Shmups

[ImmaculateClump]

Ha! "Strategic circulation attack barrage" describes a lot of boss patterns, that's really neat. I like that

 

This is canny. Bullet Casters - https://store.steampowered.com/app/1838490/Bullet_Casters/

 

 

Don't forget, switch crew. Best game of 2022, Like Dreamer coming today at some point/tomorrow?

 

https://www.nintendo.co.uk/Games/Nintendo-Switch-download-software/Like-Dreamer-2355880.html

 

 

[strawdonkey]

Ah... I did it.

 

 

Pretty much a different game entirely with Tee. Don't know what to do with myself now...

[ImmaculateClump]

Which character was the easiest clear, do you think? You've got me wanting to jump back into this.

[strawdonkey]

Probably Miria. She has the most straightforward set of abilities that are good in most situations:

 

Miria: Good selection of specials, good damage at all ranges, consistent behaviour

Mews: Slightly trickier to use, specials require some placement for maximum effect, but does the most damage overall

Tee: Mechanically unique and designed for aggressive, close-range play; probably the best for scoring but also rough for a newcomer. Also ship moves very fast

 

You might find that you prefer Mews to Miria; the thing for me is that Miria does the same every time, whereas you have a bit of variability with Mews that until you're comfortable with the way she plays can feel weird and random.

[ImmaculateClump]

Thanks, strawdonkey. I think I'll start with Miria, and see how that goes and switch to Mews if it's still not clicking.

 

Steam page up for Bullet Hell Monday: Black - https://store.steampowered.com/app/2373850/Bullet_Hell_Monday_Black/

[strawdonkey]

Good luck!

[Jazz Glands]

My copy of Drainus on Switch arrived. Looking forward to giving it a go, heard good things

[ImmaculateClump]

Oh man, one more star to get on Bullet Casters and it's proving to be a right bugger.

I have to beat the boss "Arcanum (Ferox)" without taking a hit and even when using the recharging shield, the final pattern is just a nightmare. It'll come, but it'll be a fluke when I finally get it!

 

This was the second hardest boss, "Stigma (Ferox)", some nice inventive things going on here!

 

https://streamable.com/w53lj3

[phillv85]

25 minutes ago, Jazz Glands said:

My copy of Drainus on Switch arrived. Looking forward to giving it a go, heard good things

Nice, who has that come from? My Japanese copy isn’t due for nearly 2 months.

[Klatrymadon]

Just had a copy of Raiden IV Mikado turn up with its case smashed to smithereens. I don't even think it was the fault of NIS or the courier - PS4 cases are just somehow more fragile than PAL Dreamcast ones.

 

Oh well, at least the game is a belter!

 

Edit: looks pretty muddy and low-res on PS4, though.

[Jazz Glands]

3 hours ago, phillv85 said:

Nice, who has that come from? My Japanese copy isn’t due for nearly 2 months.

Strictly Limited. 

[Djx]

https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2023/03/score-up-to-30percent-off-selected-shmups-in-live-wires-spring-eshop-sale

Quote

Publisher Live Wire has announced its Spring Sale for the Switch eShop across all regions, with up to 30% off selected shmup titles. The savings are available right now and will be sticking around until 16th April, so you have plenty of time to snag one game at a discounted price and play it through before doing the same with another title.

Radiant Silvergun is £12.23 while DoDonPachi Resurrection, Espgaluda II & Mushihimesama are £10.70 each.

[ImmaculateClump]

This is alright. Cycle Chaser H-5 - https://store.steampowered.com/app/2274550/Cycle_Chaser_H5/

 

Normal was a bit of an uneventful blind clear, but I didn't realise, I think you get more score from being near enemies when they die and you get fatter green things that fill up your special weapon gauge, so advance was a lot more interesting when I figured that out.

 

Main straight forward weapon seems to be the way to go 95% of the time. Homing for arseholes that won't stay still and come from behind and stuff.

 

 

There's an advance score to beat.

 

[Triple A]

Not quite in the genre perhaps but relevant to your interests I think -

M2’s rerelease of Assault Suits Valken is on eShop for 15 quid.

Has bonus art galleries, creator interviews, music player inc arranged option, etc.  As the original is one of my fave SFC games, this rerelease was an instabuy.  M2 sure do pick good ones to work on!

[Klatrymadon]

Yeah I'm incredibly excited about Declassified, and was waiting for some positive murmurings from a trusted source. If you're happy with the emulation I'm buying it today!

[strawdonkey]

OK OK now we're done.

 

 

There is nothing quite like the elation and relief of finally putting together The Run, regardless of the actual difficulty of the game you're playing, especially if you've been on the cusp of it for a little while. I've been cursing my shitty play for 20+ attempts at this one but all is instantly forgiven when you finally manage to pull it off.

 

Still tons of improvements to be made - there are multiple sections at this difficulty that I don't have a good route through or strategy for, but I have managed to get through them unscathed on occasion so I know it's very possible; but realistically this was the usual tactic of Somehow Emerge Unscathed Enough, and that's absolutely fine by me.

[Triple A]

9 hours ago, Klatrymadon said:

Yeah I'm incredibly excited about Declassified, and was waiting for some positive murmurings from a trusted source. If you're happy with the emulation I'm buying it today!

It’s great imo, right down to the massive explosions and according slowdown.

The sample rate of the music may or may not be a bit low?  Need to listen to the original SFC version again, could be my imagination 

[ImmaculateClump]

Soooon.

Try the demo, it's fab! https://store.steampowered.com/app/1660850/Flesh/

 

522,503 - https://streamable.com/ydtblp

 

Played "Curse" for the megadrive the other night. It's 30fps and it's pretty rough, but there's still some sparkle there. It's fun despite a lot of the negatives. I like how it looks and the music is fun.

It's a breeze all the way through but then it pulls some bullshit on the final stage, if you die on that stage it puts you back to the beginning of the final stage and it's hard to recover there once you're powered down, and there are lots of bullshit lasers on that stage so it takes a couple of goes to get the layout down and be ready for it.

 

Good fun. Unfairly maligned, I reckon.

[ImmaculateClump]

This is fun, Henry's Caravan. No sound effects just yet - https://xx-henry-xx.itch.io/henrys-caravan

 

1,843,830 - https://streamable.com/9qyap2

[ImmaculateClump]

Played Phelios on the mega drive the other day. It looks amazing and it's really good fun.
There's one part where you go underneath the BBC and fight the true last director general, dark wizards "the Saviles three" in their black shell suit robes.

 

 

 

"I want to make a huge battleship stage, but I can't draw battleships... Let's go!"

He's just drawn another bappy lass, but this time she's giant.
You at least have to admire his dedication to the cause.

 

"There was also a plan to make it possible to destroy clothes, but I decided against it"

Phew! Almost slipped into Caladrius Blaze rapey territory there.
'kin 'ell, can we get this lad laid so he gets all that out of his system and just makes nice cute em ups with cuddly teddy bears and cakes and stuff?

 

Demo is out for that Heli-cats game.
I'm not sure I like the sound of switching elevation to avoid bullets, but it'll be worth a try.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2262880/HeliCats/

 

 

[daifuco]

I want to get into the genre. I have checked my Steam library and I dont have a lot. Sky Force Reloaded and Jamestown. Are they good places to start? Any suggestion?

[spatular]

Jamestown is pretty good imo.

[ImmaculateClump]

I'd stay away from Sky Force Reloaded. It's not really a shmup. It has RPG grinding which will throw you off. Even if you're getting better and you should be able to beat a certain stage, the game might want you to do some more grinding of earlier stages to artificially reduce the difficulty before you can proceed.

I'd stay away from that, it's gonna mess with your head.

Same with Jamestown. Even though I'm not as down on it as some other people, and I do think it's fun, it has some design quirks which will cause frustration if you're new to the genre. Come back to that later on.

 

There are loads of high quality free doujin games that are pretty chill when it comes to survival and getting a clear, and the difficulty comes more from pushing the scoring systems as hard as you can and going for a higher score. One of these would probably be the best way in to build up your confidence.

 

Zakesta is pretty much just hold down the fire button and rock out the tunes if you pick up weapon 5 - https://zakichi.itch.io/zakesta

 

 

 

Blue Wish Resurrection Plus is a great place to start.
It's quite forgiving in that it gives you a lot of extra lives and bombs, and on the default settings instead of dying when you get hit, you just lose a bomb instead.
Play on the easiest difficulty until you get the hang of it, and then you can bump it up to normal.
You'll teach yourself all the fundamentals of the genre and have fun while you're doing it.

 

https://xxgameroom.itch.io/blue-wish-resurrection-plus

 

Or there's Blue Wish Desire from the same dev, not free, but it might be even more beginner friendly on the lowest difficulty - https://store.steampowered.com/app/1794300/BLUE_WISH_DESIRE/

 

 

Like Dreamer - https://store.steampowered.com/app/1867740/Like_Dreamer/

 

 

Neko Navy - https://store.steampowered.com/app/592270/Neko_Navy/

 

 

A lot of games have a novice mode so you can usually just pick a game you like the look of and it'll be a good place to begin. Maybe run it by folk here first though. Some games are really challenging no matter how long you've been playing these games!

[daifuco]

Thanks a lot for your post. It is what I needed.  Other newbies may benefit from it as well. Looking forward downloading those games when I need it. 

 

Not a fan of leveling up. That's why I like fighting games.

I play Skyrim but just as an interactive film when I'm too tired to play games 😄

[spatular]

got round to having a go of Drainus, not played it much yet but it seemed pretty fun overall, i like the absorb mechanic. Seems like a long game but i might be playing some sort of story mode. Powering down before a boss seems annoying as the boss then takes forever. And the visibility between my bullets, absorbable bullets and non-absorbable bullets sometimes isnt great, although the main pattern that was causing me most problems you can just move to the side before it starts to move. What sort of loadouts do people like? The options seem important for increasing firepower.

[phillv85]

Just bought Space Elite Force 2 in 1. It’s decent fun for an hour or two, but it’s far too easy. Worth it for the £2 or whatever it cost in the PSN sale though.

[ImmaculateClump]

What's everyone been playing lately?

 

Someone on my youtube mentioned that there was a secret golden ship in Blue Wish Desire. You have to beat all the modes on normal before you unlock it and I hadn't done easy mode yet.
You press down on the ship selection screen at the first ship "blue desire".

 

 

It's good fun, you're in hyper mode constantly, but if you get hit, you die. There's no guard and no bombs either.

 

Been playing Green Wind (parp) as well, xxgamerooms first game. It's great and you can see the cave influence way more with the patterns and stuff early on.
You have a sword attack that charges up and the enemies you kill with it, their bullets turn into gold coins. You get a healthy reward for lives left at the end so it's a nice balance of risk/reward.

 

It looks like nobody plays it judging by restart syndrome and nicovideo. I accidentality got the normal world record judging by that (28,166,380) and I died 3 times! So if you want an easy world record get on and play that!
It's not too tricky and it's lots of fun.

 

https://xxgameroom.itch.io/green-wind

 

It's uploaded in some funky old compression format, use 7zip to unpack it, and then you want to choose the lower option when running the game to run it windowed, and then use integer scaler to blow it up to fullscreen (alt+f11) - https://tanalin.com/en/projects/integer-scaler/

[ImmaculateClump]

https://streamable.com/4sx5lz

"Ooh, I haven't died yet, this'll be a decent score if I'm careful"

My brain: "Howay the lads, let's headbutt some random bullets!"

I still beat my score, but I might have gotten 30,000,000 if I hadn't choked

[spatular]

played more drainus, did the story mode on an easier difficulty and unlocked the arcade mode, 1cc'd the normal arcade mode where you don't always die when hit, then moved up to the one hit kill mode and found it really hard, struggle to get to the first shop section on one credit (assuming that's the first level), think the furthest i've got is the stage 3 boss? with the spinning lasers?, it's still fun mind, i think it's a good game, i'm just a bit rubbish at it which means later on i'm constantly underpowered. maybe could do with a difficulty mode between the normal and hard ones. might come back to it at some point and try and do a bit better but giving it a rest for now.

[Yasawas]

I'm trying to fight an urge to buy a PS5, because I know I'll only regret it, by digging out my old PS3 and just sitting further away. Once I'd set it up and rediscovered all the digital games I bought 10(!) or so years ago and forgot about I discovered Gradius V which I remember buying because of ConsoleVania yet never got round to booting. My sweet lord. I don't know if I will stick it long term since I know its reputation and I know even better my own limitations, but what a sensory feast it is. And that in the wrong aspect ratio, blurred to shite and without the benefit of a proper sound system which I hadn't booted up. Genuinely stunned. And a little emotional, for want of a better word, since I got such a strong Ikaruga vibe from it for obvious reasons and suddenly felt like I was in my old bedroom playing that in on a GameCube through composite on my parents' old CRT. 

 

I hear it does the Ikaruga thing of giving you an extra credit every hour played which is a mechanic I always liked too, so I will definitely unlock a few more of those and see how I feel about it longer term, but that was an unexpected highlight I didn't see coming when I hooked this thing up. 

 

In other horizontal dabbling I have started Rolling Gunner a bit on Switch after getting the physical copy at Christmas when I didn't have time for it. I think I like it but at the same time I'm not completely sold on the "rolling" part of my ship, and the powered-up-shot / scoring mechanic feels a bit underwhelming.