Posted by Al

Fri, 15th Oct 2010

Ace Armstrong made Easy(er!)

Hi everyone,

Recently there’s been lots of discussion about Ace Armstrong vs. the Alien Scumbags! and its difficulty (or surplus of difficulty from some gamers' perspectives!).

We’d hate people to think we don’t listen to our little community – especially as I know that it takes ages to build a good reputation, and only seconds to see that reputation torn to shreds by irate gamers. ;)

As such we’ve decided to address your concerns with Ace Armstrong, as follows:

1. Ace’s collision box size has been reduced by around 25% of the previous vertical height, with a little extra taken off the ship's nose as well. This allows for closer shaves with enemy bullets and terrain.
2. We’ve added Continues to all difficulty modes, as follows: Rookie = 5, Pro = 3, Elite = 1. We've taken the step of reducing your score to zero if you use a continue to encourage repeat plays / high score chasing, but they're in there, as requested!
3. An Autofire function has been added to Ace’s regular cannon, which has a pretty high rate of fire. Button mashing will still get you a faster ROF, though. The cannon remains mapped to the [CROSS] button.
4. The Recycl-o-Ray’s ‘suck’ function is now mapped to the [L] and/or [R] button. This allows the player to easily fire both Ace's cannon and recycled Scumbag weapons while sucking up new weapons far more easily – hopefully leading to fewer deaths.
5. The Recycl-o-Ray’s ‘suck’ function is now ‘single tap’ only. This means you just need to tap the button once to begin sucking up the nearest scumbag weapon essence to Ace’s ship, allowing you to concentrate on moving and shooting! :)
6. The Recycl-o-Ray now has an Autofire function added to any acquired Scumbag weapons. Recycled Scumbag weapons are now mapped to both the [SQUARE] and [CIRCLE] buttons, keeping them in easy reach of your right thumb. Now it's easy to rapidly fire the cannon and Scumbag weapons simultaneously
7. The [TRIANGLE] button's ‘Ditch weapon’ function has been scrapped for simplicity. The ‘single tap’ change with the Recycl-o-Ray means that now you can just tap the Recycl-o-Ray button again to stop sucking up your current weapon and begin sucking up the second-closest weapon. Fewer buttons = fewer headaches!
8. The tutorial screens have been improved to better explain how the Recycl-o-Ray works and explain which weapons are which.

We think this is pretty good news all round. Hopefully those of you who’re struggling with Ace Armstrong will now be able to experience this awesome game with slightly less frustration than that felt by someone tasked with digging through an iron wall with a cocktail stick! ;)

Those of you who are coping reasonably well – or are just plain awesome, like me!  – always have the option of keeping the current ‘Geordie-hard’ version for posterity.

All-in-all, we’ve certainly learned our lesson with Ace Armstrong vs. the Alien Scumbags! Rest assured that in future we’ll try our very best to ensure that all of Laughing Jackal’s products have something to offer players of all abilities, from elite uber-gamers down to those who just want to unwind and have some stress-free fun.

In the meantime, thanks for supporting us and buying Ace Armstrong vs. the Alien Scumbags! – more news on those updates once they’re in QA submission at Sony and we have some idea of a release date.

See you next week! :)