Incline Shoot'em up goodness (review and discuss)

[Darth Canoli]

So, after playing Steel Rain (7/10 reviewed in the space games sub-forum) and Infinos Gaiden (not reviewed yet, great arcade vide), i just played jets'n guns and Sky Force Reloaded.

Jets'n Guns



+ Cool one, upgrades outside of combat
+ Great sound effects, machine gun/gatling SE, explosions, people screaming, probably the best part of the game

- some visibility problems because everything that explodes can harm you and you can also get fucked by debris, this one is aiming for "realism"

Couldn't reach the second stage yet, was close but i always go out of my way to kill one more enemy, you can't even kill half of them, it's irritating.
It's addictive, starting weapons are on the sober side but it looks like there is lasers'n shit coming our way later, i'll save it for later.


Sky Force Reloaded



This is exactly what i was looking for

• Really smooth ride, no performances issues
• Playable intro, straight into the action!
  
• 1943 reboot done right, better than the original (the purists are going to hang me)
• Upgrades buyable outside of combat
• Unlockable ships
• Other unlockable / achievements unlocking technicians (extra lives? repairs?)
• Really good gameplay
• Enemies dropping upgrades are highlighted
• Some secrets to discover
• Good enemy variety so far
• Voice-overs
• Great bosses and half-bosses
• "You're a bad person"

Completed two stages after 30-60 minutes and some upgrades, it's extremely fun!

 

[Falksi]

Top lad, I'll be purchasing Skyforce later now.

Used to work for an Aerial firm called that btw.

 

[e-mailio estevez]

Skyforce looks cool.

I'm always habitually going back and playing EDF for the SNES. Just something about it that I love- maybe nostalgia as it's a game I played a lot as a youngin.

Tyrian is of course a classic, I would love a kickstarted remake of it. Oddly enough I think I liked the PSP version of it the best.

 

[Darth Canoli]

I played it a bit more, it's extremely grindy.

Each stage has three modes (there's 14 base stages i think, so 14 x 3 )
Normal (unlocks next stage + this stage hard mode)
Hard (unlocks insane)
Insane
The good thing is hard and insage have some variations, it's not just the same thing with faster/tougher enemies (they're tougher though)

There is cards to collect (rare drops, harder diff increases the chances) most of them with permanent bonuses (faster rescue, spawns free laser recharge or shield recharge, etc.) and some with temporary bonuses (power up boost, increase cards drop rate, etc.)

I like most bosses tirades, sometimes, it's a bit too much or simply lame though.

Management upgrades prices are incremental and there's 2x 10 to 4?/5? x10 upgrades for each equipment, it takes forever to increase, that's where they should have limited the grind, i don't want to play the game for two years.

Still, it's good, SE are good, music fits the mood, gameplay doesn't fail although, it's way better when you get distance and speed rescue bonuses.

I would adjust my rating from 4/5 (8/10) to 7.8/10. (7.5 seems too low, 8 a bit too high ...)
Luckily, the game is good enough for the grind not to get too tedious.
It's extremely fun either way, just don't expect to complete it in one go.

I spotted a cheat engine table though, might be useful for when i want to max all upgrades and wrap this one up to play another game.

 

[AdolfSatan]

Best one imo is Jamestown, it gets everything about the genre right, I don't have any complaints about it. Super fun in co-op too.

 

[Darth Canoli]

Which one?
Jamestown+ is 50% off, they're at 94% positive ratings and 92% on steam.



Also, this review makes some valid points like visibility of enemies fire and lack of vertical maneuverability.

Despite the quality of the soundtrack, the overall audio presentation leaves much to be desired. Both your and your enemy's shots lack any audio at all, and when combined with a lack of shot impact audio, means that attacks lack impact and the game feels rather sterile to listen to.

While individual sprites are enjoyably colorful and detailed, no mind appears to have been paid to how these sprites actually work in concert. Enemy fire is red, blue, green, and occasionally gold, with gold also being a color of a score pickup. These colors are shared with the player's own fire. It's also worth noting that those pickups are cartoonishly massive, which when paired with the rich contrast and animations in the sprite, means that the player's eye is often drawn to these ultimately unimportant pickups over enemy fire.

Much like the audio and graphical issues, smooth gameplay with responsive controls and tight hitboxes is marred by baffling design decisions. Gameplay takes place in a vertically-scrolling field with an internal resolution of 511x320 pixels, with chunky entities to allow for the detail in each sprite to shine. This leaves very little room for the player to maneuver, especially vertically, and even more so when you consider that some of the limited vertical resolution is occupied by player info, score, and boss health running across the top of the screen. The developers seem entirely unaware of this limitation, however, as enemies routinely spawn halfway (or more!) of the way down the screen, and some will even come from the bottom at the same time.

Unfortunately, this is not where the problems stop. The first bullet point on this store page is that Jamestown offers a “wide array of difficulty levels.” This might as well be a blatant lie, as the game requires that you beat prior levels on harder difficulties before you can progress. This means that the easier difficulties might as well not exist.

But finally, I come to performance, which is the issue I noticed first. Yes, the game runs quite well with no real issues. However, it runs in fullscreen windowed mode (which is good), at a quite low resolution, and then uses the OS scaling to fill the screen. This produces a number of unwanted effects, with windows and desktop icons being resized and shuffled around under the game, and mouse sensitivity does not decrease proportionally. Additionally, when I had closed the game, my mouse was registering a second click a few seconds after I clicked. A restart fixed this.

Unfortunately, I cannot recommend this game due to numerous design stumbles and a technical implementation that I personally found wanting.

Also, it's tagged as a "bullet hell".
In theory, i have nothing against this sub-genre, in practice, even minor lag or lack of visibility makes them an unplayable mess.

 

[AdolfSatan]

Didn't know there was a remastered version, I played the original and can't say I agree with any of the points in that review. I was actually gonna mention that for bullethell lovers the game might even feel a bit on the easier side unless you specifically go for the higher difficulties.

They might have fucked up things in the remaster, tho that reviewer does sound like he needs to git gud. I don't recall finding the vertical space lacking for example, even if it is rather tight.

 

[Darth Canoli]

Thanks for the info.
Strangely, the original wasn't on sale or with a way lower number (i'm not sure) so they probably fucked up the second/remake.

I also played SATAZIUS for 5 minutes or so and it's fucking GOOOOOOOOOD !!!



This one also really catches the 90's vibe, something like Thunderforce meets R-Type, i won't spoil but there's an amazing surprise almost right away, i wish i had more time to play it but it's coming next after i post a full Sky Force Reloaded review.

 

[Darth Canoli]

If you liked 1943 and its sequels (or prequels, or both)

Sky Force Reloaded Review
This one feels like a 3D version of it.
I even consider the graphics an improvement and i usually prefers 2D over 3D.

Graphics
It's pretty good, sure, anything is hidden under your own fire when you get the 3 shoot focused fire but it's a pretty thin line, overall, it does better than most.

Sound effects and music
Quite good as well, not ecstatic but gets the job done, you don't get tired of it either.

Gameplay
No hitboxes issues, no framerate drop.
It's fun all the way, the game throws at you just enough new enemies to keep thing interesting, bosses are great too, different helicopters (they keep getting bigger and deadlier ), tanks, mechanical spiders, giant and floating bases, all pretty well designed.
I should mention chain bonuses that aren't cancelled when you're hit.

Stages regularly bring something new, even one when you can't shoot at first, you'll need to find a card to be able to but even then, there's a twist.
When i thought i was getting bored with it, i played level 9 and was hooked all over again.

It's grindy but collectibles (cards, ships parts to get new ones, objectives, stars = cash and technicians bringing an unique bonus) keep it tolerable.

Ships you unlock bring some different gameplay elements, with one card, you unlock a special weapon for the basic ship, for example while other ones get a different characteristics.

Difficulty
For each stage, you unlock next difficulty mode when you complete all the objectives of the previous difficulty (Normal, hard, Insane and nightmare), you can even complete objectives in different runs.
Insane starts to get real difficult and nightmare ... couldn't get all the objectives from any nightmare level yet.
Late stages gets real tough even on normal mode though

Final Rating 4.1/5
It's really good, hunting down plane squadrons like in 1943 and old shoot'em up, enemies with each their own pattern and a flawless gameplay.
Sure, outside of combat mechanism relevance can be discussed but it didn't ruin the fun for me, rather added some progression layer.
Grind could have been tuned down a little but the game is a solid shoot'em up with everything you want, including a 2 players mode.

 

[Valestein]

Nice shmup for PC with selectable stages.



And here's three nice schmups from the dev behind Satazius.

 

[Great Deceiver]

I've been a fan of shmups for over 30 years. Mostly play old stuff on emulators (Retroarch with runahead + G-sync is the best, because there are a few non-standard refresh rate classics such as the Raiden series and Dodonpachi; latency is better than original PCBs, of which I have quite a few).

I don't really keep up with recent shmups, but I played a few recent and good ones this year:

1. Crisis Wing: This is very clearly influenced by Tatsujin/Tatsujin Oh (classic Toaplan games, released as Truxton in the west; the first game had a Genesis port):


2. Devil Engine: Recent game inspired by Thunder Force. Apparently the dev hasn't been paid by the publisher (haven't read too much about it, can't confirm): Devil Engine Dev Says Dangen Still Hasn't Paid Them And Won't Return The IP, A Claim The Publisher Refutes - Nintendo Life


3. ZeroRanger: 8-bit aesthetic. Pretty cool, awesome soundtrack.


Even though it's not new (the original game came out in 2010, but it got a 2020 port for the Switch. Steam version came out in 2014 I think), I have to stress how good Crimzon Clover is and everyone should get it. It's a good as Dodonpachi. Everyone should play it, and it costs peanuts.

 

[Great Deceiver]

Cross-posting from another thread because I didn't realize this one existed:

Been playing Sorcer Striker (slightly easier western version of Mahou Daisakusen) trying for a 1CC clear. It's one of my favourite shmups ever - I think it's one of Raizing's very best.

This came out in 1993, and it straddles the line between classic and manic shmups: there's still a need to navigate scenery and terrain (for example, the tripwires in level 2 triggering crushing walls of death). Stages are not just static backdrops against rains of bullets. Bullets are fast (not as fast as something like Raiden, but on the level of Psikyo bullets I'd say), and patterns are pretty unforgiving. The player's hitbox is reasonably large. This is personally my favourite era of shmups: the subsequent Cave/danmaku era took things too far, with mostly boring levels, one-dimensional gameplay with autistic, byzantine scoring systems that don't really appeal to me.

The music is kickass, with memorable tunes that really complement the action very well. Visually, it's a very upbeat game with a cool and colourful tech/fantasy aesthetic, with awesome sprites, lots of details in the stages and great enemy design. Raizing used the Mahou characters in most of their subsequent games in some form or another (most often as secret ships/characters), which I think is pretty cool. People usually remember Raizing for Battle Garegga, but Mahou has a really special place in my heart.

The direct sequel (Dai Mahou Daisakusen - Dimahoo) is also pretty cool. I own the actual arcade board and play it on my vert cabinet from time to time. But the original game is better IMO.

Some screenshots:

 

[Sore Loser]

.

 

[fork]

I recommend pretty much the entire Toaplan/Cave catalog and honestly not much else (with very few exceptions). They're in a league of their own; graphics, stage design, enemy patterns, flow, scoring—after playing those games for a while, nothing else is as satisfying anymore. The rest feels like playing some really outdated (in a bad way) shit. And there's a game for every skill-level there, too: noobs play Batsugun Special, DonPachi or Mushi Futari Black Label Original, while pros play Tatsujin Oh/Truxton 2, Ketsui or Mushi Futari 1.5 Ultra.

So yeah, buy a CRT, turn it sideways, install MAME and git gud!

 

[Nutmeg]

Oh boy I love shmups. Interesting to see the thread mostly focused on newer games, but happy to see many ASTRO PORT titles mentioned.

and it straddles the line between classic and manic shmups

Eh, not really. It's a Compile game through and through (ex Aleste series devs, notably Spriggan, Musha and Robo) but they got a few pointers from some former Toaplan staff.

Also IMO manic isn't really a sub-genre. If it was there'd be just one entry -- Dangun Feveron. Everything else is kind of just classic or danmaku.

Anyway really fun game. I love the re-appearance of the bosses in Batrider, which I consider the closest thing to a shmup RPG due to what is arguably party building and the way it interacts with the game world.

Anyway I cleared a bunch of them in 2019. Here are my favorites out of the ones I cleared:

Batrider
Raiden fighters 2
Batsugun special

Hard to give them an order. Batrider is probably my favorite.

I never cleared it but I want to give a shout out to Same! Same! Same! on the Mega Drive, the Arcade version being way beyond my reach at the moment.

Speaking of the Mega Drive. Slapfight special is an ultra rare title from Japanese PC cult classic developer MNM. I love it. It has a Koshiro soundtrack, and it's a great introduction to Toaplan shooters. Just make sure to play the Mega Drive or "special" mode. 10 minute loops, get progressively more difficult. Very fun build your ship and then jettison the wings for a bomb mechanic. Also just fun to play at the smallest size.

 

[Nutmeg]

Tatsujin Oh

Mycophobia from the shmups farm released an awesome hack attempting to fix some serious issues the game has with recoveries and player resources. He's been playing it forever, and wrote a great review on his site. From my experience with it, and my experience with Same! Same! Same! I would agree with all his changes. Same! Same! Same! is hard as balls, but it gives you the resources. Tatsujin Oh is just as difficult, but gives you 2 extra bombs the entire run lol.

 

[Great Deceiver]

I've always thought danmaku and manic meant the same thing. But you know what I mean - bullet curtains and boring backgrounds. Yeah, you can really feel the Compile in Mahou and that's an awesome thing. Speaking of Compile, their swansong on PSX (Zanac x Zanac) is really great, too. Was playing it the other day.

I really like the Shark series by Toaplan (Tiger Heli, Flying Shark, Fire Shark) but I suck at all the games.

The Raiden series is another favourite of mine and it's great that I can now emulate it pretty perfectly with Retroarch and G-Sync (the boards run at 54hz so they were janky or sped up on 60hz displays). My personal favourite is Raiden DX, but all the Raiden Fighters are awesome. Even Viper Phase 1 is great. The recent games by Moss are kind of shit, though (especially 5).

Re: Slap Fight, I love that game, played it all the time as a kid at arcades. I now have the board and still play it every once in awhile. Never played the MD port, though.

 

[Valestein]

There's the "Zeal" series that's reminiscent of the "Raiden" series.

 

[Great Deceiver]

I recommend pretty much the entire Toaplan/Cave catalog and honestly not much else (with very few exceptions). They're in a league of their own; graphics, stage design, enemy patterns, flow, scoring—after playing those games for a while, nothing else is as satisfying anymore. The rest feels like playing some really outdated (in a bad way) shit. And there's a game for every skill-level there, too: noobs play Batsugun Special, DonPachi or Mushi Futari Black Label Original, while pros play Tatsujin Oh/Truxton 2, Ketsui or Mushi Futari 1.5 Ultra.

So yeah, buy a CRT, turn it sideways, install MAME and git gud!

No offense, but this is the typical navel-gazing forum kiddy attitude that helped bury shmups for good. Cavetards are insufferable.

 

[Nutmeg]

G-Sync (the boards run at 54hz so they were janky or sped up on 60hz displays

I splurged on a 144 HZ G-Sync compatible 4K monitor just for Retroarch CRT shaders and shmups.

My personal favourite is Raiden DX, but all the Raiden Fighters are awesome

Raiden Fighters play completely differently to earlier Raidens (1, 2, DX), which makes sense because apparently they were originally going to be a completely new franchise "Gun Dogs" but location testing revealed if they call it Raiden it makes more money lol. The original series were Kyukyoku Tiger clones, the first sometimes described as a bootleg lol.

You should try Akuu Gallet. High level scoring has some milking but if you're playing for the clear, it's a very accessible Raiden like. It's from ex Toaplan spinoff Gazelle. How the turn tables.

Anyway I myself am playing Xexex. It's great. I'll copy paste my thoughts so far from the Shmups farm:

Aesthetics are a mix of state of the art, height of popularity, 1991 boundary pushing AAA arcade shooter and eroge bootleg for yakuza operated pachinko bars. Even the music, which is a mix of Gradius space adventure and 80s porno funk.

It is super fun to play. While I don't have more than 10 hours experience with either series, it's obvious the play is a mix of Gradius and R-type, leaning more heavily towards Gradius despite the presence of the force-like "flintlock". It has two very frantic and fun levels with looping vertical push scrolling, something I love and strongly associate with Gradius. Gets more memorizery towards the end, especially the final stage. I haven't played the second loop, so I can't comment there.

I find the flintlock fun to tactically deploy; you can employ it both offensively and defensively. Important to note that you can launch it forward by cancelling a charge shot, and that the tentacles (which grow from 1 to 3 as you power up the flint) cancel bullets. However, I do find it difficult to get it to reliably latch onto bosses. Might be because I'm currently playing on multiple credits, so it's almost always powered down. In any case, if you do get it to latch on to a boss, they go down quickly. Even if you don't, they're not very difficult on the first loop. Most of the difficulty comes from the brilliantly constructed stages, which you can clinically cut through with good routing and flint placement, or if you don't yet know what you're doing, scrape through relying on improvisation and skill.

The checkpoints are very fair on the first loop, and recovery is almost never a problem. This makes credit feeding through the game a good way to learn it. You can't just auto-win, because there are checkpoints, but it's not a grueling experience either with recoveries that require arcane and weird routing.

Was it the Einhander thread that someone pointed out that the dev team is shared, and the ships are designed similarly? The games play quite differently, IMO, but I love them both.

 

[Nutmeg]

Cavetards are insufferable.

I like some Cave games.

The first Dodonpachi is fine. I also like Guwange.

They're in a league of their own; graphics

Cave? Graphics? Most of their games after 1998 are clearly made as cheaply and quickly as possible as far as art is concerned (all just pre-rendered sprites).

Even the original Dodonpachi (gorgeous pixel art) cheaped out with the music (which is good, it's from the studio that did the music for Winds of Thunder, but there's only 3 tracks lol).

Also they never quite know what to do with the gameplay. There's like 9 different ways to play Mushimesama Futari or something. They discovered a winning formula with Dodonpachi and since then have just been throwing variations at the wall and seeing what sticks.

Anyway I'm hardly an expert in Cave and a lot of good players are really into them but that's how it feels.

honestly not much else

Razing, Konami, Treasure, G. Rev, Seibu.

I mean I can understand thinking this way if the only non Cave and non Toaplan (I much prefer Toaplan to Cave) you've played is Compile (who made ultra charming games, but the play is lackluster in comparison to the arcade greats) or something, but c'mon.

 

[Great Deceiver]

I also like many Cave games and played them on release (Guwange is indeed awesome, never saw the board though), but this sort of narrow thinking that the Cave games somehow rendered the entire spectrum of shmups obsolete is ridiculous. It's a forum kiddy attitude, people that didn't grow up with these sorts of games and think they've discovered the holy grail because they wank off to some jap superplay DVD somewhere. Sad.

Speaking of Cave, I recently downloaded Xenia to play Mushi Futari and was surprised to see that it runs at full speed and input lag is low. However, the audio is very delayed, making it hard to enjoy the game. It's a shame M2 doesn't put their ports on Steam.

 

[fork]

Forum kiddy my ass. It's just that life is too short to play mediocre or gimmicky shit.
The same is true for many other genres. Once you played Doom and Quake, most other FPSs feel like clunky amateur shit, to give another examole. There are exceptions, just like there are some shmups outside the Toaplan/Cave catalog which are worth playing, but the rule still stands.

 

[Nutmeg]

One of the best 3 minutes gaming has to offer at time stamp, IMO. Clinically dismantling a train fortress housing a secret weapons project as it speeds away from you while swatting away intercepting craft. The music is perfect, the play is perfect, the visuals are gorgeous.

That's the thing about good Shmups they're just 30 minutes of perfection so you don't care that you play the same thing again and again to git gud. You don't really want to play anything else cause nothing else has the same fun over time ratio. Nothing else comes close. Some of the most fun I've had in my gaming life has just been practicing the RF2 mega bosses.

 

[Nutmeg]

life is too short to play mediocre or gimmicky shit.

I agree but there's a lot of super high quality shmups that IMO exceed Cave (although Toaplan is hard to beat).