prfsnl_gmr wrote:I don't remember Life Force being that hard. Did you try it with two players? Some early Konami games really can't be played any other way.
Nope, don't have anyone else to play it with!
Looked at in terms of general difficulty, Life Force isn't crazy hard. But it IS stupendously punishing. Dying makes you too slow to dodge things, leaves you only able to shoot a single bullet at a time in a straight line, leaves you unable to take a hit - you're basically useless. Mid-stage there are very minimal opportunities to power up, especially seeing as the first 2 you get basically need to go to speed, meaning even after the opportunities you get you're too underpowered to cope.
Maybe 90% of hazards on Life Forces first 3 stages are environmental, and even after that point we're talking a good 50% or so. Environmental hazards will kill you no matter whether you have shields or not, meaning a brush with them will basically ruin your run.
The environmental hazards in Life Force are also unpredictable without knowing where they are in advance and in a few cases they're random. This means that you have to perfectly memorise upcomign hazards because reacting to them is pretty unlikely. For example, on stage 1 you have some walls you have to shoot through. If you don't know that these regrow almost immediately, then it regrows on you and bam, you're dead, start over. It also has sections where walls grow outwards quickly - sometimes completely blocking the path. If you didn't know that was going to happen, you're screwed, there's no way to get past it. Dead. Start over. Later, theres one that grows quickly in and punishes you if you're close to the front of the screen - ther thing it just conditioned you to do by blocking your path earlier and forcing you to push forward because of the regrowing tunnel you just shot through. Dead. Start over.
Level 2 has volcanoes that shower rocks at random. Most of the time that's avoidable with good reactions, but every now and again a random rock launches right out straight into your ship. Bam. Dead. Start Over. Later in the level rocks rain from the top of the screen. As far as I can tell these are randomly placed, and they also seem to come at random speeds due to the games slowdown issues. Because you can't predict them, these caused me a lot of deaths. Start over!
Level 3 has solar flares which cover a third of the screen and shoot from either the top or bottom of the screen with little warning. Sometimes they shoot once, sometimes they shoot 3 times and catch you out when you move back thinking it's safe. Dead. Start over, you aint getting powered up on this stage, the enemies are too strong and too mobile and you're super slow and can only have one fucking bullet on screen now you died. Start over.
Level 4 goes back to having things grow across the whole screen without warning. Dead, game over.
You get the idea. Life Force isn't about playing and reacting, it's about tedious memorisation. In all honestly, the stuff it throws at you isn't that tough, and I'm sure people who played the game to death can get through with little difficulty. But having a game where dying is basically a game over and filling it with bullshit environmental hazards that can kill you instantly, even if you have a shield, and are completely untelegraphed is just not for me. There's no skill involved in reacting to those. It's just a game of progressing 10 seconds further into a stage so you can be killed by the next crappy insta-jib, and then trying to remember where you need to be to avoid it next time. Screw that for a lark!
