Does the Epic store even do cloud saves? Either way I'm surprised this does client-side progression, normally games like that store everything on the server.
Giana Sisters has warps but not like Mario, every third level has a hidden block somewhere that when hit transports you three stages ahead (so to the next stage with a warp).
I liked the writing in Presequel more than in 1 and 2 (timing felt better too) but maybe that's because I've played those to death and was sick of their jokes long before I tried Presequel. Also had much more interesting character skill trees, in BL2 only the two DLC characters have interesting sets.
There's a neat but ugly shlooter called Revulsion on Steam, it tries to go more into the Quake style of combat.
That guy who you said sucks and you shouldn't play him? Yeah, just the most overpowered class in the game.
You should re-read the rusty key's description. It doesn't work the way you describe it. Instead once you have it a rusty lockbox (brown, so hard to see in most maps) spawns on each map that you can open for free (doesn't use up the key). Having multiple keys increases the chance of a rarer item coming from that box.
I'm really enjoying it. Granted, I skipped EDF 5 because I wanted to wait for this one (2017 and 2025 were fun but 5 seemed too similar). Right off the bat, this has a weird cinematic tone that kind of works.
I'm having a ton of fun flying around and I've barely scratched the surface of unlockables. After the demanding precision of Sekiro, running around shooting rockets without a care in the world is just what I needed.
The smarter humanoid enemies of 5 change it up a lot. You should try it.
Insect Armageddon was caused by Vicious Cycle, they made crap like the Matt Hazard games.
On the upside we've seen from that failure that Sandlot is willing to take any good ideas these spinoffs have and put them into the mainline games. E.g. Insect Armageddon introduced the four classes and the lock on rectangle for homing weapons (previously missiles would just chase the closest enemy, regardless of where you aim).
How do you fuck up one of these games? EDF is such a basic idea and the fans want a very specific thing from it.... Why would you reduce the features of the main series? I don't even play EDF and I can tell that the wing diver Jason is using is WAY LESS mobile than the one he was using the last time they played EDF on this site. Bizarre.
The trick is that Sandlot isn't actually a bad developer (Yukes and Vicious Cycle on the other hand...). EDF is cheap and unpolished but not badly made. They spend their scarce resources on the aspects that give the biggest gains to the game, instead of polishing graphical aspects they make more missions, more weapons, etc. When they're untethered from EDF they can make very different games although they do tend to keep ideas that worked in EDF around for other games (and vice versa).
For example the spiritual successor to Robot Alchemic Drive, Chou Soujuu Mecha MG for the DS, used the same difficulty tier approach that EDF does where higher difficulties are basically tuned like new game plus loops even though the game itself isn't like EDF at all (although it inspired the Balaam and EMC vehicles in later EDFs).
Zangeki no Reginleiv (Wii) uses a similar collect-items-and-craft-weapons approach as Iron Rain does but in ZnR the different materials were gained by severing different limbs of the enemies. The way limb severing worked in that game later found its way into EDF 5 for the humanoid enemies.
I wish Sandlot would get more chances to make games that aren't just EDF. They've done really cool stuff with the DS's touch screen and the Wii's motion controls, I'd love to see them let loose on VR or something.
kdr_11k's comments