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[Zaratustra]

THANK YOU FOR PLAYING! PRAY FOR A TRUE PEACE IN SPACE.

[Brentai]

Already did this for Doom but, uh, I think it's a bit more literally appropriate here:

DVDA - HeMan - Now you're a man

[R^2]

DIFFICULTY SET: MEDIUM MODE


Celebration for my bravery!


So here's the first major hurdle. The Ice Age is, as you may have guessed, mostly frozen over. Mammals get perfect traction on ice, but other creatures don't. Bird agility is already set pretty low on the ground, but now it takes a long time to even get up to speed.


Of course, birds can fly, so there's that.


This time we'll go over Mt. Snow! It'll be new and different this way!


Paramis is a species whose name is so thoroughly butchered I have no idea what it might be referencing. Anyway, they're the little hopping squirrel bastards from the start of Chapter 5.




Man, let me know when I get to the Domain of Prime Rib. I'm hungry.


If you fall in a hole, you're booted out of the level. Prime Birds are fond of interrupting your jumps so you fall into them. And now you know why I didn't come this way as a mammal! Well, that and the good level-up chance I had to butcher and eat a bunch of dinosaurs as a tiny rodent.


The Exit to Mt. Snow is the same as before.

[R^2]

Fast-forward mode!


For what I'm sure are reasons the bird body is entirely upright. At large size and with a long neck, eating food scattered on the ground is virtually impossible.


One thing birds do better than everybody else: Eatin' Tyrasaurus.


What was the easiest fight ever for a mammal is quite frustrating as a bird. The homing bubbles fired by the Mammoth Brothers can knock you out of the air, where it's difficult to get close enough to take a bite out of them before they knock you away with a charging attack.


So it takes a little while before you can corner and eat them.


I'm a bird! How come I can't fly up from here myself?


Gawd, fiiiiiine.


You'd think I'd have caught myself before crashing into the balcony here.


Remember the very tiny amount of resistance Bird-King put up when I was a mammal? Not the case here.

[R^2]

Well, I did.


Isn't your whole deal that you're trying to kill all the mammals trying to evolve? Why you got a beef with me, man?

Mmm, beef... Prime rib... Sorry, what?


Sir Yeti is quite capable of leaping into the air and knocking you out of flight, no matter how high you go.


But like the Tyrasaurus before him, he's vulnerable just as he starts a jump.


Mother Yeti is the same way. Once you can stop slipping all over the ice, the fight gets a lot easier. Of course, if you screw up once you're probably dead before you hit the ground.


So done with this Ice Age chapter.

[R^2]

Most of those rushed final-chapter levels where it's just "Hey, here's a new enemy that lives here and nowhere else" can be flown over. The exception is the Domain of Grizzly, where the bears will leap into the sky and swat you to the ground with their claws.

Bears, man.




It's your fault for being delicious.


On top of Mt. Condor...


All covered with cheese?

[R^2]

The Final Ocean is actually kind of hard as a bird.


The caves are mostly horizontal tunnels, and birds have a very tall profile, as discussed before. This means you have lots of vulnerable spots where Rogons can swim up and shoot you with their guns, and there's little you can do about it. I shed Feather Body for Armor Body in hopes of defending myself better, and shrink my body size to reduce the number of indefensible areas on my armor-plated bird body.


The Rogon King was clearly not a problem, since I didn't take even a single screenshot of him.

Anyway, if you leap out of the water and start flying, you don't evolve feet again until you touch the ground.


You can skip the Queen Bee fight entirely if you go to Final Ocean first. The next area is a fine place to amass a pool of EP for healing, since it's full of Tyrasaurus and birds can make mincemeat of those guys.


Birds don't have the mammal's kick attack, so Cro-Maine is a little harder. You have to dodge his stomp, turn, and bite.

He can jump and swing his club, so being able to fly doesn't help against getting expelled from the battle.

[R^2]

Birds have an easier time hitting Bolbox's weak point, since they can fly in place in front of it and don't have to worry about jumping into the pseudopod as it undulates.


First up: the guy I had to evolve into a bird to beat last time.


Next: easy pickings.


Early break.


Early long break.


Like King Rogon, the swordsbird was so easy I didn't even get a screencap of the fight.


Remember how really tall birds have trouble hitting really short targets? I beat Debustega by letting him sit on the floor barfing up slime, flying overhead, and dashing downwards for a claw attack into his eyes.


Profasu has air superiority with its quick counterattack. I squash it by evolving into an elephant and goring with my tusks.


Please.




The ending is the same.

[R^2]

Mt. Brave, huh?


Eh, forget it.


It looks like the Pronesaurus is hurt here, but it's not. They attack by spinning around with their tails out. If you're on a platform above them (or are flying as a bird), they spin so fast that they propeller straight off the ground.


Anyway, before we leave...


...I green crystal into a bird.


The irony is not lost on me that, in the playthrough where I refuse to evolve into a bird, the bird-only level I'm cheating my way into is hovering over Mt. Brave when I enter it.


Anyway, green crystals don't wear off inside the Cloud Maze, probably because there are several areas inside where you'd be stuck and have to reset your game if you couldn't fly.


They do wear off in the River of Asteroid, though, because you exit here by falling off the bottom of the screen.


Shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii


iiiiiiiiiiiii


Whew. If you're going to do this trick in your own game, don't forget to snag the replacement green crystal from the rightmost asteroid before you head left.


Hey, free EP.


This is the Nautilon's Body, which is only available to quadruped dinosaurs.


It's magnificently tanky, but slower than Kotaku sucking molasses out of a frozen pipe.


Dinosaurs can evolve to walk on two legs for an agility boost, but this limits their skin type to the Armor body.


Evolving to two legs again puts their posture in that painfully-upright stance that nobody thinks dinosaurs ever actually used anymore.


Anyhow, I settle on a semi-upright stance and the Armor body.


Because, as it turns out, Tyrasaurus have really poor depth perception. Some manner of hitbox weirdness means the Tyrasaurs will try to bite and just plain miss, even if you're standing still. I guess their vision really is based on movement!


WHAT Gaia sheesh can't you see I'm in the middle of something here this better be importa-- oh. Right.


Off we go then.

[R^2]

Dinosaurs have a hard time in icy levels, because they continue to slip for several seconds and can't get moving. No wonder they all die out in the ice age!


Oh, you.


You'd better believe I'm taking the cave through Mt. Snow rather than going over the frozen peak.


If you don't stop to grind, the Tyrasaurus boss fight and this Land of Survival seem awfully close to one another.


Dinosaurs have an easier time with this fight than birds do, because while both creatures slip on the icy floor, dinosaurs tend to have a better Agility than walking birds. If I were in the Nautilon's Body, I might be too slow to close the gap and deliver a bite attack between the end of the Mammoth's bubble beam and its charge. But I'm in a more agile shape for exactly that reason.


Another reason to not use Nautilon's Body: these jumps in Fort Bird-Man.


Easiest fight yet, Bird-King.

[R^2]

But I did! I promise! Why are you so mean?


The margin for error in this fight is even narrower than it was as a bird. If you don't time it just right, Sir Yeti will sock you out of your pattern and mash you to a pulp. (Yes, it took me several tries this time, too.)


Considering her ability to take off half my HP with one slap, that goes double for Mother Yeti.


Nonetheless, I prevail.

[R^2]

The only mook to put up a decent fight to my fleshraker? A grizzly bear. Seems legit.


In fine yeti tradition, the kung-fu yeti in Cave of Monkey Human is another sticking point.


Either that or I'm just off my game. Either way, I have to heal up several times. The game only seems to check if you're dead if you're on the ground, so yeti finishing his combo with an uppercut that knocks me skyward actually saves my life a couple of times. You can still open the menu at 0 HP!


Hey, I look like you!

Only, you know. Badass.


By the way, you need to get your eyes checked.


Now that all the levels that demand agility are over, I go ahead and evolve to do what dinosaurs do best: be really big and really tanky.


After no selling three or four of King Rogon's blindness beams, I shove him into a corner and bite him to death. Not that you can tell with all those pillars in the way.


I remember the Nautilon's Body making your jumps much worse than this. Maybe I could have played to this point with it and not had to worry about scaling cliffs or making it through Fort Bird-Man.

Oh well.


I became a very important ancestor by virtue of not dying like a bitch. Maybe you could have tried that.

Instead, you decided to fight me. Your loss.


Nautilon's Body is even fast enough to fight Cro-Maine with the standard strategy. Huh. I underestimated you, tiny turtle!

[R^2]

I can't decide if this body at large size looks awesome, or like something Gary Gygax would have drawn into the first-edition Monster Manual. I think it's the spike on the tail that does it.


Anyway, you know how this part goes.


Bolbox opens with the Ikustega.


But it's a ploy to get me to drop my guard for the giant Zinichthys.


I basically win by trading hits. Sometimes I get him, sometimes he gets me. That bite of his has amazing priority.










A two-legged mammal's strike hits downward, so there's almost no knockback. If it were faster, it'd be easy to stunlock enemies so they couldn't move while you smashed them. A bird can't reach the Profasu while it's crawling. But a quadruped? Now we're talking! Take a bite, and the Profasu gets knocked backwards. It begins flying in a circle, but all it takes to avoid it is to turn around so it flies over your ass instead of into your face. Ah, simplicity.


Meat.


You think this is a motherfucking game?


Actually I'm slow enough that I can't corner it and bite it before it gets one of its shout attacks to work. Thankfully I have armored eardrums, too.


The rest goes exactly as you'd expect.




Debustega and I play the same leapfrog game I had to do to beat Mother of Prime Frog way back when. I bite, he jumps, I run over to where he's about to land, he hits the ground, I bite him again, repeat.


Eventually he stops playing that game so I corner him and eat him.


And that's how you win as a dinosaur.


A wonderful world, where society is made up entirely of dinosaurs the size of a school bus, brimming with fangs and horns and spikes. It'll be glorious.

(And imagine just how big their school buses will be.)


The ending, of course, is the same. What do you want, custom content?

THE END.