[ACCEPTED] "The Devious Four Chronicles 6 : The Fourth Sector" - Scorpion

Permanent link to Submission ~ Updated!

File Name:	The Devious Four Chronicles 6 : The Fourth Sector
Submitted:	2014-08-29 05:50:53 PM by Scorpion
Authors:	Scorpion
Demo:	No
Length:	98 exit(s)
Difficulty:	Hard
Description:	The Devious Four Chronicles - Episode 6 : The Fourth Sector Made by Scorpion Mario and Sonic have earned a well deserved vacation from the Devious Four's attacks. Sonic decides to have a normal adventure with Mario. Instead, they find a whole new world filled with wonders, bombs, and a strange creature called Sectorial. Unfortunately, trouble is brewing in the dimension between dimensions, and it's not to be taken lightly.

Miscellaneous
A nice title screen, polished and well made. I generally wouldn't find it nice not to have movements in it because most title screens without them (still showing the player in them, though) don't look good at all, but yours was very fitting with the hack itself. The cutscenes in general are very great, at least whenever a scenario is shown up above the text. The graphical work of the hack is gorgeous, no complaints overall. One thing I should point out is that the HDMA gradients disappear after you beat a level, and entering in a pipe makes a "background" show up the entire HDMA gradient when you've entered it. Something that bothered me a bit was the fact that some cutscene almost at the end of the hack didn't have borders as the most of them in the hack have, due to the lack of space in its GFX file. But overall, the Miscellaneous work of the hack is really great.

Overworld
Great work with the overworld and submaps. I don't have any nitpicks about them. Their design was well done and interesting. I'd only like to note that the submap which originally was "Bowser's Valley" still has the lightnings enabled, causing some of the graphics that use the "BG palette" of the lightning to flash and make the graphic not look so good [1] (see trees). Lastly the SopDPG submap is definitely one of my favourites in the hack.

Level Design
Despite a few nitpicks on design choices I have myself (i.e. places like this that appear quite frequently in the hack) and some areas in later levels that required me to use spin jumps, I'd still say the level design of the hack was very enjoyable at most. The level themes were great (aesthetics, music choices) too, and I felt the difficulty curve was, in fact, eventually increasing as I played the hack and getting closer the end . I felt a few spots were a bit tough (i.e. the spots with torpedo shooters and Scorpion statues), which I'm not sure if it's due to my lack of attention when playing sometimes, blaming my own playing. Overall, I think the level design was great and solid.


Overall, it's a great hack. It has its unique aspects, entertaining story, and the original graphics make it even more interesting to play. I guess I don't have anything more to say about the hack, since I already explained my points above so I'm not going to be redundant, at all. And in a quick note, I'll need to say that I've found many bugs while moderating it, but that all of them were fixed in the version linked in this thread's OP and in the submission page. So, for those who downloaded the old version, try to download the new.

Difficulty, would definitely be Hard. Later levels can get really tough if your playing with SMW hacks isn't good at all.

This should be all. I had fun moderating this, and hopefully other reviewers may think the same about the hack. Great effort on the hack overall - it's been a while I didn't play a great hack like this one.

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+1'd users:
- Suika Ibuki
- Wakana-chan
- Hailcrash

Phew~ Finally done with this one. I think Jesus banned me from paradise after all the swears I said.

Level design is pretty good, although it has its bad aspects. From the bright side, it is very good, well structured and nicely done overall. It's nice that the player has always "something to do", like going here, take switch, going back, climbing there, press button and so on; good job from this point. The dark side is mostly what I anticipated in the beginning: the difficulty and its curve during the gameplay. Let's say that...if you are going to play without savestates you're going to have a hard time beating most of the levels. Some of the sections were just unfair and pretty frustrating to pass. Sometimes, though, you were generous enough to put swich blocks, which made said sections easier. There are also a few errors here and there, as Mirann stated too. A good hack overall, but it can be improved a lot.

Aesthetic is the best factor of your works, and this one isn't an exception. Great palettes, an amazing style and very good scenarios are what this hack is made of. Some parts were a tad confusing to be honest, but nothing big I think. Good job.

Unfortunately, your hack has lots of misc issues. I'd mention the most frequent ones, but before doing so, I'd suggest you to go all over the levels once again, checking everything to be sure it's all right. As Suika stated, the bonus star counter's first digit is cutted in half, not very nice to see; slowdown can occur quite often in levels where there's a crowd of sprites; the player disappears when he dies (it looks weird if you ask me), and also if you happen to have a P-Switch playing, death theme won't play if you die; last but not least, please double-check all your checkpoints: the level "Ptooie Revenge" leads me to a castle level after I died after grabbing the midway point.

Difficulty is very very very very very hard, with a difficulty curve which honestly looks a tad weird (like, alterning super easy levels with impossible ones).

All in all, I'd accept the hack: it's not easy to take care of all the issues of a big hack like yours. With the accepting, I rewarded you for the big work you had to do to set up all the levels, cutscenes, story, ASM, and so on. An update would be really appreciated though~

The "Game Over" theme is indeed glitchy, however, the ROM didn't crash and I still could re-play the hack.

Also it'd help a lot if you said what's the glitchy midway so the author can fix it.

I used ZMZ, and be sure to play the version linked in the first post of this thread, of course.

And,

You still didn't say where it happens (level name, what midway).

Sectorial Attack's midway point is fixed in the version I linked in my first post - you probably played an outdated version of the hack.

It's my fault for not updating the submission though, however, I kind of did a beta test in Scorpion's hack, because the author sent me fixes for many bugs I've found and if I updated the submission download link every time... well... it'd get hard to keep track which version is the most updated. When the -final- version was sent to me (the one linked in the first post), I finally had updated the download link of the submission.

E: Scorpion sent me another fixed version. It's linked in the OP.

I have been following this hack ever since 2009 when I saw a Let's Play of an earlier version. At the time, it was one of the most unique hacks I had ever seen, and the most recent version kept that statement true.

Before it was submitted, I beta-tested the game. The version that was submitted made it one of my favorite hacks I've played. Every time I found a game-breaking bug Scorpion would fix it.

The story is really dark, and quite epic as well. I won't spoil the details for you so that I don't ruin the experience, but what I will say is that you will see a lot of character development for both the heroes and the villains. Beating each level is a rewarding experience because you get to see more of what is going to happen next.

The soundtrack is amazing, but this is to be expected for every game in the Devious Four Chronicles. That's why I put together an audio soundtrack for the series. Fourth Sector's soundtrack is one of my favorites, and even contains an original track written specifically for the game.

Graphics are also a strong point. Hunter and Scorpion design all of their own graphics, and they are just as strong here as they are in their other games.

While I do love this hack, it does have flaws. Firstly, it is harder than most SMW hacks. You will be able to see just how hard it is towards the middle of the game. There are some levels, I won't say which ones, that were designed to confuse the player. That being said, I do enjoy the level design for the most part.

Overall I would accept this hack. It has come a long way since it was first started, and is right now one of my favorite games on the site. If you're up for a challenge, then I highly recommend it.

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And the hack has been accepted!

For these who were playing this hack to make a review for it, still feel free to post the review - it'll be considered and you'll get one score point for that as usual.
Also, the download link has been yet updated again, but only the submission's.