Jan 15, 2022

Me getting all 7 stars in Corroded Charklet City without the use of savestates.

I thought this hack was definitely beyond my paygrade, and I was therefore very happy when I beat it. I found this hack very challenging, despite the short length of each star.

It pains me to say this, but I fucking loved this hack. It's amazing, one of my favorite hacks of all time. From innovative crazy-box bounces to intentional bonks, to outrageous wallkicks, to consecutive chained lavabounces sans metal cap, these stares are jam-packed with unique, intense challenges that require precise and non-stop control. So many mechanics in this hack are so unique, which is awesome. More hacks should be like this, or at least take inspiration from it. I also would personally love to see more hacks of this style in this difficulty range. This has the insane jumps of (in my opinion) a difficult kaizo, but with insanely short star lengths, resulting in something that is quite hard but still manageable.

I'm having a tough time deciding if this hack is harder than KBRX, the hardest hack I've ever 100%ed. When it comes to peak difficulty, KBRX probably wins with "Teamwork With the Enemy." In terms of overall difficulty, though, it depends. KBRX is a 160 star hack, and so it definitely takes way longer to complete and has more challenge by sheer quantity alone. But in terms of average difficulty per star, this destroys KBRX, in my opinion.

I really have no shortage of nice things to say about this hack. Every star felt unique and exciting. I actually WANTED to play this hack blind, which is literally something that hasn't happened to me since KBRX. Each star in this hack was kind of puzzle in its own right. Playing through each segment first with states left me scratching my head multiple times, wondering what I was possibly supposed to do next. This added to the fun greatly, and there was only one time where I couldn't figure it out and had to check Katze's video, and that was in Star 3. I just had no idea where I was even supposed to go; I knew I was supposed to slide off the pyramid in some direction, and even tried the correct wallkicks at some point, but had no clue I was able to wallkick off of that tiny patch of gray that you can see at 3:43 in this video. Now, once I DID figure out how to do the stars on my own, I did reference Katze's video to check out his strategies to see if there were any techniques he used that were more optimal or easier for me than the ones I had discovered (like the minor cheese Katze found in Star 4).

In terms of which stars took me the longest, that would have to be Star 3, as well as Stars 6/7 (they're basically one star, as the star dance from Star 7 is needed to get Star 6). The other five stars still took a fair amount of time and effort, though, and I'd be hard-pressed to say exactly which star was the hardest of the hack, as every star has some really tricky moments in it.

Fun fact, this hack FINALLY unlocked pause buffering for me! Previously I rarely buffered and couldn't really do the rapid-fire pausing to any useful end. But in this hack, I pause-buffered enough to make a cat blush, and enough to make an early morning rainfall roll over in his grave.

Oh, and while I do absolutely love this hack, there are two very minor things I don't quite like, both in Stars 6/7. I didn't like that you had to do the box section before each attempt; it just seemed to kind of go against the ethos of the hack (that being of unique, virtually non-stop movement), and instead made you do a relatively simple sequence of slow-paced events to get to the real start of Stars 6/7 every attempt. I also did not like the ending of this two-for-one star. I might not have understood the jump, but it seemed random whether or not I'd succeed. Sometimes I'd lavabounce and land on the upper ledge, ready to collect Star 6, and other times the star dance wouldn't take me high enough and I'd have to reset. I tried to use Katze's strategy, but it still felt like a gamble. In the end, the best setups I made only worked 60-70% of the time, with no indication of why they would fail. This caused me to die three times on the final platform to what felt like bad RNG. Now again, maybe there is a method that works 100% of the time, in which case this critique is invalid. Either way, these are both VERY mild criticisms of what is an altogether phenomenal hack.

Brief note: There's no audio in Star 4 because I had my headphones plugged in for that one, which apparently makes Windows Game Bar not capture audio. Also, as per usual, the audio gets distorted in some places, because if Game Bar records for too long, it starts to fuck with the audio for some reason.

Shoutouts to Katze for having the only playthrough out there as of right now (which helped me come up with different strategies in a few places), and to Icy Skid for making this amazing absolute gem of a hack (who would be appalled that I'm comparing this hack to KBRX so much).