Ruining It For Everyone Else Since 2004
It’s been an eternity and a half since I last touched Freedom Planet, or so it feels like. I remember getting stuck on a boss fight and then just buggering off onto the next thing(s). This time I used a little patience and overcame a couple boss battles. 🙂 Now I’ll have to do it again in Adventure Mode to see the dialogue I missed. It was also nice to listen to the soundtrack again – I almost forgot how much it slaps!
I’ve been playing Freedom Planet 2 on my Steam Deck on and off, and decided to put more time into it tonight. I’m really liking it! They made quite a few changes since the original game, which could basically be described as a Sonic Clone (a really good Sonic Clone!). The music is still powerful as ever, and the visuals look just as stunning – with the protagonists having matured a bit since the original game.
Instead of going from one level to another, you gain access to different levels instead (kinda like in the older Super Mario games). This is great if you want to go back and explore each level (there’s a lot to explore in each level). You also have the added option of starting levels with buffs that you can purchase with gems you find throughout your runs, though it introduces a penality.
Freedom Planet 2 allows you to choose between 4 different characters to play as from the start. So far I’ve mostly played as Lilac the Dragon, but I’ve also dabbled a bit with Carol the Wildcat and Milla the Hound. They all have different movesets that are familiar if you played the original game, but they’ve also added a guard option as well as additional cool features. Carol can now pocket her motorcycle to use at later times, and Milla can supercharge her green block gun!
You also have the option of starting a tutorial depending on which character you start as, if you want to get a better idea of how each character’s abilities work before jumping into the actual game. I’ve enjoyed what I’ve seen so far! And while it isn’t verified for Steam Deck, it might as well be! It runs without any issues and looks really nice on the screen, as evidenced by all of the above screenshots. If you liked the first game, and you like Sonic type games in general, I highly recommend this one.
Here is my compilation of last year’s Freedom Planet Livestream. :melon:
I spent a good chunk of the evening trying to animate a final scene for my upcoming Freedom Planet video, but ran into a problem with a particular model I downloaded from the Gmod workshop. I found a nice 3D model of Lilac I wanted to use for a scene to end the video, and I extracted it for SFM use. Upon playing with the model I found out after posing it for various keyframes that I couldn’t do it properly. The model doesn’t have a skeleton, but you can move around the limbs. Unfortunately, the next video won’t have as much animation as I had originally anticipated.
The gameplay will have to do most of the talking. I’ll probably release it next Sunday, (not the upcoming one).
I made time to do a livestream tonight across YouTube and Twitch. The good news is I didn’t have any recording issues, and the stream stayed up the entire time. The bad news is for some strange reason the quality was fuzzy. It turns out my stream didn’t downscale for whatever reason, so I’ll have to double check that next time. Sorry! If you want to watch it still you can view it here, but I have a higher quality local recording I plan to pick over hopefully not in the too distant future.
Speaking of the future; I’ve ordered an Elgato Stream Deck to make things like transitions easier during livestreams. I have a plethora of ideas already set aside for it to make my streams a little more spicy. :v: