“Ok, guys, we just shipped the title update off to our publisher for final testing, and then compliance testing at Microsoft. Once the update has passed compliance testing, you can all enjoy the update. Here is an abridged list of the changes we made. The big glaring feature you'll notice missing is a quick save option, which we spent a great deal of time on but eventually proved too technically difficult to be worth our time. The game just was not built to easily support that kind of feature.
That being said, we've added "Leave Your Console On" functionality that behaves just like we intended the quick save to... er.. almost.
1. Controls - Left stick will now move AND turn, but you can use the right stick to override the turn, so basically the same if you've been using both sticks, but alot simpler for noobies to get used to. A and B will now both jump and dodge respectively, but you can still press the sticks. In particular, the run ability is now much much easier since all you have to do is hold down B rather than hold the stick down. Controller vibration has been toned down.
2. Camera - You can now enter chase camera in the majority of the special camera sequences. The topdown camera's movement has been fine tuned quite a bit to remove the constant zooming and twisting it did before. The first downtown sequence camera was entirely redone so its much less annoying.
3. Player Movement - Players now turn a bit faster, making the game feel more arcade-like. The autoaim has been tweaked up to all hell and it feels quite a bit more natural to aim and hit enemies. Player movement speed has been increased slightly.
You can now reload while dodging and can jump while coughing.
4. Weapon Tweaks - We made quite a few weapon tweaks to balance weaponry and make holding on to ammo a little easier. The level 1 nailguns will now autofire. All nailguns consume less ammo. The level 1 rocket launcher holds two rockets instead of one. The bee mine launcher consume half the ammo it did before. The grenade launcher has more splash damage but less direct hit damage. Bombs will not blow up when directly damaged. The radioactive flashlight was downgraded from ludicrously powerful to ridiculously powerful. The sonic shield no longer consumes any ammo. The glue cannon no longer sticks allies.
5. Grades - All grade-related (and achievement) bugs were fixed, including non-checked off weapons and overwriting better grades. Also, getting a grade on a higher difficulty level will replace any of the lower grades for that level on lower difficulty levels. Most boss related bugs were fixed. The game is beatable on Madness now (sorry 'bout that). The required weapon parts percentage for each level was knocked down from 70% to 45%. Weapon parts no longer checkpoint. That's a big one, no having to recollect weapon parts.
6. Enemies - All of the boss-related bugs were fixed. Lots of enemies tweaked, stun attacks removed or toned down (one was turned up, the martian abduction). In particular healths were decreased on some of the absurd enemies, such as the clown, big foot, undead samurai, etc. A semi-transparent health bar was added to all of the tougher enemies when you damage them (they aren't always on). This has proven very useful in our playtesting and should have been included from the start.”
7. Coop Dojo - The cooperative dojo went through a massive overhaul. Its waves have been tweaked and balanced to be a bit more natural and not just plain silly. Also you are periodically awarded health.
8. SonicDude's Cheat - You'll see! Feel free to guess though...
9. Game Options - "In-game Monsters" - any of the maps that support dojo now feature this option, which will add monsters to the game world for any of the game types. You can optionally also set this to "ghouls" which will only spawn the members of the ghoul squad. Bingo, quasi-Bots! "Autotargeting" - you can now turn autotargetting on enemies in the arena map levels, making the mode a little more strategy-based. "Dojo Wave" - you can now select the starting wave for the Dojo on any of the supported maps. "Weapons - Random" - select the random weapons option to completely randomize the weapons that spawn on the map, makes for quite a few different situations. Monster Hunter stun times of 15, 30, and 60 seconds were added, which should make that oft-played game mode quite a bit more interesting.
10. Performance Optimizations - The game was optimized a bit for 3-4 players on coop. Invite friends over and play coop, its quite a bit of fun!
Overall, I feel the game now feels more refreshing and fun, and chase camera is totally overrated with the tweaked auto-aim. See for yourselves in the coming weeks. Keep your eyes peeled for a Southpeak press release announcing the date, though I'll probably come online and let you guys now the moment I know something.
Thomas Williamson
Technical Director
Artificial Studios, Inc.”
