Forum posts

Reviving this because I've found a weird trick with the ending cutscenes: if you extract after killing the final gang and the 5 second dossier countdown begins, then respawn in The Keep, the true endgame 'cleared the city' cutscene plays before the cutscene for the gang (actually, in some instances I'm not sure it plays at all if you do this), even before the loading screen.

I bring this up because it appears to save ~2-2.5secs, involves technical skill instead of just waiting for 5 seconds, and intuitively I've been thinking this should count as a valid way to end a run, after all it is the true final cutscene (unlike using one of the 'gang defeated' cutscenes as the end-point).

So is it a fair assumption that skipping to the final cutscene like this is legal for the boards?

Edit: I should also say that the endpoint using this cutscene is the first frame of black screen after warping (because the beginning of this cutscene is fading in from black).

Yep, those are the rules I'm thinking of. You'll likely need to go and get Supreme yourself for this because I think he currently only tangentially pays attention to this game (i.e. probably not the forum).

Now this is where it gets weird. I believe it makes more sense to focus on tracked collectibles than anything else, so it's fair to say ignoring the max upgraded Warriors, the bonus section, and rune pouch.

However, by this standard, I do still hold that alternative skins should be part of 100% because they are tracked collectibles, just in the wrong page of the Wotnot book, if that makes any sense. Collecting them also does add something of substance in the routing as well, because 100% is mostly a collect-a-thon (so they fit right in), and it gives rise to finding an optimal route for collecting a substantial amount of runes (not just for fruits and elixirs in the shops), such as multiple stone chests.

Or maybe the added runes make it a little too much? I don't know, but I'd be willing to try the lot for what that's worth, and the other shop purchases aren't exactly cheap by comparison if my notes are correct (395 runes, the skins + the pouch upgrade costing another 500 runes on top), so it's probably fine.

And on the "collect-and-complete-everything-OCD" category, yes we could just have a 'Max%' (or 'Wotnot%'/'Completed Wotnot') category made down the line. Never know, it could turn out to be a pretty hilarious meme category. 4Head

I always found this one a bit difficult to define. I agree the four criteria you've given are definite, but then are we defining just the Wotnot's back stat page or also completing the Warriors' profiles? Either way I presume we're ignoring the 'bonus' section in the Wotnot, which is the cheat codes and concept art (so high-scoring the individual levels) and max upgrading the rune pouch (seeing as it's not really being 'tracked' in the Wotnot).

If we're just going for the back stat page, then I agree there's nothing else to it, but if the Warrior page is relevant, then I think the following need adding:
-All 10 alternative Warrior skins (also needs one pouch upgrade)
-Max upgrade all 10 Warriors

The 'max upgrades' are admittedly more of a time sink than anything else (just spam through upgrades after getting all the fruit), but from following 'complete the Wotnot book', that's how I took it.

(I guess we're now using this thread as 'Kameo General Discussion')

The cutscene skips are actually very straightforward (these are however the only ones I had ever found when looking with quit-outs).

When I say quit-out, I mean pressing 'select' to go back to the main menu, where you should only need to mash 'A' to go back into the game. I timed this process in Enchanted Kingdom (post-game) to be 13secs. I'm under the impression that you're quitting out of the entire game program, not the 'in-game' part back to the main menu.

If your XB1 is taking ~46secs to go from 'start game' to the black screen after the intro cinematic (in your vid), while my X360 (my old one, I haven't tried on this new, not-knackered one) took ~51secs, that's likely either faster loading times or comparable loading times (as I said, I haven't tried on my new X360). But I'm not familiar with Rare Replay and XB1 Kameo so I can only speculate.

On optimisations, as far as I can tell, yes it appears mainly to be combat and menuing/swapping out Elemental Warriors. I'm trying to recall my old searches (one year ago) and I don't remember finding viable glitches outside of the quit-out exploit. It mainly appears to be optimal vanilla gameplay.

As long as you have a valid video that can be timed in real-time by the moderator, there shouldn't be a problem. I've been submitting the raw footage as my runs on other games with no issue. And there's not much point worrying about the in-game time for this game as it only goes down to minutes.

And even though this isn't what you asked about, I did run this game a while back and there are some quit-out abuses if you wish to use them. Copy-and-pasted from the Kameo SDA thread:
"...there's a few tricks that abuse the checkpoint system via quit-outs:
-Some cutscenes become skippable (out of the ~30-35min worth of them), namely the first cutscene in Thorn's Castle when dropping off of the ice wall with Chilla (done during his falling animation), and all of the cutscenes that play when picking up the Elemental Sprites (done immediately after pressing 'A' to absorb them). This trims down probably ~5min worth of cutscenes.
-It's possible to quit out after destroying the last catapult while defending the Red Shrine, warping Kameo back into Snow Top Village, skipping Farron's "victory cutscene," so you can progress immediately and not need to trek back. I estimated ~1m15s saved doing this."

Something I've noticed between the versions of the game is that the saucer animations lag more (or seemingly at all) on Xbox 360 (using the Xbox disc) compared to Xbox, PS2, and the PS4 port (I don't know about PS3).

For now, I based my observation off of Turnipseed Farm as the landing and take-off animations appear consistent no matter where they're done (I recall the times being unchanged when taking off from 'The Lone Gunman' mission).

The approximate observed times (Takeoff | Landing):
My Xbox 360: 22secs (21secs at TheUnbiasedGamer's angle, not furonwarrior's) | 24secs (Ariel Torano's angle)
TheUnbiasedGamer's Xbox 360: 20secs | 23.5secs
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yml51mcYwwU)
Furonwarrior's Xbox: 15.5secs | 17.5secs
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMnC5iHXijE)
(Landing from 'Earth Women are Delicious': [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1nigWU7f2Y])
Ariel Torano's Xbox: 15.5secs | 17.5secs
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHYmfPmWx-c)
Austinthegamer's PS2: 15.5secs | 17.5secs ('Earth Women are Delicious' intro)
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BcfBWxyszxc)
James Best's PS4: 15.5secs | 17.5secs
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sz40Igvykvs&t=336s)

The strange thing is the times appear consistent regardless of location or angle change on all versions except the Xbox 360, which I believe is poor emulation at this point. So the change in angles on lag is likely nonexistent or irrelevant outside of the Xbox 360, and a second of difference doesn't mean much thanks to the slow turn radius of the saucer, so it's rarely likely to be worth accounting for.

My Xbox 360 appears to be a little slow also, but even comparing to TheUnbiasedGamer there are still seconds of difference. Using my 22secs takeoff and 24secs landing animations (because they copied the other versions' angles more accurately), there is still a +2secs difference between takeoff and landing, and appears consistently ~6.5secs slower.

To put this into perspective, there are 27 landing and takeoff saucer animations in the Any% run (including cutscenes, which might have dialogue that lasts longer than 17.5secs, negating the version differences somewhat):
-My Xbox 360 wastes a projected total of ~175.5secs.
-TheUnbiasedGamer's Xbox 360 wastes a projected total of ~148.5secs (if taken as a consistent ~5.5secs each).

I'll need to revisit at a later date and crop & compare my and Austin's PBs to see what the overall difference is and confirm/refute my suspicions.

Also if anyone has knowledge of version differences in general and can offer some insight, that would be appreciated.

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For now I don't know about load times as I can't test these because I need footage of definite mashing A/start or X/start through loading screens on the other versions.

The rapid fire glitch for the Quantum Deconstructor used probably only saves 15secs on Roboprez, but I have no reason to assume the other versions can't do it (unless it's bad Xbox --> Xbox 360 emulation at work).

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TL;DR: For anyone interested in running the game, at least based on the saucer animations, I would recommend not running on Xbox 360 unless that's all you have and don't mind potentially throwing away 2.5-3 minutes RTA. Also use a different console and get your free WR.

An update to the DNA grinding. There are two very quick side missions early on: 'Farmland Fiasco' in Turnipseed Farm (land Saucer after completing 'Destination Earth') and 'Rockwell BBQ' in Rockwell (after completing 'Citizen Crypto').

'Farmland Fiasco' has a high density of easily-extracted, relatively high-DNA farmers that rewards 200 DNA (and eventually 300 DNA) for completing the mission (repeatedly). Completing enough missions until earning 300 DNA four times (20 farmers), plus all of the DNA from brain extraction, should give ~6,300 DNA in up to 15mins.

'Rockwell BBQ' doesn't give any brain stems, but killing the cows for the first three difficulties (6, 9, and 12 cows) gives 600 DNA in a little over a minute (even while using time to grab a probe), which is more rapid grinding than ‘Farmland Fiasco’. With practice (and good DNA drops), the total time between the two grinds may drop by a minute or two to a little over 14mins.

These are both done on the way to grabbing probes throughout their levels, and make up ~7,000 of the 8,350 DNA needed. Along with extracting certain high-value brain stems (female civilians in Turnipseed Farm, Mayors, (rarely) Generals, and the President), this easily reaches the DNA required - usually a few hundred over.

The issue is the 7k grinding section is 3,200 DNA rewarded from completing missions, which aren't boosted by post-game +50% brain stem DNA. So a method of skipping the ~7 minutes of ending cutscenes is needed to farm like this during the endgame (but it at least makes resets for dying during farming less punishing a reset).

On attempting farming off of the Majestic Agents, the problem is they generally don't come about in such huge densities like the farmers and take about twice as long to extract for about twice the amount of DNA (while getting no 'mission completed' DNA bonuses).

I also ran into an issue of trying to farm them in Capitol City and they eventually stopped spawning, which I believe is because the game can only spawn so many assets at once, and tanks spawning in the background struggle to despawn (destroyed or active) and clog the spawn pool.

Also, the Majestic Agents spawning during ‘South by Southwest’ get blocked by their cars, making it difficult to collect their brain stems while extracting others AND making spawn limits an issue again. I tried an alternative by hovering around the beach behind the target motel for the mission, but they only spawn in trios, with groups still being quite far from another, and still no bonus from 'mission completed' screens.

So for now, it seems some early game farmer and cow side mission grinding is the way to go. On run length: from my test runs this category is likely to get near to (or even under) 2 hours with some practice, optimisation, and good brain stem RNG.

So if I've read everything correctly, the end-time is sticking to when the 5 second dossier countdown ends (what Blues' time is calibrated to at 23:07), and not the absolute end cinematic at 23:29 in his video? If I've got that right, thanks for the clarification.

The rules define the time range as: "Timing starts after character select, and ends at final cutscene."

Just to clarify, does "final cutscene" mean the last gang's extermination cutscene, or the full "city cleared" cinematic that comes ~5 seconds afterwards? I ask because I would assume the latter, but Blues' NG+ run (the only reference) is timed to the former.

I was hoping for feedback on proposing a 100% category, which is viable through the Invasion Report (stats screen). Proposed criteria:
-Complete all 22 missions.
-Collect all 184 probes.
-Purchase all 18 upgrades.
-'World overlord Complete' at 100%.

The 184 probes make up 13,800 DNA, and all of the upgrades in total cost 22,150 DNA, so an extra 8,350 DNA needs to be collected throughout the run.
The probes:
-Turnipseed Farm: 25 probes.
-Rockwell: 30 probes.
-Santa Modesta: 50 probes.
-Area 42: 24 probes.
-Union Town: 25 probes.
-Capitol City: 30 probes.

The upgrades:
Zap-O-Matic: 2,500 DNA
1) 250 DNA
2) 750 DNA
3) 1,500 DNA
Disintegrator Ray: 3,400 DNA
1) 400 DNA
2) 1,000 DNA
3) 2,000 DNA
Ion Detonator: 4,250 DNA
1) 500 DNA
2) 1,250 DNA
3) 2,500 DNA
Psychokinesis: 5,000 DNA
1) 500 DNA
2) 1,500 DNA
3) 3,000 DNA
Death Ray: 1,500 DNA
1) 500 DNA
2) 1,000 DNA
Sonic Boom: 2,000 DNA
1) 750 DNA
2) 1,250 DNA
Quantum Deconstructor: 3,500 DNA
1) 1,000 DNA
2) 2,500 DNA

If grind is a worry, there are many 50/100+ DNA targets along the way through the missions and levels, and I've recently found a disorientation-anal probe combination that allows 2-shotting (instead of 3-shotting) Majestic agents, making them the best reliable DNA targets, at least at maximum notoriety. So, if done correctly, actual dedicated time to grinding should be fairly minimal.

I would also note the post-game yields 50% more DNA from extracted brainstems. However, to activate post-game the unskippable final cutscenes and credits must be watched, which is ~7 minutes long. So the grind period would need to be initially over 15 minutes to justify grinding post-game.

The 'World overlord Complete' statistic is the 100% metric, where all six levels in the game have their own '[level] complete' statistic, when they reach 100%, so will World Overlord. Completing main missions, collecting probes, and unlocking extras increase these percentages. Upgrades don't increase the percentages.

Collecting all of the probes and completing all of the missions also completely unlock various sections of the game's Archives (extras screen) for further confirmation of a complete 100% run. Relevant sections:
-B-Movie Theater
-Furonigami - Some Assembly Required
-Furon Propaganda

@Harmak
Yeah, at the time I hadn't actually put any real thought into how much grinding 120,000G takes: e.g. I used a grind spot on 3-1/3-3 that gave ~1,000G, completing the level in ~5 minutes - which comes out at 10 hours of grinding for 120,000G (dull Grind%).

You make a fair point on the A+/S+ dilemma, I said "go with S+" because my mindset was the highest grade on the level times' grading system, thinking "collect" all of the highest grades. But the grades' thresholds ARE technically arbitrary, so saying "there's technically no need to aim for ranks above what's needed for the prizes" isn't unreasonable.
How much extra work does it require to get the S+ ranks, though? You'd need to repeat levels anyway because medallions often get in the way of A+. An anecdote for some of the hardest levels (Forge of Hours 2 & 3): I managed to grab all but one medallion between the two levels and still get both S+ ranks during casual play, but I did have a lot of pauses to help me, so it might not be applicable in a run.

If the increase in grind is significant - and I know you'll know far more than I would, so if you say it's too much you're probably right - 100% being A+ instead of S+ would make sense. There could also be a separation for "100% w/S+" or something if anyone was interested down the line - which wouldn't be too different from Medievil's 100% (all Chalices) and Max% (all Chalices + grab all of the Chalices' rewards + the few extra life bottles they ignore in 100%) distinction.
(IL runs could just cover S+ ranks anyway without a need for a "100% w/S+")

@Paulmall
The game's not excessively difficult to run, but of course it's unforgiving if you die. Between the PS2 and Xbox 360, the 360 should be faster because it's a next gen console. Both Austin (Edit: if I remember his VoDs correctly) and I think the 360 has faster loads overall but no direct comparison has been done as far as I know.

@Austinthegamer (Enjoy my Wall of Text)
Mr. Crypto Goes to Capitol City (MCGtCC)
Disintegrator Ray (DR)
Ion Detonator (ID)
Quantum Deconstructor (QD)

With DNA requirements, my overall route is to accumulate 2,400+ DNA before MCGtCC instead of 2,000+ so I can purchase the DR1 upgrade (400 DNA, before 'Aliens Stole My Brain Stem') ASAP to blitz through enemies faster sooner.
At MCGtCC I buy the DR2 and ID1 upgrades (1,500 DNA total). This is for Armquist, but buying them early might make MCGtCC go faster if something goes awry.
Another 500 DNA makes up the QD1 upgrade (1,000 DNA) for the final mission, as it's technically half price (in DNA and time). So 2,900 DNA total.
I haven't actually properly timed getting DR1 early and QD1 against getting DR1 at MCGtCC with DR2 & ID1 and (probably) NOT getting QD1, but I think it works.

Condensed rundown of my notes (without DNA & upgrades):
M2) Earth Women are Delicious:
-Holobob isn’t necessary and only makes you run out of PK carrying Miss Rockwell.
-Miss Rockwell doesn't need to be hypno'd, Pox just needs to tell you to grab her.

M3) Citizen Crypto:
-I answer the questions in the order 1/2/2/2/1/1, where the last two are answer 3, and so slower than getting them immediately wrong.

M4) Alien Pool Party:
-Holobobbing isn't necessary if you're fast through the houses and jetpacking onto the motel roof (civilian alert, maybe flashing police alert).
-The Mayor can be extracted without scanning him – Minor Warning: I got ~20-25% chance of softlocking doing this during repeated testing on a test file, but NEVER on a fresh run.
-Let the police exit their cars properly (become two new entities), before destroying their car to get 5.5% for the car instead of 2.5% – each officer gives 1.5%.

M5) Televisions of Doom:
-I follow the Majestic car and DR it without the PK upgrade (they move closer to Sleep Ernst). If they exit the car, you can do obscene damage to them by knocking them over with PK (grab, move, release), jump on them while they're down, and grab them again. The game launches them away from you at high speed because you're too close, smashing them around for literally ~2/3 of their tank health.
-Blow up Sleepy Ernst's car directly after scanning him, the game doesn't care.
-Farm during Pox's rant (possibly ~75 DNA).

M7) This Island Suburbia:
-DR the scientists' cars ASAP and collect their briefcases.

M8) Teenage Zombies from Outer Space:
-This is a great 200+ DNA farming segment using the Anal Probe, watch for random police cars (seriously, they cause mayhem).

M9) South by Southwest:
-After destroying ten vehicles, destroying the motel emplacements with the ID can be done quickly and often with authorities spawning near them to maintain notoriety (less saucer work).
-I stay near the saucer while killing Majestic.

M10) Foreign Correspondent:
-I get Bert from the front and carry him out the back without disguise or hypno, most enemies can’t aim and keeping Bert high is generally safe (you’ll have enough PK).
-Also, I did manage to "drown" myself carrying Bert (~waist high lel).

M11) Suburb of the Damned:
-Tanks can't see you behind hedges and the chain-link fence, and tanks and robots can be blown up through the fence.
-At phase 3, spawn camp the robots up tower 1's road with ID rounds to accelerate the mission (probably ~5secs).

M13) The Mutant Menace:
-Destroy the Tesla Coils from back-left of the base clockwise to front-left to reach the saucer sooner. A cow can 1-shot the back-right Tesla Coil if clear and angled right (but awkward).

M14) Duck and Cover:
-At the mines, lead the nuke carrier and destroy the mines on the right side of the road, the left don't get in the way.
-Entering the airfield with the carrier can be done by IDing the tower and the switch, and then again to the barricades (mind the carrier) then holobob.

M16) Furon Down:
-Destroy emplacements with Crypto as you're doing objectives (less saucer work).

M17) MCGtCC:
-While holobobbed at the target scientist, scan him and then run to the octagon without him. (Edit: Mistake)
-You can drop down the right side of the bridge and jetpack across quickly, safely, and without raising awareness, and is VERY safe on the way back.
-Jetpacking across the pond currently works by jetpacking from a tree trunk. It is only JUST barely possible (read: easy death) and running out of jetpack fuel most of the way across probably stops it from saving time (slow jetpack spam). You're better off taking the bridge for now.

M18) Armquist vs The Furons:
-I’ve only tried this once, but duking around the boat statue near the boss spawn seems to keep aggression and mitigate the missiles. Also, watch out for flanking troops.

M20) The Furon Filibuster:
-Be hyper aggro, spawn kill the front senators down the road, and figure-eight the side entrance due to respawning soldiers (ignore the soldiers otherwise).

M21) Shocking Developments:
-Hypno the console scientists, they destroy some Tesla Coils while you move on to others.

I haven't played through the entirety of Blinx yet (I'm at the Forge of Hours round), but here's my 100% category suggestion:

If the Isa's GameFAQs guide to Blinx is at all accurate (see 'VIII - Prizes' section), then the 100% category should mostly be measured by the number of prizes in the player's collection. Requiring all 80 medals and A+/S+ rankings in all levels to get all 14 prizes. We also then have a 14/14 counter to review.
Walkthrough link: http://www.gamefaqs.com/xbox/561518-blinx-the-time-sweeper/faqs/19690

Then there's two other questions:
1) Should the player have to get the S+ ranks in all stages and not just A+?
2) Should buying upgrades to max out Blinx's retry holder to 9, his time holder to 10, and upgrading the sweeper to 10 capacity also be required?
My answer to both is 'yes', so we can count 14 prizes, see if all levels satisfy an 'S+ rank' threshold, and Blinx's upgrades all have visible upper limits as well.
This would also be significantly different from an 80 medallions run because of likely-many stage replays, so I think they can exist as properly separate categories.

So the 100% category rules I propose:
-Unlock all 14 prizes:
--'S+ Rank' all stages.
--Collect all 80 medallions.
-Level up Blinx's retry holder to 9 lives.
-Level up Blinx's time holder to 10 effects.
-Level up Blinx's sweeper to 10 storage capacity.
-Defeat the final boss.

Another topic is purchasing the best sweeper (TS-X7 Supreme), and the last clothing set (Bright Set), for 90,000G and 30,000G respectively. Ignoring the grind to get the gold for these, would they need to bought? Sweepers and clothing sets aren't permanently bought, they replace each other, so that would be a strike against their inclusion in the run, and clothing is merely cosmetic, so I would put it as a definite 'no'.
I'm somewhat unsure on the best sweeper because it's technically part of maxing out Blinx's in-game ability, but I still personally lean to 'no'.

I've been testing this game for a little while now and - even though this is on the Xbox 360, so I can't say for any playstations - I can safely say this category can easily be dropped from a sub-2h to a sub-1h30m RTA by using different routes and more aggression. Seeing as there's a video of a run here I was hoping to get some headway into putting out a faster time on video (I don't have a capture card, so I'm not going to be posting anything any time soon).

There are various tricks (not really glitches, the game is still mostly being played vanilla) to speed up various missions:
-Many instances where you're asked to scan/hypno/follow a character, you can actually ignore or skip it (such as Miss Rockwell, Bert Withers, the mayor in "Alien Pool Party").
-During some downtime/autoscroller sections of the game (Pox's speech in "Televisions of Doom" and the projector in "Teenage Zombies from Outer Space"), these are very convenient times to farm DNA, to the point that over 300 DNA can be gathered between them to forego later probes.
-Destroying emplacements early on-foot like in "South by Southwest" and "Furon Down" should save considerable time for the saucer later on.
-There are civilian-tier humans that drop 100 DNA (or if you're lucky: 200 DNA) brainstems when live-extracted, like mayors and military generals.

There are many other strats of note, but I'd rather not write an essay if I'm the only one posting. I've already posted something like this on the SDA forums, but the DAH! thread there seems a little too inactive over there to get any real discussion started.