mninp
Champion Bullfighter
Offline
I Love Space Jam!
Posts: 21
|
I've been a lurker here for quite a while on and off. Been a huge TM fan for the past 20 years or so on my own time, but never really connected with the community. Glad to finally be here.
Anyway, I've always wanted to try and beat every game in the series with every character on every difficulty. I've never attempted this, as I've always just found my "go to" characters and would do either tournament or deathmatch with those.
So the other day I started this long, grueling journey to beat every TM game with every character on every difficulty. I already know TM2 and (to a lesser extent) TMB are going to make me lose my mind. TM2 on Hard with characters like Grasshopper, Twister and Hammerhead...I have no idea how I'm gonna be able to do that. TM2 is ridiculous. At least Black gives you your lives back after each level.
So I already started TM1. I made it through Easy mode with (surprisingly) no deaths. Medium has been quite a step up though. I'm not as familiar with this game as some of the others in the series, but man, sometimes the AI can be a bitch. I haven't gotten a Game Over yet, but I've beaten Medium so far with Sweet Tooth, Roadkill, Mr. Grimm and Hammerhead and I haven't gotten a "no death" run yet on Medium. Almost did it with Grimm, but I got too greedy with Minion and went for a few extra hits when I should have bolted, and he killed me.
Anyway, since I'm really into the first game right now and it's currently fresh in my mind, let's talk about it. Who are your favorite characters? Least favorite? Which CPUs do you find the easiest and the hardest?
For me, best three characters have to be Roadkill, Mr. Grimm and Spectre. Roadkill feels the most balanced to me, good speed, decent ramming ability (on smaller cars), pretty good and satisfying special, and overall just very easy to use. He does slide quite a bit when you turn sharply, but it's not nearly as bad as Pit Viper. Mr. Grimm is basically a drive-by sniper. You can clear an entire level with him by driving around sniping people with your special as you pass, and it's so satisfying. Spectre is just a lot of fun to use. I like the way his special seems to tease the enemies by zigzagging towards them or even passing them only to come back and hit them. I like using Hammerhead as well because it's fun to run over everybody and demolish them, but I'm starting to see his weaknessess a lot more on Medium. He's just not fast enough to get out of bad situations. On Easy I never really needed a quick exit strategy since everyone was...well, easy.
Least favorite have to be Darkside, Crimson Fury, Thumper and Yellow Jacket. Darkside is just hard to use as if he gets hit with anything that's not a fire missile, he spins out of control and flies into the wall. Darkside can easily become a punching bag for a group of enemies. Crimson Fury is fast, but his special isn't that strong and you have to line it up perfectly, and his armor is not good enough to balance having to stop and line up a perfect shot, especially with all the craziness usually going on around you. To me he's the weakest of the light cars. I love Thumper in TM2, but in the first one his special isn't as strong, and you can't really use it in groups too much. TM1 isn't a game where you can afford to stop and line up attacks, because being caught standing still in a group is just asking to be killed. Yellow Jacket is just kind of "meh" in every category, so he's not my favorite to use either. And Pit Viper's controls are bonkers, but her special is pretty good.
Keep in mind that I'm still figuring out good strategies for this game as I'm not too familiar with it. What works for me now may get me killed on Hard mode. And yes, I am ready to rage on Hard mode. I think I'll probably get a couple of Game Overs on Medium, but it shouldn't be too bad. Hard mode is going to be terrible, though not nearly as bad as TM2 Hard mode. Just looking ahead to TM2, I think that's going to be the hardest game in the series to 100% beat it with everyone on Hard. Black will be ridiculous as well, but at least Black gives you your lives back at the beginning of each level. I mean characters like Grasshopper, Twister and Hammerhead...I don't even know if I can do it. But I'm gonna keep going until I do.
Now I want to talk about the AI. First off, Sweet Tooth can go die in a fire. I am legitimately scared when he's in a level because his AI is so damn aggressive and he spams homing missiles and specials non stop. Darkside is also very aggressive, but as long as you don't let him near you physically he can't do much to you.
Some of the other AI opponents have thier own little quirks from car to car that you start to notice over time. Outlaw tries to circle you constantly spamming his taser which is SO ANNOYING when you're someone like Mr. Grimm or Sweet Tooth who needs to line up a shot. Spectre tries to special spam you from far away, which is frustrating trying to hunt him down, but once you catch him it's over for him. Pit Viper must be on something because God damn does she spam weapons like crazy, but thankfully she's fairly weak and gets easily killed by rams. Crimson Fury for some reason has perfect aim with his tiny little special bullet. He'll be circling me and hitting me over and over again with it. He's someone that you have to drive by and attack, because face to face he'll have you bouncing and spinning all over the place. But his low armor makes him easy to take down if you can make contact with him.
Something I noticed is that certain characters will NEVER appear on certain levels. For example you'll never have Sweet Tooth on Level 2 or Level 6. Level 2 especially is locked to only about 9 characters you can have because there's some I've never gotten. Also Sweet Tooth and Darkside will ALWAYS appear in Cyburbia no matter what unless you're playing as them. I have no idea why this is, but that's how it is.
I always wondered if the civilians with guns that are on the road and the SWAT team guys can shoot enemy CPUs as well. Can anyone confirm this? I could have sworn I've seen it happen, but I may be wrong. But yeah I hate those guys. Happy they took them out for TM2.
Lastly I want to rank all six levels from worst to best because...why not? It's fun to go back and revisit these games and dissect them. These games are a ton of fun.
6. Rooftops- My least favorite rooftop level in the series. What I don't like about this one is how there's only one way to really go around in a circle. Once you get to the bottom there's only one way back, and fighting Minion becomes a game of shooting him from afar and driving around the level only to rinse and repeat. I just don't like how there isn't more options to go back and forth from the top to the bottom. Everything is basically a one way trip. A couple of bridges connecting some of the rooftops would really help this level a lot.
5. The Arena- The first level is just very basic. It's too small, and I get that being small is the entire point of the level, but it's just a bit TOO small for me. Also no healths kind of ruins it in my opinion.
4. Cyburbia- Pretty sure this is everyone's favorite, and I get that, the design of this level is fantastic. It's just that it's so large and with 8 enemies it becomes exhausting. The level is cool at the beginning of the match, but when it starts to get down in numbers, I start to get bored of it.
3. Warehouse District- Nothing good or bad about this one, it's just a nice, solid stage with two healths in perfect locations and a nice 3 enemies to dispatch. Nothing much to say about it, it's pretty cool.
2. River Park- Love this stage. This is the most chaotic level in the game and it's the one that is most likely to make me die since it has the smallest size to enemy ratio. I also think that basically being an extension of Level 2 is pretty cool.
1. Freeway- What a great, fun stage. I enjoy how this level is mapped out, with your two main roads and your two side roads. It's not overly chaotic, but it manages to section off the enemy AIs into groups of two or three which I really like as it spreads them around a bit.
So yeah, that's pretty much everything. Tell me what you like, what you don't like, your favorite characters, least favorite, etc.
I'm planning on doing a tier list of these characters in each game after finishing each of them completely. I would do it for TM1 now in this post, but I feel like until I get through Hard mode, then I really don't know the strengths and weaknesses of each character yet completely.
|