Analysis of my 11,490 point game on 2/24/2012

Here is the video of my game play for this analysis.

While I took some risks, I didn't make my first mistake until after I cleared a room with a total score 8,700 at around 8:04 minutes into the video. I got to 5,000 points without losing a life and I stayed focused, mostly, and didn't lose any lives through 8,700 points.

1. Mistake 1 - At 8:24 minutes into the video is where I make what I consider a dumb mistake. I was trying to take out the robot that was in the open box as I call it in the middle of the room when Otto appeared. In trying to both avoid Otto and get him to kill the last robot left on the screen I managed to get myself killed.  The correct solution would have been after we both shot in the same place, would have been to head back to the left and either shot the robot or cause the robot to run into the wall and then run for the exit. 
2. Mistake 2 - At 10:03 minutes into the video I let Otto just get inside my head. I had plenty of time to shot and run upwards, or duck for a .5 second longer and used the wall to my advantaged, but I switched my focus to Otto which resulted in my death from the robot. 
3. Mistake 3 -  At 10:27 minutes into the video I was spending to much time watching where my bullet went instead of moving my humanoid out of the line of fire. Having watched this segment of video several times the correct move would have been to move down a little to avoid the incoming bullet from my right, taken out the robot directly below me, then gone back up and taken care of the robot that was infront of me. From there clearing the hallway would have not been that difficult. 
4. Mistakes 4 and 5 - I made the same mistake on both which ultimately ended my game. I was moving upwards when I should have moved downwards. Its easier to hit the robots that are on your horizontal when you are slightly below them, it gives you the smallest possible target for them to hit if you can not get directly above or below them. 

The first two mistakes I made should be easily corrected on my part, however when dealing with open hallways and several enemy robots, it needs to become just pure instinct to dodge and duck, if I can survive the initial on wave of shots from the robots I should be ok. 

Going to try something new here . . .

I know I still haven't posted my game videos from February 24th, but I had an idea tonight on how I was going to do it. Currently my Berzerk cabinet has been moved as I'm finishing my basement and my arcade room at the same time, I'm not good a drywalling at all, so I haven't played since Friday, so instead every night I'm going to analyze one video and point out all my mistakes that I made in that video.

Hopefully I will have the first video from my games on the 24th posted soon!

Rough night with the Blue Robots . . .

Just a quick update. I played 8 games of Berzerk tonight, 5 of which I achieved scores higher than 10,000 points. My best score of the night was 13,420 points, 1,630 less than my high score of 15,050. The blue robots after 10,000 points tonight were my struggling point. I'll post the videos of my games tomorrow!

Well last night ended up being a great night. I broke my high score twice last night. My old high score was 13,640. The first time I broke my high score I achieved a score of 14,600. After analyzing my 14,600 game for mistakes, I played couple more games and then achieved a score 15,050.

Here is the video of my 14,600 game:

Here is the video of my last game where I achieved 15,050 points. I did several things in this game I had never done before. I was able to get to 10,000 points without losing any lives, and I had my first neck shot with the fast bullets robots.

Just a quick update. Found a way to record my gameplay so I'm going to try to start recording my gameplay at least once a week so I can share what I have figured out and so I can study my gameplay to see where I'm making my mistakes and where I can improve.

Noticed tonight that Evil Otto popped out on me really quickly once I got to the fast robots and I'm not sure that was suppose to happen. Going to have to ask someone about that. Could just be my boards doing something funky!

Hello! My name is Grant and this is my blog where I plan on documenting my progress of mastering the game of Berzerk. I'm writing this blog for two reasons, to help me keep track of my progress and to hopefully give in-sights to others that are wanting to learn how to play Berzerk better.

I've been playing the arcade version of Berzerk for about a month now. On the fast bullets version of Berzerk I can get to 7500 usually with only losing one life, which I need to fix. Once I get to the fast bullet robots I can usually get to 10K before I lose all my lives at around 10K ~ 12K. Currently my high score is 13,640. 

My goal is by the end of March to be able to get to 20,000 points.

Please expect this blog to change in terms of layout, I'll be making adjustments as I get time! Thanks for looking and I will be giving another update soon!