Housemarque will no longer make arcade shooters

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qmish
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Re: Housemarque will no longer make arcade shooters

Post by qmish »

I dunno

Also Cuphead style isn't Disney, it's earlier :roll:
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Shepardus
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Re: Housemarque will no longer make arcade shooters

Post by Shepardus »

Disney as a company goes back to the 1920s.
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Squire Grooktook
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Re: Housemarque will no longer make arcade shooters

Post by Squire Grooktook »

Bananamatic wrote:haven't played madworld or anarchy reigns but they look even more simple and more boring
they're definitely no bayonetta which is by far their best game
gaaaah raaaagh

Anarchy Reigns is nothing like any other platinum title, it's practically not even in the same genre. It never ceases to annoy me when people talk about the game like it's another single player character action title when it's anything but.

It's a multiplayer-focused power-stone esque arena fighting game, and its mechanics are radically different. It's the only Platinum title where you can't dodge/parry cancel every move at any time, as the timings for linking/chaining/cancelling attacks are very strict and defined (again, it's a fighting game). It also has the full fighting game suite of poke vs block vs throw, supers, etc.

It's not a good single player game (because it's pretty much a thrown together mission pack, and the combat was designed for fighting game style reads and footsies which doesn't really work against cpu mooks), but it's a wonderful multiplayer game with a great pvp combat engine layered on top of some really creative game-modes and content. I'd say it's tied as their most fun game.
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BrianC
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Re: Housemarque will no longer make arcade shooters

Post by BrianC »

qmish wrote:I dunno

Also Cuphead style isn't Disney, it's earlier :roll:
If that were true, Cuphead would be mostly silent cartoons. lol.
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Re: Housemarque will no longer make arcade shooters

Post by Tim James »

qmish wrote: As for "depth", i m not very fond of those "cuhrazy action depth: advanced techniques" where everything revolves around shit like jump cancel, evade cancel, blade fucking cancel, what else you can cancel?!

I believe games like DMC and Bayonetta are more about "oh shit i can do this and that" at bulletsponge enemies while in Ninja Gaiden for example its more about "kill it quick and clean" without "mad combo style SSS" bullshit.
Better than 1CC bullshit!!!11!!

Cuhrayzee action is by far my favorite genre because it's so flexible. I can fart around, I can practice techniques, I can play super hard modes for completion. It never feels like work, but it's mentally draining enough that I feel like stopping after a while, so it's not an endless timesink.

Shmups are second though, I guess.

Anyway, stylish action is dead too, so it's all moot.
Last edited by Tim James on Fri Nov 03, 2017 4:07 am, edited 1 time in total.
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BrianC
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Re: Housemarque will no longer make arcade shooters

Post by BrianC »

Not only did Disney make cartoons in the 20s and 30s, but some of the best Mickey Mouse cartoons were in the 30s. He was quite a scamp back then!
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qmish
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Re: Housemarque will no longer make arcade shooters

Post by qmish »

Ok, i mean Cuphead is more a tribute to Fleischer
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fleischer_Studios

They even said it in interviews etc. Of course Disney and others were inspiration sources, too.
Anyway, stylish action is dead too, so it's all moot.
"Cuhrayzee" and "stylish" aren't two names of same "genre"?
my favorite genre because it's so flexible.
But do you play it naturally or go crazy with that "oh look i'm cancel this cancel that framebuffer this just frame that" stuff? These things are helpful, but make me sick due to attitude of users + it makes like you are abusing game engine instead of playing.

Regardless, anyway, DMC and the likes are best if you wanna fight like John Woo/Rodrigues heroes or Matrix but better)
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Re: Housemarque will no longer make arcade shooters

Post by Elixir »

qmish wrote: Too bad my friend shitposts on both Platinum and Cuphead (well, he believes what he says actually):
Cuphead is hipster trash that people only love because it has a shitty art style that nobody gave a fuck about until the Cuphead retro hipsters saw it fit to revive oldschool Disney toons back when Kike Mouse was a fucking mute. It tries hard to be like Contra Hardcorps & Alien Soldier but like most hipsters, they never heard of this concept called game balance so the bosses take forever to fucking kill whereas you can kill most bosses in Alien Soldier or Dark Souls/Bloodborne in only two minutes. Even the final boss goes down quickly if you know what you're doing
I bought Okami earlier this year for PS3. I thought it was AfuckingMazing at first until I realized how boring it was since you do nothing but constantly backtrack and the combat is just a bunch of skilless button mashing like most Platinum games. Weird how Ys looks far more simpler but actually has a far higher skill ceiling than the likes of Nier Automata, Metal Gear Rising, Anarchy Reigns, etc. due to the precise timing you need to execute guards & free dashs against Bullet Hell patterned bosses & enemies.
I thought about this a lot. It's basically my experience with Platinum's games as well.

Okami: 60 hours of running around fetching things and repeatedly mashing square during battles
Vanquish: the latter half of the game copy-pastes the former half.
Max Anarchy: Musou singleplayer with unbalanced 4v4 multiplayer. largely dead on arrival because Sega
W101: anything taking your eyes off the main screen is a bad idea. did you know you can stop gaming really fast by going into an area and having to draw a little pentagram on the wii u touchpad?
God Hand: has substance and style, godawful camera, godawful graphics, needs a remaster. good game which feels like it's actually built to play against the player
Bayonetta: YYB YYB combo mashing and kilgore glitch. never a dull moment when the scenery is constantly changing!! ugh, it's like they're trying to target people with ADHD
Bayo 2: nobody bought this but "at least it exists, you know. be grateful"
Scalebound:
Star Fox Wii U or whatever: nobody bought this either and forcing people to play with gyro controls is a terrible idea
Transformers: reportedly good but I didn't play it, supposedly similar to bayo
TMNT: reportedly bad, didn't play

Ys/Kiseki have always rewarded smart thinking (but good luck trying to get anyone interested in playing any of the Ys games using the "bump system") but they're not really popular and in Kiseki's case those games take forever to get English releases. Good games though, but they're really time consuming.

As for Cuphead, I beat it in 4 hours, with 31 deaths, and a bunch of retries. It doesn't adhere to arcade setplay but it's also mostly about choosing the right weapon for the right boss. Shmup stages have inertia, so they're pretty bad. The parry system is pretty redundant, and the boss cycles can be DPS'd easily by toggling weapons. I don't have much incentive to play this again, and probably won't, but at least some of the bosses were fun.

Nex Machina, I'd probably still play it if there were a way of removing the voxels/massive visual clutter. Yeah you can circlejerk over huge voxel counts on NeoGAF pretending you've played Resogun for longer than an hour but as far as I'm concerned, it's just tedious to look at. I'd rather play something like Superhot or Clustertruck which still require skill and still have substance but aren't trying to be flashy and crowd pleasing at the same time. Nex also had the weird issue of being incredibly PC intensive, my i7 6700k with a GTX 1070 could be considered a 2016-grade PC and even I noticed framerate issues.

Neither Cuphead nor Nex Machina come across to me as arcade games. Cuphead can be played in bursts whereas Nex Machina tries to make the player progress through repetition but it doesn't really work too well since there's a ton of secrets and stuff which just makes it impossible to play through without a ton of prior knowledge. Even then there's barely anyone running it in contrast to Cuphead full to the brim of speedrunners.

Anyway where am I going with this? oh yeah I guess I was going to say that I don't think I've ever really considered Housemarque to make arcade shooters to begin with, and if they wanted to make games for profit they'd better find a different genre. also releasing 2 games within the span of just a few months is weird as heck
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qmish
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Re: Housemarque will no longer make arcade shooters

Post by qmish »

Interesting.

Coming back to "parrying" question, where it was best implemented? DMC's Royal Guard? Dark Souls? Ninja Gaiden 1 vanilla's Intercept :?
I don't think I've ever really considered Housemarque to make arcade shooters to begin with
Maybe it's more about what "most gamers" consider "arcade".

How would you compare to Assault Android Cactus, for example?
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Re: Housemarque will no longer make arcade shooters

Post by Durandal »

Elixir wrote: whereas Nex Machina tries to make the player progress through repetition but it doesn't really work too well since there's a ton of secrets and stuff which just makes it impossible to play through without a ton of prior knowledge
How would the secrets in Nex Machina differ from something like in Raiden Fighters?
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Re: Housemarque will no longer make arcade shooters

Post by gray117 »

qmish wrote:
The reap is an apt reminder of this.
Is it "style over substance" game? As i know those who gave 9/10 to it, but they are not arcade-minded.
Not really my point - more misplaced/misdirected. They saw viewpoint, thought they could make it better. OK. So they made a decent game ... and gave it a nonsense title, an abstract cover, only released it on pc, and did so with very little/no marketing... And this was when you had to sell yourself in a mag or a store shelf... Who were they aiming at here?
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Bananamatic
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Re: Housemarque will no longer make arcade shooters

Post by Bananamatic »

Elixir wrote: Bayonetta: YYB YYB combo mashing and kilgore glitch. never a dull moment when the scenery is constantly changing!! ugh, it's like they're trying to target people with ADHD
of course there will be slightly broken/spammable shit in games with tons of options, it's unavoidable
there's a reason why people who play these games "seriously" absolutely detest speedrunning them - it's fucking boring and nothing but abusing the game instead of having fun with it
might as well say that god hand is nothing but YMK+unleash spam and side kick cancelling against a wall, because you can certainly do that and beat the game 100x more easily than playing it the "normal" way
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qmish
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Re: Housemarque will no longer make arcade shooters

Post by qmish »

^ what you said above, proves that MGR is fine :mrgreen:
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Re: Housemarque will no longer make arcade shooters

Post by Bananamatic »

the difference is that MGR ends right there, there isn't much advanced stuff or mechanics to have fun with once you go through the game a few times
what doesn't help MGR either is how many bosses or enemies in general are immune to perfect parries or are impossible to pull off against them, especially the final boss

the final boss bothers me in general, there are very few things to do with him, there's no reward for blocking his attacks, his attacks are all heavy so you can't perfect parry him, can't do any interesting combos on him so damage comes down to mashing attack and blade mode plays no role in the fight outside of the scripted sequences
it's almost closer to dark souls than something like DMC with the roll/attack during openings thing, MGR is a good game but I wouldn't pretend it's something more than a button masher outside of sam's dlc
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qmish
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Re: Housemarque will no longer make arcade shooters

Post by qmish »

Though blade mode was helpful in some VR missions where was hard to survive unless you did blade mode while sliding. And what about Sam? Taunt/charge things?
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Re: Housemarque will no longer make arcade shooters

Post by Shepardus »

I like how Housemarque was apparently so forgettable that this thread has turned into a Platinum thread.
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Re: Housemarque will no longer make arcade shooters

Post by Bananamatic »

the thing with sam is that he has a seriously nerfed parry that you can't just mash to turn yourself into an iron wall and a way better dodge as a tradeoff
plus taunt and charge moves take a bit more skill to use than just smashing square and he does very little damage without those
not to mention raiden's ripper mode is literally just a cheap instakill mode that offers nothing interesting besides making the game easier
Shepardus wrote:I like how Housemarque was apparently so forgettable that this thread has turned into a Platinum thread.
I didn't even know who they were tbh
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Re: Housemarque will no longer make arcade shooters

Post by qmish »

I didn't use ripper mode (i actually forgot it) and i used to parry only once per each incoming attack so maingame was harder for me :x only when i went for dlc i had to spam parries, mainly cause to Sam's fight with Wolf where wolf attacks you every 2 seconds or something. And i mostly often didnt use taunt because i got hurt when i wanted to taunt, instead i just ignore it.
Housemarque
As said before, honestly for some reason "style" of their games is pretty "generic" or "forgettable overall, even if it's unfair to say. So most people dont even get interested in them despite hearing great words regarding gameplay.
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Re: Housemarque will no longer make arcade shooters

Post by mamboFoxtrot »

Okami's not a hard or skillful game by any stretch of the imagination, but mashing the attack button is generally inferior to spamming brush techniques up until, like, the last third of the game. And even then I think the Glave's charge attacks were better.
Honestly the cutscenes are way more tedious than any of the combat.
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Re: Housemarque will no longer make arcade shooters

Post by Zaarock »

Elixir wrote:Even then there's barely anyone running it in contrast to Cuphead full to the brim of speedrunners.
Why would people speedrun a shmup that reminds you to play for score every second and has strict time bonuses to begin with?
Oh yeah there's some ketsui & ddp runs out there too :lol:

Curious how nex is impossible to play through without much prior knowledge. Only thing I can think of is 1up locations, everything else is scoring bonuses.
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Re: Housemarque will no longer make arcade shooters

Post by Durandal »

Bananamatic wrote:the difference is that MGR ends right there, there isn't much advanced stuff or mechanics to have fun with once you go through the game a few times
what doesn't help MGR either is how many bosses or enemies in general are immune to perfect parries or are impossible to pull off against them, especially the final boss

the final boss bothers me in general, there are very few things to do with him, there's no reward for blocking his attacks, his attacks are all heavy so you can't perfect parry him, can't do any interesting combos on him so damage comes down to mashing attack and blade mode plays no role in the fight outside of the scripted sequences
it's almost closer to dark souls than something like DMC with the roll/attack during openings thing, MGR is a good game but I wouldn't pretend it's something more than a button masher outside of sam's dlc
I remember perfect parrying the Mistral body double which would OHKO her on Revengeance, however that only got me an A afterwards because I didn't meet the Kills requirement, as I was expected to farm her tripods a little to get an S instead of speedkilling her and being done with it. The ranking requirements are all over the place in MGR, for example if I wanted to meet the combo requirement on Armstrong (at least I think), I'd have to enable Ripper Mode and constantly slash him in Blade Mode while he was recovering from an attack so I could get around 100 hits in for minimal damage, since Ripper+Blade Mode consumes less energy than Blade Mode without Ripper on
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Re: Housemarque will no longer make arcade shooters

Post by Bananamatic »

Durandal wrote: I remember perfect parrying the Mistral body double which would OHKO her on Revengeance, however that only got me an A afterwards because I didn't meet the Kills requirement, as I was expected to farm her tripods a little to get an S instead of speedkilling her and being done with it. The ranking requirements are all over the place in MGR, for example if I wanted to meet the combo requirement on Armstrong (at least I think), I'd have to enable Ripper Mode and constantly slash him in Blade Mode while he was recovering from an attack so I could get around 100 hits in for minimal damage, since Ripper+Blade Mode consumes less energy than Blade Mode without Ripper on
fun fact, you can actually perfect parry monsoon if you force him against the wall, then the scripted dodge results in him just getting stuck and he gets hit normally, one shots him on revengeance too
rev mode in general was kinda shit since you could just luck your way through with a single pefect parry which aren't even that hard to get and the rankings didn't make sense either (especially the BP ones with picking up nanopaste you don't need)
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Re: Housemarque will no longer make arcade shooters

Post by Tim James »

Bananamatic wrote: the final boss bothers me in general, there are very few things to do with him, there's no reward for blocking his attacks, his attacks are all heavy so you can't perfect parry him, can't do any interesting combos on him so damage comes down to mashing attack and blade mode plays no role in the fight outside of the scripted sequences
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vgsp4oasfAY

Pretty spammy.
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Re: Housemarque will no longer make arcade shooters

Post by Bananamatic »

Tim James wrote:
Bananamatic wrote: the final boss bothers me in general, there are very few things to do with him, there's no reward for blocking his attacks, his attacks are all heavy so you can't perfect parry him, can't do any interesting combos on him so damage comes down to mashing attack and blade mode plays no role in the fight outside of the scripted sequences
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vgsp4oasfAY

Pretty spammy.
Literally the only thing going on there is that you can cancel out of attacks with blade mode(just tap the button once so like you said, you can and should spam it whenever you can) and cancel out of blade mode with the dodge move to speed things up, other than that it's just regular gameplay with no damage taken because you can't do any fun things in that fight
the only difficulty is using the dodge attack at the correct time, just like dark souls
except it looks cool

compare to what Sam can do, this ain't dark souls
notice how the enemies are way more interactive and have more going for them than the above boss as well, who is really just a dumb brick wall sitting there taking damage and sometimes attacking, which you can't even perfect parry, just dodge it or block it
just like dark souls bosses
boring
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Re: Housemarque will no longer make arcade shooters

Post by d0s »

Shepardus wrote:I like how Housemarque was apparently so forgettable that this thread has turned into a Platinum thread.
i'm sure there are dozens of euros crying while clutching their riced out amigas, but not on this forum
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Re: Housemarque will no longer make arcade shooters

Post by mamboFoxtrot »

I can't believe I played the entirety of Raiden's story in MGR without knowing that Perfect Parrying or Dodging was a thing, or remembering to ever use Ripper mode.
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qmish
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Re: Housemarque will no longer make arcade shooters

Post by qmish »

Ouch I played Senator fight like Dark Souls - waited when he strikes, evade, hit him once with defensive offense and run away, then repeat until those qte things

:lol:

As for "abilities" , I find mgr version of stinger (forward triangle triangle) satisfying
And blade wolf' rotating wheels in dlc
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Re: Housemarque will no longer make arcade shooters

Post by Bananamatic »

maybe a mod could split the platinum discussion into offtopic?
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Re: Housemarque will no longer make arcade shooters

Post by Despatche »

Durandal's writeup depends too much on two weak threads: that it's difficult to cater to people, and that such games are a dime a dozen. Neither of these are true at all. The problem with the first is that the people in this community worship "arcade standards" way too much and cannot even imagine something like "a game that doesn't have credits". Most basic thing in the world, would absolutely save this genre if it was researched. Suggest that and people flip the fuck out because they only want to see the completely wrong implications of it.

Credits outside of arcades, and the continue culture we have because of it, have done more harm to this genre than anything else in the world... yet the people who are supposed to care, you guys, seem to think that this is okay.

Just look at Durandal's suggestion buried in about the middle, it is flawless proof of exactly what I'm talking about. Too many people end up with that exact suggestion, even. It perpetuates the problem and insults everyone else who wants to play your game at the same time.

Love the dig at Raiden V, by the way. I bet you wrote it just for me.
Shepardus wrote:I like how Housemarque was apparently so forgettable that this thread has turned into a Platinum thread.
Right? It's fucking garbage. I'm not really surprised they bailed anymore. I mean look at this shit:
d0s wrote:i'm sure there are dozens of euros crying while clutching their riced out amigas, but not on this forum
The man does not even know who these people are other than that they're based in Europe (sort of), but he thinks he can be their judge and their executioner because of the euroshmup meme (that he clearly doesn't understand at all). But that's d0s, really. Every time he says something remotely reasonable, he follows it up with ten utterly fucked things. Every single time.

RIP Housemarque.

Also can we, like, "enshrine" HydrogLox or something? I have a shortlist of people who absolutely need some kind of super-elitist "you are better than every other member forever" badge/color and HydrogLox is on that list. "Power Users". snort
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Re: Housemarque will no longer make arcade shooters

Post by d0s »

Despatche wrote:meme
omg stop
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