Part 20: 20 - Less Fast, More Furious

20 - Less Fast, More Furious



[The CloudRunner Queen told us we had to go find her kids, and apparently they're born dumb and they stay dumb.]



[Apparently, they're also deaf since you have to be within three feet of them to succesfully use the bloody horn.]



[The camera pans off to the next bird, which is the one I pointed out in the last update.]



[But first let's go rescue this other one we also saw before.]



Ok, where was that other one?



Uhh.

They're born dumb and they'll stay dumb until the day they die.



Hurry man, before there's still time!



[Two guys here. I'm sensing a pattern.]



[Two down, two to go.]



Where the hell is that?



[Remember when we first got here and we had to unlock a gate at the top of a spiral stairway? I mentioned there was a Boost Pad that didn't really lead to anything poignant. Now it does.]



[The way mobs go transparent when they die can make some pretty weird images. This guy looks like he's eating his own head.]



[This bird is even dumber than the rest. He backs off if you get too close, but he still has the annoying range for using the flute.]



Urge to kill rising.



[For amusements sake I used Ground Quake to try and take them down together. It doesn't actually hurt things, apparently. I knew Ground Quake didn't directly do damage when used on the two enemies you need it for, but I figured it would at least hurt weaklings like SharpClaws.]



[One last moron kid and we're good to go.]



[Now, at this point there is apparently a bug that allows you a chance to fall through the map. I have never actually been able perform the glitch and I couldn't find any help on doing it outside of an exceedingly vague explanation on a website that also had such brilliant 'glitches' as "At the beginning of the game, when you are Krystal at Krazoa Palace, go to the nearest ladder. Make sure you are climbing down and not up. As soon as Krystal begins climbing down the ladder, pause game play. Her "kilt" should be going through her body, making it seem like a thong." ]



Scales has hidden the SpellStone inside the treasure rooms. Find it, Fox, and return it to the Force Point Temple.

It's almost...almost as if I've done this before!



You're one to talk. You put the safety of your children above the safety of a planet about to explode.

The Krazoa take forever to do anything, the planet wouldn't just blow up instantly.

She has a point.



[Down we go.]



[Bafomdad Count: 14]

[It's fastest to just jump across the ledges, and amusingly if you actually fall off it costs you nothing. Not health, not a Bafomdad, nothing.]



Oh fuck you guys. This is either a good idea since this is the treasure vault, or a really stupid one because there was already a huge door in the way.

I'll go for the latter.



Yeah, definitely the latter.

[The door just opens when you get there. If you don't kill them now, you'll have to kill them on the way out since they keep the door closed.]



[Head through to here and set the wind lift to downwards to get past. There were some fireflies in the last room, but as usual, you won't need them. The Krazoa Palace room was at least vaguely challenging without fireflies...]



[...The draw distance fog in here contrasts even better making this absurdly easy.]



[We need explosives, though. Oof.]



[Bafomdad Count: 15]



[You might be tempted to reset the wind lift in order to get topside where the SharpClaw bomb is. That's a bad idea.]



[You'd be half right, though, because we do need it to blow open the wall.]



[Well, it's not falling through the world, but there are a few places where you can toss bombs through walls. They're not always useful, but in this situation it actually lands in the wind lift and drifts down safely.]



[I will never understand why these cracks lead into rooms with no other exits, not even locked exits.]



[In the next room Fox's decision on how best to go down the ladder is to jump. ]



[We won't bother with the Boost Pad here, it just sends us back up. I really wish there were more Boost Pads used like this.]



[We have two choices for where to go (unless you look at the minimap). In reality, it's just so we can't use the camera to zoom in, because...]



It's go time!



Hah!



That is so awesome.

Enough!



That's even more awesome.



[And they're off!]



[Huh, he really is the predator. Guess I'll have to stick to 'get to da choppa' jokes instead of Grey Fox jokes.]

[CloudRunner Fortress Race - Normal: Viddler]
[CloudRunner Fortress Race - Music: Viddler]

[The second one is the same video with an alternative music track because I got sick of listening to the same thirty second music loop from playing/editing/rewatching/reencoding the race over and over. It wasn't necessary, but making a video of this segment was almost entirely pointless because of how dull it is. It also lets you make fun of my taste in my music. ]

[Anyways, the race itself is much like the first jetski race, but it differs in two key ways. First off, your objective is not to simply get ahead of the SharpClaw before the end of the race (because the track is circular). Instead you actually have to ram them to death; more specifically, you have to ram the one carrying the SpellStone (the one in the lead) to death. Since he's in front you'll almost always end up killing the others first, and I've never bothered to find out what happens if you avoid the other two. Because that is the actual goal this minigame really shows off how dumb the collision physics are in this game. Regardless of angle and force the result is always the same: the SharpClaw rockets forward and Fox comes to a stop. Previously, we could attribute that to walls being the common collision element (thanks to poorly defined clipping planes in snowbanks).]

[The second difference is that you have a pseudo time-limit because the 'health' on the bike is constantly dropping (to prevent you from leaving Fox idling in the tunnels and letting the SharpClaw ram themselves to death on you). You can replenish your health by running over the speed-arrows on the ground (which actually blur the screen as if you were speeding up, but you don't speed you up at all). So, ultimately, the race is just a long tedious bumper-car ride. As long as you hit the arrow patches you should never get low enough to lose.]



[Ah yes, the archetypal sakura trees, shitting leaves like they're on chemo therapy. There's always time for references to Glorious Nippon. ]



Who the fuck are you anyway? How is it possible for there to be one solitary dinosaur with not a single other member of their species?

And with Scales gone my tribe can now start to rebuild their lives.

...Ignoring me, huh.



...you need to find the Ocean Force Point Temple.



And why do you all have saddles?! Who rides you?!

<sub>Fox? Is that you? It's been four days! Let me out! What the hell is going on?! Help! Fox!

I should just nuke this shithole too, so they can rebuild for real...</sub>



[Located near the sea. Ham-fisted? Naaaah.]



[Collecting that Spell Stone marked the halfway point of the game too. Now that we've got our fifth heart we're off to Ocean Force Point Temple!]