Monkey Fuck Target
Apolito Leyva
The controls are terrible. Even in the main game, the camera alone increases the difficulty. It took me forever to beat the boss in World 2 because of it. The snowboarding it terrible. It took me a long time to get the slingshot trophy. Not looking forward to the monkey target trophy...
I all but gave up on this game for now, I could get a couple more of the grindy trophies but some of the mini games and a certain level in the final world was doing my head in.
I swear I remember this game being easier on the original version but in minigames and the main game.
The slingshot game is pure garbage in fact most of the game was and I gave up getting the trophies for it. Also that space shooter game caused me to fart blood on several occasions. Really was disappointing as the minigames on SMB2 were fantastic for most part
I've been playing the Decathlon and Casual Time Attack once a day for a little over a month to inch towards the two trophies for playing both the Decathlon and Time Attack 36 times each, and finally got them both just now.
Seesaw Ball: One of the better mini-games since the controls aren't anywhere near as bad as the rest of them, but that's not a high bar to set. Got ridiculously close to the required 8k score (got 7884, kill me) and just couldn't seem to get anywhere near that ever again.
Space Monkey: The mini-game itself isn't terrible (not great either) but the required high score of 5000 is absolutely ridiculous, you'd need a godlike run to get it. Best I've gotten is 3560.
Dangerous Route: Somehow the controls in this are even more slippery than the main game? How does that make sense? Like Space Monkey, you need a near flawless run collecting as many bananas while racing to the finish and not falling to get even close to the 2 min required time remaining. I'm not even close to this one.
Hurdle Race: I have no idea what I'm doing wrong with this. I'm mashing the life out of my L1 and R1 buttons. Getting a boost over every hurdle. And best time I'm getting is around the 23 second mark, can't even get close to the 20 seconds.
Hammer Throw: As with the rest of the mini-games, the controls in this just don't make sense. A lot of the times I'd barely get 50-60m and then, while doing the exact same thing as all of my other throws, I fluked a 111m throw to break the 110m required.
Hovercraft Race: Who the fuck thought controlling a hovercraft like this was a good idea? Yeah, lets make them point both analog sticks in opposing directions to turn while slipping out of control! What the living shit is this?
Whack-a-Mole: The control for the cursor in this is atrocious. Sometimes you think you're over the mole and whack down, only for the hammer to hit just on the side of the hole where the mole was. Got stupidly close to the required score of 3000 (got 2850) after many, many attempts.
I don't mind a challenge. But when the challenge stems from poorly implemented controls that completely hinder your experience no matter how many times you play them, then its a problem. The main game is frustrating enough with its horrendous camera that you can't control but these mini-games just ruin the game completely.
I'll end my rant there. I've given up and come back to this game a bunch of times over the past year and I think after this one, I'll officially give it up. If anyone has any tips on how they beat any of these mini-games, I'd gladly appreciate it.
Seesaw Ball: This one is actually not that bad, minus the awkward physics. The biggest thing here is to collect as much bananas as possible and it is also vital to land right in the middle at the very end for maximum points.
For the waves of enemies before the boss fight, I recommend going left and right constantly on the screen while shooting so you can kill as many enemies as possible. For the boss fight, you need to make use of the barrel roll (R1) to dodge the attacks. I recommend going into a corner and waiting until the VERY last second to use the barrel roll and save yourself from damage. This is because the boss will often send another attack right after, and you need as much time as you can get so that the barrel roll can recharge before you get hit.
Hurdle Race: This is another shovelware tier mini-game like Slingshot. In this one you have to spam L1 and R1 while jumping over the obstacles in the correct timing to win within 20 seconds.
My biggest tip here is to re-map L1 and R1 to X and Circle, and remap X to Triangle. This way, mashing those buttons becomes significantly easier and increase your chances of victory. This still took the most time to complete by far. Just keep mashing and trying again, and you should succeed eventually.
Hammer Throw: Easy and fast minigame, I literally had the required score for this within 2 minutes. Just wind up your throw with the right timing and it should hit the required distance very easily.
A short time ago I had a harsh twitter argument with Nick Hodges (@NickHodges) about the FireMonkey framework in Delphi XE4 (you may know that I had the start of my professional career with Delphi and started as a speaker at Delphi conferences).
It all started with the definition of 'native' or - even worse - 'true native', but let's start at the beginning. I know the audience of my blog is mostly .NET focused, so let me get you all set with the required background information.
So, let's start what FireMonkey is - or aims to be. FireMonkey is a application development framework (or platform, as Embarcadero likes to call it) and contains components that should enable the developer to build cross-applications with a singe code base for Windows, Mac OS X, iOS and soon to come Android. FireMonkey is written for Delphi and can also be used from C++ within Embarcaderos C++ Builder.
So the main idea is, that you design your forms with FireMonkey components and controls, double-click on buttons to add your business logic like Delphi developers did this for the last decades and then be able to compile the application for Windows, for Mac OS X and for iOS without changing it anymore.
FireMonkey, by it's RAD approach, encourages the developer to click his user interface together, double-click on controls and put all the logic onto the form - where it doesn't belong. I'm not going to argue with anybody about decoupling, testability of code and all the other Clean Code aspects and concepts. A good developer should have the inner urge to produce code at a certain minimum quality level and putting everything on the form is nothing that helps here. So, the basic concept that FireMonkey encourages is wrong.
New and not-so-advanced developers tend to adopt this bad style and start running into a direction that will end up in fatality. Good developers instead will start by building up a good architecture for their application. Most probably working with tests, that makes the usage of some DI container a no-brainer. This most probably also lead to a good decoupled architecture on the application frontend, perhaps introducing some MVC concept for their GUI. Only this enables them to take a good approach to real and thoughtful cross platform development, but more on that in a minute.
Every platform has its specifics. And a user - that is, in fact, our customer we want to sell our application too - chooses his platform for some reason. There are multiple approaches to make the user happy, and the most simple thing is, to integrate the app seamlessly into the environment (platform) the user chose to please him.
Let's talk a little about UX. I'm thinking about the overall user experience with your application here, not only the look & feel of the GUI. It's the whole full package including a good guidance through the workflow, helping the user to not enter crap into your app, assisting him to solve problems when he does, make everything accessible for everyone, especially impaired users, and of course also response times and stuff. As said, the whole package.
All platform vendors have thought about how their platform / devices should behave, how software should behave on the platform and what they expect from an application. They offer UX guidelines that describe what fits into the environment and how applications can fit seamlessly into the platform, providing an overall exquisite user experience to the guys you want money from.
Comparing just Apples (iOS and the Mac) and Googles (Android), which are the current relevant platforms for FireMonkey besides Desktop-Windows, UX guidelines shows you how different the platforms are. They are fundamentally different in how the control flow in applications is expected from the user. Leave alone Windows RT for tables and Windows Phone, which have a radical new approach to interacting with applications. But since Windows RT and Windows Phone are not (yet ?) supported, we don't need to get into those details right now. Just so far right now: Delphi is marketed as the best/fastest/most productive dev tool for Windows. Why can't you target Windows RT? Or write Windows Store applications for Windows 8 with it? Well, thats another topic. But still taking into account, that the main target audience for FireMonkey are Delphi (and as such mainly Windows-) developers, this leads into a fatal direction:
FireMonkey encourages the following: The Windows-Developer designs his FireMonkey form for Mobile Devices just as he would design a Windows-Application form. This for Windows designed UX is ported in a one-size-fits-all attempt onto the Mac (not so extremely terrible bad), but also to iOS and later Android (overly extremely bad).
Why is this bad? Because the user chose his platform with something in his mind. This something is the overall user experience with the device and of course with the applications he gets from the store within the platform itself. It's a closed ecosystem for his needs. He expects his iPhone/iPad-Applications to come in his loved iOS style or he expects his Android-Applications to come in an Android-Style. So again, we need to please our customers because they are the ones buying our applications and giving us their money. So how can we make them happy? Give them, what they expect.
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