Black Future ’88 – Beginners Tips

Tips for Newcomers

You will find better weapons quickly. Focus on surviving – you start with a double jump and at least one dash. (Some characters have two. There is a stim in the shop that will give you another dash, and you’ll get another dash offered to you after beating the first sub-boss. Some weapons also give you more dashes, as do some combinations of enhancements.) Also, the SavingGrace enhacement (available from the first sub-boss) not only gives your dash a chance to heal when dashing through enemy fire, but it also significantly extends the length of your dash.

• As for offense, are you using a gamepad or keyboard and mouse? I can only advise as it concerns gamepad. Try out the different control styles.
• I like to use the ‘QuickFlick’ aiming style, which uses the right stick as simultaneous aim and trigger. It’s unusual, and a little tricky to get used to, but after getting comfortable with it, I think it feels great.
• It was definitely frustrating my first several dozen runs, especially because the aiming behaves differently depending on the weapon and your control settings. Over time though I’ve found that the quirks in aiming and targeting lend a great effect to all the different weapons, thanks to the great variety in weapon and ordinance behavior.
• Consider shooting enemies as your second priority. As your first priority, focus on where your character is and ensure you’re always out of the way of incoming fire or in position to successfully escape to safe ground as needed.
• To deal with the time problem, I strongly recommend playing enough regular runs (not daily runs) to unlock some of the other time cultures and especially the FeverDream enhancement (available at PERX stations found in almost every level). Once you have FeverDream, the time problem is nearly solved.
• At first I had to put down and pick up the game a few times before it clicked. These days it’s one of my favorite games to play. It gets really fun once you get good enough to stand your ground (which involves fleeing as needed).
• The game mechanics are fairly simple, but fully reveal themselves slowly (with lots of surprises…).
• Once you are comfortable with your range of mobility, can successfully evade, and as my friend above said, have some familiarity with enemy movement and firing patterns (and as also mentioned – if enemies can’t see you they won’t target you, and if you stay moving, they can’t really effectively target you even if they can see you), here are two more ‘tips’ I’ll add:
• Melee weapons will deflect incoming enemy fire (and if you get Returner, which is possibly the single most powerful offensive item in the game, it will send enemy fire back to enemies, and it rarely misses). Carry a melee weapon, and get comfortable alternating between it and whatever else you’re carrying, and keep it in mind to use it defensively as well as offensively. Also, in this game, melee weapons are generally great offensively.
• Also I am finally convinced of the merits of BlackRichter after scaling up curse damage, after last night’s run where I picked up every curse I could find and was one-hitting everything with BlackRichter. I’d practically given up on it. That said, it’s really only great late game.)

This second tip is really a continuation of the first above. Strategic weapon swapping in this game is extremely powerful. Once you are comfortable with the fundamentals (or even as you are getting comfortable) work to get the hang of switching weapons frequently, almost constantly when in battle. This will render a huge increase in overall damage output, and if you are cycling a melee weapon, it will block incoming fire when it’s not dealing damage. In most scenarios, even with many enemies in close proximity, the proper cadence of weapon cycling, with at least one melee weapon (or an empty gun), will effectively deflect incoming fire while dispatching every enemy much faster than with a single weapon. Depending on what weapons you’re cycling, the optimal cadence will differ.

With a gamepad, using the game’s ‘QuickFlick’ aiming style, which uses the right stick as simultaneous aim and trigger, effective weapon cycling is exceedingly easy – just hit right trigger to swap weapon, while keeping the stick pointed in the attack (or deflect) direction (I suspect this would be significantly more cumbersome on mouse and keyboard, but I’ve only every played BF’88 with gamepad.).