Section 8

[brell]

Toybox wrote: I find it personally too Hard to be Normal. Maybe I'm just out of practise, but  ...:o All these hidden bits, ladder jumps, squirrel jumps... And this one where you have to jump from one screen to the other, otherwise you fall to your, I mean Jack's doom² [smiley=evil.gif]  When you don't know the way you have to try stuff and jeopardise Jack lives, which shouldn't really be the case in Normal mansions.


Oh, and I found the background a bit disappointing (sorry about that!). Not very Catacombs-like³ maybe? I don't know.

(1) i.e.: I end up killing every last one of them
(2) there I killed two Jacks in a row. Having no memory doesn't help either  :
(3) whatever that means...

I repeat: There is only ONE ladder jump. And hidden bits? Each section is supposed to have some secrets and they are all hinted.

[brell]

Spiak wrote: Hi gang.

My biggest gripe was all the back tracking. There were several screens that you had to go two or three forward to get back to something in the room.

Spiak

As far as I can see that is the case with most of Catacomb's sections.

[suztours]

Without many tours to guide over the past few days, I've played through Catacombs completely once and Section 8 a few times... before the revision and after.

I'm not a great player... normal is my usual

speed

but I like a challenge and a puzzle... and Section 8 is my favorite of all of them... I'm not that much on background - guess I don't really care about the

story

, just looking for something to keep my mind and fingers occupied (

idle hands

and all that...). I think there are plenty of hints and plenty of easy stuff mixed in, so I don't have a complaint - except that I would have liked a few more rooms!

Who's doing Section 9? Frankly, IMHO, whoever it is will have to really stretch to do better than 8! But I'm looking forward to it...

[Toybox]

Ah zut, I had written a beautiful answer and pressed reset instead of Post. Time to go to bed I think.

To summarise I was saying: ladder jumps are fine for me but unsuspecting players may be put off if they have to do some for the first time, especially from lethal height; and the hidden part I had in mind was one on the right part of the screen with a platform moving up where you have to catch a ladder and leave through upstairs. For some reason I didn't find it but thought you had to go first to the middle part of the room, so I lost a few jacks looking for a hidden way. I'll pay more attention to hints (I'm rather bad at spotting them usually). The vines room finished me off.

On the other hand, every time there's a new section, the first time I play it I lose most (and sometimes all) Jacks; it goes much better the second time. I'm confident Section 8 won't be an exception from this point of view!

[aquaMat]

Exactly, Toybox !!

The room you described (with the hidden ladder) I could NEVER have mastered without the hints from this thread, and I consider myself a very experienced player !!
(On that platform I lost a zillion lives by trying to jump on

potential invisible floors

that -of course- weren't there.....)

And -as far as I remember- there is another of those secret exits in the room after that (even if somewhat easier...).

BUT: I also must state that - usually - I am a great fan of secret passages etc. in MM, so I love it.... but I also remember very well the storm of complaints I earned for using secret passages in DoD....and DoD was labelled HARD by the way.

So to sum it up: while it's fine with me....and I very much enjoyed section 8, I can see players with

normal

playing skills having a fair amount of trouble mastering that section.  But as I and someone else said earlier: maybe it isn't tragic when the difficulty level rises within Catacombs.....  and also: let's not forget that one charasteristic that made the original 2 levels of Catacombs unique and interesting was the use of little caveats in the walls (that usually had money or other rewards in them), which could only be accessed via little secret passages (sometimes in front of bricks, tricking the eye etc.).

So after all....Brell might be closer to the Catacombs concept as one might assume at first glance !!

[Toybox]

Ah, don't get me wrong. I'm not complaining that there are hidden passages; I'm quite keen on layer 6 myself. Only, I find it more than Normal when you can lose Jacks just because you're hidden behind something in the foreground and you don't quite know what to do.

As for the rise in difficulty for Catacombs: in an ever-growing mansion, I don't mind either. If it kept being Normal it might get tedious - besides, that's an astute way to test one player's skills

I'll play it again tonight, rested and fit. Section 8, here I come [smiley=evil.gif]

[Freddy]

aquaMat wrote: ... The room you described (with the hidden ladder) I could NEVER have mastered without the hints from this thread ...

After playing this section once again I would quote Section 8 as normal. Which also means: as normal as the others. Except the one issue with that hidden ladder. Main problem is the absence of any hint about what to do while Jack is invisible. That indeed feels too tough.

In general I would suggest to keep our Catacombs normal. And maybe later start a Catacombs hard with the XP? What do you think, friends?

[Toybox]

Nope, it still doesn't work for me. There are too many places where Jack has to do stuff (and potentially lethal stuff, too) whilst hidden, and I was a bit disappointed by the background too (it didn't really feel like catacombs, I think, but maybe that's just me). Sorry about that

And I'm still short of 300 $ : But now I'm scared that I will have to jump behind any hidden place where a mistake would cost me one Jack.

[Wingy]

Someone should update the catacombs 8.1 download page. It says at the bottom it has a total of 40.000 dollars atm and its 45.000 I believe.

P.S. Voted in the poll. :'( None for my section... But I like section one the best!

[brell]

Actually, Wingy, there are 8 sections now, each with EXACTLY $5000. And 5 times 8 is ........... ?