Incline Shoot'em up goodness (review and discuss)

[DJOGamer PT]

Because OTXO is a Shoot 'em up...

And it's a really fucking good one.

 

[Morenatsu.]

shooting games, shooters, shoot 'em ups, shmups, whatever you call them, some other unrelated genre is going to steal the name for itself

 

[DJOGamer PT]

Oh...
So this is a thread specifically for spacecraft vertical/horizontal scrolling Shoot 'em ups, not for the genre in general (no wonder this thread is so small, given how wide the genre is)
Alright, my bad.
I'll remove the post from the premises

Still a better thread title would help

 

[Nutmeg]

Oh...
So this is a thread specifically for spacecraft vertical/horizontal scrolling Shoot 'em ups, not for the genre in general (no wonder this thread is so small, given how wide the genre is)
Alright, my bad.
I'll remove the post from the premises

Still a better thread title would help

I wouldn't say so, but that's the starting point.

So basically, you can have arcade format shooting games that aren't pure verts or horis like idk for example Sin and Punishment OR you can have non arcade format verts or horis. Shooting is a hard requirement ofc. whereas one of vert or hori or arcade format should also be met. Bullet hell inspired I guess will automatically qualify too e.g. that touhou bullet hell castlevania clone or whatever. Well this is how I've defined it in my head, but it's really a hivemind thing.

 

[Morenatsu.]

Oh...
So this is a thread specifically for spacecraft vertical/horizontal scrolling Shoot 'em ups, not for the genre in general (no wonder this thread is so small, given how wide the genre is)
Alright, my bad.
I'll remove the post from the premises

Still a better thread title would help

so you're saying I should post about mmos and gacha games in RPG threads?

What is an STG?

It's a very wide genre. Of scrolling spaceship arcade games.

 

[Matador]

I don´t think Hotline Miami style games qualify, they are real time tactical/puzzle stealth/shooting games.

The only point in common is shooting.

 

[gabel]

Yeah, do Contra-likes qualify though?

 

[Matador]

Yeah, do Contra-likes qualify though?

No. Run and gun for me. They play too differently to shmups.

 

[DJOGamer PT]

My understanding of Shoot 'em ups, is that they all share these aspects: 2D, ranged combat against multiple threats, big focus on reaction times to both hit enemies and dogde their projectile

Fixed Screen, Side Scroller, Isometric, Twin-stick, On Rails, Run 'n' Gun, whatever...
If they have the above 3 pillars, then imo they're just different subgenres of Shoot 'em Up.

 

[Morenatsu.]

You use 'reaction times' in shmups? Pfft, noob. Everyone knows it's all about memorization and routing.

 

[Nutmeg]

For stages yes but boss and to a lesser extent mid-boss choice of attack are usually RNG'd in the later (after 1995) arcade classics (certainly true in many Cave and Raizing shmups). Even outside of bosses, many (though, IMO not enough) shmups also have zako that move in relation to the player's position (e.g. the helicopters in Gun Frontier, and helicopter units in general -- kind of a cool genre convention), which can feel very RNG-like as you don't usually maintain pixel perfect positioning unless you're an extreme autist and the effect of being slightly out of position giving you a slightly different pattern forces you to go even more out of position forming a feedback loop that makes any kind of routing more "this general area" rather than "on top of this exact background pixel".

Some players don't like RNG in shmups because "bad" RNG can make a run more difficult, which makes score comparison questionable (i.e. the valid "that guy just got a better score cause he got better RNG!" sentiment), but IMO controlled chaos approaches like the ones I described can give you best of both worlds.

 

[Nutmeg]

My understanding of Shoot 'em ups, is that they all share these aspects: 2D, ranged combat against multiple threats, big focus on reaction times to both hit enemies and dogde their projectile

Fixed Screen, Side Scroller, Isometric, Twin-stick, On Rails, Run 'n' Gun, whatever...
If they have the above 3 pillars, then imo they're just different subgenres of Shoot 'em Up.

Yeah but when the game

1. is outside of the arcade format (no continues, lives, or some such, and allows saving beyond suspend and resume),
2. has numbers go up game rules (XP, character levels, loot, and other kinds of permanent power ups),
3. has free scrolling and large open levels
4. and no kind of time pressure whatsoever,

can you really say it's a shmup just because it has projectile based combat? None of these things are necessarily bad and one or two elements can be very enjoyable in a shmup, but all of them present at once is really stretching the genre definition. I myself place special emphasis on the arcade format. For example, I consider Senjou no Okami (or Mercs) on the Sega Mega Drive a really excellent bit of game design, and a shmup, even though it has free scrolling (tho you can't go backwards) and permanent power ups, because it sticks to the arcade format, in addition to the fact that it has projectile based combat. Another example is Nex Machina, discussion of which was welcomed ITT.

 

[Lutte]

Yeah, do Contra-likes qualify though?

No. Run and gun for me. They play too differently to shmups.

You're being too generous by saying "for me" as if implying it's a subjective thing. Look at any 80s or 90s "top 10 shmups" or whatever (And I mean, written in the 80s and 90s, not /about/ the 80s and 90s). Do you see Contra in it? Nope. Not because contra doesn't deserve to be in a top (it does) but because it's not.. a shmup. It's a Run and Gun, it's an actual genre in itself and includes legends like Metal Slug. No one ever called those games shmups back in the day.
And if a game like contra is not a shmup, a shameless hotline miami clone certainly isn't going to be.

Modern gamers have lost the ability to understand game genres. It's just like how you see so many "roguelikes" that have nothing to do with the real deal. Some people tried to push the roguelite term but it failed hard enough that roguelike is still used as the main term to describe games that absolutely do not play like the rogues of old.

 

[Matador]

You use 'reaction times' in shmups? Pfft, noob. Everyone knows it's all about memorization and routing.

And muscle memory in pattern recognition. What people call "reflexes" is just the brain getting used to patterns, and wiring eyes and hand for them.

I started playing shmups with 39 years, and got my first serious 1CCs in Batsugun, Futari,Dodonpachi and Batrider with 40. It´s not reaction but the brain being prepared to act to visual stimulus.

 

[Morenatsu.]

Of course, I play Garegga-likes, which are more about resources than literal routes, and the accumulation of technically-not-random randomness, so I am just memeing, but it is quite true that if you think it's just about reflexes, well, you're playing the genre wrong. But if you know how various enemies and patterns work in general, you can play a lot of games without having to specifically memorize too much.

And actually, ironically, the more reflexes matter, the less useful they are, because at some point the bullets will be too fast for anything other than memorization to work.

 

[Matador]

Of course, I play Garegga-likes, which are more about resources than literal routes, and the accumulation of technically-not-random randomness, so I am just memeing, but it is quite true that if you think it's just about reflexes, well, you're playing the genre wrong. But if you know how various enemies and patterns work in general, you can play a lot of games without having to specifically memorize too much.

And actually, ironically, the more reflexes matter, the less useful they are, because at some point the bullets will be too fast for anything other than memorization to work.

In my Dodonpachi clear the most important things to beat it were:
Tactics level:
- Learning and practicing bosses
- Learning and routing trick parts
- Improving fundamentals in movement (bullet herding and moving in smaller increments most of time)

Strategy level (mostly resource management and plan whole run as well as possible before executing):
- Assign bombs to trickiest moments, skip pro routing there (again, not reacting)
- Plan bombs to arrive to stage 5 second part and 6 with a good amount of them.
- Some light scoring in early levels to arrive to second points extend to have more resources (6 bombs).

So there is tactical and strategy skills necessary to survival clear a hard game. (tactics and strategy change for scoring runs).

 

[Falksi]

Reading through this last page it's really clear who are SHMUP vets and who isn't.

 

[DJOGamer PT]

My understanding of Shoot 'em ups, is that they all share these aspects: 2D, ranged combat against multiple threats, big focus on reaction times to both hit enemies and dogde their projectile

Fixed Screen, Side Scroller, Isometric, Twin-stick, On Rails, Run 'n' Gun, whatever...
If they have the above 3 pillars, then imo they're just different subgenres of Shoot 'em Up.

Yeah but when the game

1. is outside of the arcade format (no continues, lives, or some such, and allows saving beyond suspend and resume),
2. has numbers go up game rules (XP, character levels, loot, and other kinds of permanent power ups),
3. has free scrolling and large open levels
4. and no kind of time pressure whatsoever,

can you really say it's a shmup just because it has projectile based combat? None of these things are necessarily bad and one or two elements can be very enjoyable in a shmup, but all of them present at once is really stretching the genre definition.

Then OTXO is indeed a shmup because because it only has 2 of those aspects and I could even argue it only has 1

 

[Nutmeg]

Gradius fan-game. Looks great, taking some queues from Gradius 5 as well.

 

[Great Deceiver]

Nice, it seems based on Gaiden. Do you have a DL link?

 

[Nutmeg]

Nice, it seems based on Gaiden. Do you have a DL link?

stgdu0000588.zip here http://www.esc-j.net/stg/stgdu/upload.php

 

[Matador]

Nice, it seems based on Gaiden. Do you have a DL link?

stgdu0000588.zip here http://www.esc-j.net/stg/stgdu/upload.php

I like Gradius games, but never got serious about beat them. It seems like they are too punishing on death, so you have to no miss them.
The one I liked the most is Parodius Dah! in SNES. I usually don't like goofy games, but the presentation is stellar and hilarious, conquers me. It seems one of the hardest though.

I like the upgrade system but I would like that could get implemented in a way that let´s you recover reasonably on death, so your run is really 3 lives and not 1. I remember Slap Fight and V-V Toaplan games, while being great, also have that issue.

Will try that fan game.

 

[Nutmeg]

3 lives and not 1

This isn't strictly true, as at least on the first loop, the games that have them were designed and tested* with checkpoint starts i.e. recoveries. There was an interview with a Toaplan dev where he gave a very strong opinion on checkpoints. He basically said that checkpoints are part of the core of how shumps should be designed and played, and that shmups without checkpoints were a mark of amateur, unserious design. Ofc. I disagree, but he argued the point well on the basis of player learning and player experience (basically, you end up playing the hard sections more often with less fire power, forcing you to actually learn them and come up with tactics for them).

What got me into checkpoints was Same! Same! Same!'s more forgiving Megadrive version (even when played on Hard, though I recommend Normal to begin with). There was a particular checkpoint in stage 8 that usually ended my run until I memorized a pretty crazy recovery. I never did get the 1CC on it, but I had a few near misses, including a very frustrating one where I got to the final boss with a huge stock of bombs and lives (as I didn't die on stage 8, and that stage gifts you many resources), and then died cause I was being stingy with the bombs (why? why???) and I didn't ever practice that recovery and nerves set in and there went my run.

I also find that recoveries are a bit like bombs in the sense that there are recoveries you really should practice, and then there are recoveries that you really don't have to because it's so rare to die in those spots, and if you do you might as well just restart out of shame. But learning a few crucial recoveries can be the difference between a restart and a winning run.

*the caveat here is that sometimes in late stage testing ("location" testing) players found the game too easy so they just ramped up the difficulty by increasing bullet speed or number thus making some recoveries nigh impossible even on the first loop.

 

[Matador]

3 lives and not 1

This isn't strictly true, as at least on the first loop, the games that have them were designed and tested* with checkpoint starts i.e. recoveries. There was an interview with a Toaplan dev where he gave a very strong opinion on checkpoints. He basically said that checkpoints are part of the core of how shumps should be designed and played, and that shmups without checkpoints were a mark of amateur, unserious design. Ofc. I disagree, but he argued the point well on the basis of player learning and player experience (basically, you end up playing the hard sections more often with less fire power, forcing you to actually learn them and come up with tactics for them).

What got me into checkpoints was Same! Same! Same!'s more forgiving Megadrive version (even when played on Hard, though I recommend Normal to begin with). There was a particular checkpoint in stage 8 that usually ended my run until I memorized a pretty crazy recovery. I never did get the 1CC on it, but I had a few near misses, including a very frustrating one where I got to the final boss with a huge stock of bombs and lives (as I didn't die on stage 8, and that stage gifts you many resources), and then died cause I was being stingy with the bombs (why? why???) and I didn't ever practice that recovery and nerves set in and there went my run.

I also find that recoveries are a bit like bombs in the sense that there are recoveries you really should practice, and then there are recoveries that you really don't have to because it's so rare to die in those spots, and if you do you might as well just restart out of shame. But learning a few crucial recoveries can be the difference between a restart and a winning run.

*the caveat here is that sometimes in late stage testing ("location" testing) players found the game too easy so they just ramped up the difficulty by increasing bullet speed or number thus making some recoveries nigh impossible even on the first loop.

Good points. I have to go sometime into one of these games. I´m reasonable skilled now at danmakus but very bad at horis.

Best starting point I guess is Gradius 1?

 

[Nutmeg]

Best starting point I guess is Gradius 1?

Good question. Maybe Einhander (it was made by ex-Konami)