Uberschizoid: it's not as hard as it seems

So back in the mists of time when I first started working on Schizoid I thought "Uberschizoid" - the mode where you control both ships with both sticks - was *the* mode.  Fortunately, Richard Garfield and Skaff Elias talked me out of that .  In kleenex tests I saw a lot of people try it once and throw down the controls - "Nobody can do that."

Which is fine, the main thrust of the game is co-op, so find a friend or play online, but if you want to try something really different...stick with Uber for a while.

I'm not a super uber gamer, but I can do it--I've beat the game at uber, and so has Bill--so let me share some of our tricks.  Humans can't truly multitask.  We joke about needing your corpus callosum severed in order to play the mode, but you don't.  Instead you find crutches that allow you to get by:

Some of these could be considered spoilers. 

One of the biggest problems is you forgot which stick controls which ship - particularly when they're on opposite sides of each other on the screen.  The "anti-panic lines" (those red and blue lines going from the corner of the screen to your ship) help here, but not 100%.  One good thing to do here is try to keep the left stick ship on the left and the right stick ship on the right most of the time.

Another good thing to do is to think of one ship as your "base" and the other ship as its satellite.  For the most part you fly the ships together, in the same direction, and when fighting heterogenous hordes you move the satellite around relative to the base.

Just like in co-op, you should almost never split up, except possibly on some of the breeder levels.  The further away they get from each other the harder it is to split your attention.

In pulsinator levels, once you've dealt with everything but the pulsinators, you can often just park one ship out of range of the bullets, then take out all the pulsinators of one color with one ship, then all the pulsinators of the other color with the other ship.

Even with all that, I haven't been able to gold the Gauntlet or Chophouse levels in uber.  Bill and one of our testers have golded Gauntlet and have proven it's theoretically possible to gold Chophouse...can't wait to someone do it on youtube.

Comments

[Sean]

Gratuitous link to Schizoid:
http://www.torpexgames.com/games.php

[Nat]

"Uberschizoid" was the first thing I tried at GDC. If that dude can play 2p Ikaruga on his own, some intrepid players out there can "Uberschizoid."

This is no ordinary human.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ToBdzV7w5Pc

[ac]

There's a lot of proof in youtube that you can do different things with what seems different pace at the same time:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Iny5idG99I
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1_dPyBR_eY