Difference between revisions of "Air man's ultimate weapon"

Well, one thing's for sure, this level is extremely green, and... not a whole lot else. There's a few kinda unique moments, if only because I've never seen a Passworder lock without the actual cannon-meaning it's absolutely no threat, but the level is primarily encounters with generic goons or Air Man's regular goons. Unfortunately, this is nothing we haven't seen before, and even when the level adds on Sheep Blocks, it continues to be unremarkable. Probably the only thing I need to remark on is the absurd amount of green-mainly because green spikes and green all-the-other-solids equals readability havoc.

The boss, however, is borderline unplayable nonsense. His regular attack spawns and dies immediately, so he's basically just dabbing uselessly. But then every so often, he'll freeze time and fire large wind waves that tear off large pieces of your health bar, and if you happen to be grounded when he does this you're pretty much dead... with no warning. When the most prominent element of a level is this thoroughly broken? And it's got nothing else going for it? It needs to go back to the drawing board.

During the process of judging these levels, we were tasked with giving each a personal difficulty score. This one got a 3/5 from me, and the one (and only) reason it even got that high is due to the boss.

As far as the stage itself goes, it's pretty short with not much to talk about, save for a few aspects. The color palette is certainly one, given how...overly green the tiles are. They don't look that bad when paired with the sky background, but the indoor segments are a bit harder to look past. That aside, the Melody Response Cannon (minus the cannon) part is probably the most notable section of the stage, but not for the right reasons. Two of the buttons aligned underneath a low platform, making it impossible to jump over said buttons without hitting them. It's a very tedious segment to an otherwise bland level. As implied before, however, the boss is what really pushes it over the edge.

Air Man has a plethora of problems, with the most obvious being that his tornadoes don't spawn correctly. They flash in for a split second (and can actually damage you if you're standing in a spot where they briefly appear), then immediately go away while Air Man casually pushes you back. Then there's his "air wave" attack, which does enough damage to kill you in four hits. Thankfully, it's relatively easy to avoid...until he pulls out a version of it that stops time. There's no telegraph for when he's about to do this, which means if you get frozen while facing him on the ground, you'll be losing a ton of health (or depending on how much damage you've taken prior, all of it) with no way to retaliate. Thankfully, he's incredibly weak to the Spark Chaser...which can also easily trigger a soft-lock. If you kill Air Man while time is frozen (via Spark Chaser or by just timing your shots right), the time freezing effect doesn't go away, no matter how long you wait.

All things considered, I think it's pretty safe to say this could have done with a lot more playtesting.

Lookie, Airy Does the Funny.

Green room green spike green ladder.

Simon Says miniboss with no threat of failing other than the annoyance of needing to use special weapons to traverse through the buttons without triggering them.

No checkpoint after that until right before the boss. I guess this is supposed to be making fun of MM1 and 2 level design? Ehh, the stage is short enough, I guess.

The Air Man fight is silly, I guess; definitely rude when getting caught by that Flash Stopper attack the first time around, being stuck and not being able to deal with the onslaught is not good boss design. Also really weird that the tornados he summons show up for one frame and then despawn immediately, can't tell if it's intentional behavior.

With 176 levels to judge, I've tried to balance detail with brevity and limit myself to around 300 words per review. That adds up to more than 52,000 words...which is longer than The Great Gatsby. And those are just the words that made the final cut. I can't tell you how many times I've revised and completely rewritten these reviews.

As long as a level's premise, atmosphere, challenges, and polish give me something worth writing about, I don't mind producing another 300-odd words. Here, I'm struggling.

The level is playable. It meets my expectations for length, general layout, and other fundamental aspects of design. But when competing against 175 other levels, "playable" is only a starting point.

Theming, novelty, fairness, purpose - that's what I'm looking for on every screen. Color-contrasting spikes of a uniform design, two-way ladder transitions, and a boss fight with stable programming would be nice, too.

From the enemies to the music, none of the elements from Air Man's level in MM2 are used in a way that feels original. The button puzzle is awkward filler; it doesn't fit with the rest of the level, there's no risk or danger involved, and the low ceiling makes some button sequences impossible without using special weapons to get around the room. Sheep Man blocks are a rough surprise for players who haven't encountered them before, and it's a shame they're never combined with any enemies.

Metalls and Joes are thoroughly exhausting in these stale configurations. Air Man jokes have run their course. At least the tileset is simple and clean; the boss chamber looks particularly good.

This stage doesn't have it easy bein' green. In fact, it rather hurts the eyes at some points.

Also, fun fact - when instant death spikes should probably not be the same colour as the background to which they're on.

Most of this stage is just oh so very basic. The most stock of stock asset enemies, a very badly placed mini-boss, and...

Well, to top the stage off, we have what is the most pointless of pointless Simon Says Doors - said section is absurd to try and navigate, and the fact the checkpoint is BEFORE it rather than after it makes dying to the Air Tikis way more annoying than it had any right to be.

And then... Air Man. I mean, his sprite looks good, but it's also not yours - it's straight from Boil Man's stage in MaGMML2.

And honestly - what, the, bleedin' hell. Either he freezes time, in which case he throws attacks that knock off a whopping quarter of your health and you can't even slightly avoid it, cause, y'know, he's frozen time without a tell he was going to do so...

Or his attacks refuse to spawn.

Yeah, obviously, not a fan of any of this.