Well, right here’s a superb concept. Tom Francis, the fella behind Gunpoint and Heat Signature (and numerous journalistic endeavours again within the day) has launched an replace for Heat Signature that takes ‘fair points’ from critiques and provides a characteristic or an merchandise to handle every of them. They’re all easy tweaks to the ‘plans gone wrong space-heist ’em up’, however the replace lured me again into the sport final evening and its shocking simply how a lot of a distinction they make.
You can learn concerning the new features here, or go to Tom’s blog post the place he explains the reasoning behind every change.
The ‘Glitchback Guarantee’ may be my favorite addition. In response to the inducement that permadeath offers gamers to play cautiously and never strive more durable missions, some missions now have a consumer that may immediately teleport you out whenever you get hit. Like Tom, I normally dive into powerful spaceships under-prepared and hope that I can suppose my method out of any sticky conditions anyway. Those are the moments the place Heat Signature shines, and the Glitchback Guarantee encourages me to throw myself into much more of them.
I’m additionally a giant fan of the additional data you now get about every mission. You’re now advised precisely what number of of every guard kind there are on every ship, which suggests you’ll be able to go in figuring out that you’ve the correct instruments for the job. The concept is, once more, to encourage gamers to take extra dangers – in runs the place I solely had a restricted variety of instruments, I’d err on the facet of warning and keep away from taking missions the place I’d get swarmed by armoured foes that I had no method of coping with. Now, I’d see that I’m up in opposition to four armoured bosses and determine to enter a mission with three grenades, hoping that I can both keep away from or creatively sort out the final one. There are additionally new self-charging traps for taking out shielded and armoured dudes.
One grievance that Tom didn’t truly see in critiques, however did get from some gamers, was that they didn’t get on with permadeath. Rather than go together with his preliminary response of “well, this game is not for you”, Tom’s added an choice to simply flip it off. He’s upfront about how it is a cheat that may make the sport a lot worse for most individuals, however he’s included it for the sake of opening the sport as much as as many individuals as doable. I don’t notably wish to reignite that entire ‘difficulty-ageddon’ controversy, however hey, here’s looking at you Cuphead.
Finally, Brendy will likely be happy to listen to that one of his main problems with the game, a scarcity of visible readability, has been addressed with the addition of a Simple Art mode that strips away the decor and makes every part rather more readable. Guards that explode whenever you kill them are actually tagged whenever you first see them, which offers with my major frustration on the parsability entrance. If Tom ever decides to take suggestions from information posts in addition to critiques: hey! Any probability I might have the choice to activate easy artwork, however just for Glitcher ships?
I received’t get my hopes up, as a result of Tom additionally cautions that we shouldn’t get used to seeing updates like this. While the crew may add some new devices in some unspecified time in the future sooner or later, one other replace on this kind is unlikely.
Oh, and there’s additionally a brand new weapon that strips away armour and flesh that fires acidic foreign money. Use with warning.
Disclaimer: One time after I was in Bath a number of years in the past, Tom Francis purchased me a pint. Possibly two.
