Impardonnable (sic)

Très chouette cadeau de retour de vacances que Pirez (fait de la résistance sur sa chaîne "Pikajouent") me fait là: la toute première vidéo d'analyse et critique du jeu "School Rush" manette en main. De quoi mieux me rendre compte que les morts-instantanées-dans-l'encre sont plus fréquente que je ne l'aurais cru pour un joueur qui découvre le jeu. Et les fins de niveau (en mode normal) ont tendance à brusquement rendre ce genre de faux-pas beaucoup plus fréquent. Impardonnable  ?

J'imagine que Pirez a voulu dire que le jeu est sans pitié. Intraîtable... en un mot, punitif. Impitoyable. Je dois lui donner raison, maintenant que je l'ai vu à l'oeuvre. Mais je ne suis pas sûr que ça me déplaise. Si je compare les deux sessions de jeu de Pirez dans SchoolRush, il s'est indubitablement amélioré de l'une a l'autre. Il a augmenté sa maîtrise du jeu et je pense que c'est ce qui rend intéressant ce genre de jeu.

Huge thanks fly to Pirez, who brings the Internet the very first Let's Play video for Bilou: School Rush. I hope this will be a nice way to get the game reach a broader audience, as it is typically easier to share a video with friends that show them a game that require specific (and aging) hardware to run.

From his video, Pirez describe School Rush as an unforgiving game (in 'normal' difficulty). And now that I see him failing about 256 pixels away from the level's goal, I cannot really dodge the argument anymore. At some point in the level, there start being "deep ink pits" where dropping a single toe means eventual death. Maybe it would be something to absolutely fix in a non-retro game. I can understand that in such circumstance, player may not feel like re-playing the first half of the level to get a second chance... and yet I cannot help remembering that for Commander Keen, every single contact with any ennemy meant instant death.

• first failure after 1:20 in level 1 could have been avoided if Bilou automatically dropped the blador to ride the inkjet.
• at the 3rd try, Pirez properly stun one inkjet to ease the challenge, but yet falls in the ink. Yet, he manages to jump back into the inkjet (mostly out of luck, I admit). By then, he reaches that point of the game within 50 seconds. He gets hit a bit later by the last inkdrop of the level, but hopefully, he is pushed back to a safe platform. He'll be less lucky in the second run of the game.