I just recently reinstalled my linux, because Arch finally broke on me again (Probably due to forgetting to go to archlinux.org before doing updates, that's usually what does it, but even after reading what I needed to do before the update, I couldn't get it to work. At least I kept it going for quite a few years this time. Used to have to reinstall way more frequently). This time I chose Debian, which is pretty new to me, but my reasoning was that Debian is very stable, and I don't really care about having the bleeding edge of software, actually (not anymore, at least). My laptop is really old now, anyway, so it's probably for the best.
Anywho, since doing this, I installed a bunch of shitty open source shooters and played some of them casually, to see if any were worth playing more. Very few seemed any good at all. Some of the good standouts though were, unsurprisingly, Kenta Cho's games.
Val and Rick was especially surprisingly fun just given how weird it is. I will say that there's not much variety in enemy shots, though. It basically gets just more enemies. Most of them just do straightforward aimed shots, too, so I'm guessing once I figure out how to stream those with large numbers of enemies in play, it'll be pretty easy. Then again it might just get more and more enemies until it's literally impossible to dodge. I think there's some RNG in where enemies and scenery spawn, but I'm not totally sure. I also don't know if it's endless like some other Kenta Cho games (though I would guess it is, in which case there must be RNG as well).
Also, on the Kenta Cho front
Tumiki Fighters is the shit. I kind of already knew this, but it's probably my favorite shooter that is available in Debian's repositories. Well,
rRootage gives it a run for it's money of course, but that's a much different type of game. Tumiki Fighters actually has a set of stages and stuff. It's structured much more like an arcade game. But yeah, what a cool game conceptually, and also very fun! I think this one might not have any RNG in it, which is unusual for a Kenta Cho game.
Much further down the list,
Garden of Colored Lights is not half bad. This is designed by a guy named Linley Henzell, who seems to have also designed the predecessor game to the popular roguelike
Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup, which is interesting. He also did
White Butterfly, which is about as good, but a bit more straightforward (
Garden integrates the gameplay into the music. It's kind of trying to be a shmup version of Rez).
White Butterfly seems to be absent from Debian's software repositories. Both of these games are pretty brutal in difficulty, and seem to have too much enemy HP, but I think that's really the main flaw (well, also no bullet deadzone at the bottom of the screen even in the early stages, I don't think). Still,
somebody has cleared it, and on a higher difficulty no less, so that's good to know. I don't know if I'll pursue it beyond casual credits, though.
Geki 3 (haven't tried Geki 2, and didn't see a Geki 1) is also pretty fun. This one has a lifebar, but you do actually get a good amount of feedback for being hit. It does suffer from some really bad Gradius syndrome, though. The first boss takes like a year if you're at low shot power. You do lose shot power when hit, as well. The first and second stages were both pretty easy at high shot power, IIRC, but I powered down too much before the boss, so haven't made stage 3 yet. The one really fatal flaw is that it has no fullscreen mode, though. Who the hell designs a 640x480 game with no fullscreen mode!? I suppose it could be pretty old though, I really don't know when it was written. Also, apparently someone at least started working on
porting it to dreamcast at some point. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be a straightforward cdi file, so I don't really know how to get it to run. You might need writable storage and a dev kit (Though it is probably the homebrew dev kit).
Additionally, I do have the steamless version of
Blue Revolver for linux (Haven't installed steam yet). This game is pretty sweet. No question about it. I could see getting serious with it eventually. My version is still pretty old and has the no enemy collisions with popcorns bug, which I'm guessing has been fixed by now, but I probably like it better this way, anyway.
Apart from PC shmups, I also had the opportunity to play
Valkyrius with a P2 not long ago, and it was pretty fun. My P2 went through all of his continues before I died once, so I didn't even have to continue
![Razz :P](./images/smilies/icon_razz.gif)
. Pretty solid two player, and also just a really excellent game. One of my favorite--if not my actual favorite--commercial indie shmups, for sure.
Also dusted off the Dreamcast for a little Mars Matrix action as I do every now and then. Actually managed to get the clear on my second or third try, which was pretty cool
![Cool 8)](./images/smilies/icon_cool.gif)
. I don't actually usually get the clear when I play. Wasn't even too bad of a run. I think I got around 3.3 million exp, maybe? Can't remember the actual score. Maybe 1.4 trillion or something...? It's certainly no where near my best (1.9 trillion, if anyone's wondering
![Cool 8)](./images/smilies/icon_cool.gif)
) Too many chain breaks in stage 4, but I think I no missed the stage 4 and 5 bosses, which is pretty amazing given how long it's been since I played.
Sorry for the wordiness, but I haven't posted here in like a year. Happy New Years, everyone
![Mr. Green :mrgreen:](./images/smilies/icon_mrgreen.gif)