HellSinker.

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RNGmaster
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HellSinker.

Post by RNGmaster »

If you've been playing video games for a good portion of your life you'll notice that it is harder and harder to find a truly novel experience. Those few games that consciously try to change things up and confound the player's expectations are often artsy, dry, and/or extremely dull. HellSinker, a doujin bullet hell shmup by Ruminant's Whimper, is one of the only games I know of that is constantly, beautifully novel - and incredibly fun to boot. It's an incredibly flawed game to be sure, but even if you're not interested in bullet hell games or even shmups in general you ought to experience HellSinker at least once.

Story: The crazy thing about HellSinker's story is that... well, there's a detailed story, which is an oddity for bullet hell titles. In short, an advanced civilization built a tower called the Garland System to control human karma, and sacrificed four children at its base. Something went horribly wrong, and during the period of time the game takes place, humanity is eking out a meager living from the few scraps of working technology that still remain from the Garland System. The player characters are members of the multi-international organization Graveyard, which is trying to reclaim the center of the Garland System, now called the Cardinal Shaft. They have been driven back twice by fearsome robots called Prayers, and the game details their third attempt.

This is a basic overview of the plot, but things quickly get inexplicable, hinting at a deeply detailed world that Ruminant's Whimper must have spent a lot of time working on. The nature of Prayers, of Graveyard itself, and even the boundary of life and death become muddled as the story goes on.

Aesthetic Design (Music & Art Direction): Holy shit, where to begin. The art direction and music of HellSinker both attracts and repels prospective players. The animation is fluid, the art style is wonderfully surreal, and while the game doesn't seem that graphically intensive the anti-aliasing and backgrounds are flawless. The HUD, though, fills up both sides of the screen with a confusing array of bars and gauges, each of which are emptied and refilled by different actions and pickup items, and along with the visual chaos is enough to turn many people off from even testing the game out. Once the intimidation subsides, though, you can't deny that HellSinker has a great sense of style. This extends even to the menu-screens, mandala-like figures of concentric circles and rotating spires which use contrast masterfully.

The music is on a level rarely seen in video games in terms of inventiveness and rhythmic dexterity. The Shrine of Farewell, probably the most famous piece in the game, builds from a syncopated opening to a loud climax, with a main melody backed by crazy percussion and stereo effects as well as some odd choral sounds. In the last minute it winds down to a more sedate melody, and the syncopated percussion blends with a haunting echoing synth melody. The Quadruple One, the TLB theme, is frankly kind of obnoxious at the beginning, but the last minute just pulses with this crazy bass and a rattling noise starting at about 1:45. Cloudy Ocean starts out with some grimy raspy bass, and slowly crescendoes to a moment at about 2:10 that just gives me the fucking chills, especially in combination with the stage background. The music is often perfectly timed to the enemy waves and boss attacks, creating a crazy experience that borders on synaesthesia.

Stage & Boss Design: I recall some guy in that shmup documentary saying that Radiant Silvergun has a new idea every 15 seconds. This applies equally to Hellsinker. Only a few of the stages are even close to traditional shmup stages. One is a series of multi-scrolling mazes strung together by portals. In another, A giant laser fires from behind which you can use to destroy obstacles and enemies. The Shrine of Farewell sets your score to zero and gives you infinite lives, pits you against a series of tough bosses, and then allows you to regain it - or even double it - depending on how few times you died. No matter how well you do in the first part of the game, the Shrine is always really damn tense because you know that if you screw up you could totally sink your score.

Bosses take after Battle Garegga in having large numbers of destructible parts, but there's some Warning Forever mixed in there too - depending on what parts you blow off, boss attacks can drastically change. The bosses are equally as creative as the stage designs, and as with the stage designs, words really can't convey quite how crazy they are.

Control: Considering how many attacks each individual character has, it's surprising how simple the control scheme is. Unlike Stella Vanity where you're juggling about 6 buttons at the high level of play, HellSinker makes do with 2 buttons and a bomb (as well as focus if you have a mappable joystick). Each character wields a diversity of attack comparable to a Silvergun, and every single implication of every attack must be exploited if you want to succeed at this game. In most characters' cases, the vulcan shot is very weak and the player must rely on chargeable attacks or close-range strikes to inflict damage. If you go in expecting that you can just hold down shot and kill everything you are going to get your ass handed to you quite fast.

To remedy how hard it is to get in close on bosses, Ruminant's Whimper made bombs rechargeable. This is a boon in many circumstances, especially since bombing doesn't carry score penalties and can kill enemies quickly, but it also sucks the challenge out of the game by giving you infinite bullet cancelling. There's also an autobomb and a suppression field that you can use to slow down and cancel bullets, so this is not really on the hard side of shmups. Low difficulty would be a relatively minor quibble if the game weren't so damn long. It lasts more than an hour for a full playthrough and quite a lot of that hour is relatively easy. Criticizing this game for a lack of difficulty is really missing the forest for the trees, though. It might not be challenging the entire time, but considering all the crazy shit going on you'll not need to be afraid that you might doze off.

Scoring System: The thing about Hellsinker is that there isn't a scoring system, per se. You do things which increase your spirit score (the number on the top of the left HUD), but there's little internal consistency. Actions that skyrocket your spirit at one time, like grazing red lasers, might do next to nothing when you do the exact same thing during a different segment of the game. You need to play analytically, trying out various techniques, if you want to optimize scoring. It's easy to understand why many players hate the idea of spirit scoring - not only is it arbitrary but at high levels it involves repetitively milking bosses with weak attacks.

However, the level design is organized in such a way that there are always scoring opportunities. The pacing is hyperactive and frantic on the level of Raiden Fighters - while you're busy milking an enemy to increase its spirit value, a series of enemies will come on, shooting destructible bullets, so you have to shoot away from them to destroy the largest number possible. Then there might be an unchaining section, or you might have to leave an enemy alive to graze the largest number of lasers you can.

In the end scoring in Hellsinker works much the same as normal shmups despite the lack of a system - there's an underlying logic to it, an optimal path for each character type and easier scoring paths for less skilled players, and you can watch replays from superplayers to find out what to do if you're stuck. In the end it just comes down to knowing what attack to use, where, at what time, and why you're using it. That isn't too different from scoring in Ketsui or DFK, is it? Superficially the system is different but if you want to excel at it it's no different from learning how to score at any other game.

Wrap-Up:

I have incredible trouble assigning a score to this game. I can see why some people might give it a 1/10 and others a 10/10. Really, the only solution is to set aside your hesitations and just play it yourself. Every individual player ought to have a chance to decide what to make of it. Now that an English patch is on its way, you have no excuse not to take the plunge. Go and get this game. Now.

P.S. Use this guide if you are starting out, as well as the Strategy thread.
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