ikarugakomatik wrote:I guess..... my problem with most shmups is that they all seem ultimately based around the spray-and-pray design where the tactic for basically everything is to hold/mash the shoot button. It's like before when I mentioned Mario. What do you do in Mario when you come to a new area? "Jump over the pits and jump on the bad guys' heads." It's always the same answer no matter what, there's nothing to figure out. I'm looking for a game that mixes it up a little or has some kind of nominal puzzle to it.
quarth
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Your sentiments really remind me of a few threads we had a while back.
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Hibou wrote:For me, euroshmups are most of all a kind of gaming spirit. In fact, all the specificies of euroshmups come from what pedant people would call a "cultural thing".
The real point is that somehow, a shmup is mostly a game where you shoot things and dodge bullets.
This definition is far too vulgar for any european mind. I mean, no real european man can enjoy a simple thing like that AND keep looking into a mirror with some respect for himself. Because it's a definition that makes the game a matter of agility, and not of intelligence and strategy. And this, for a genuine european mind, is the most despicable thing of all.
So euroshmups are a (missed) attempt to level-up the intellectual interest of the genre. So to say, a desperate attempt to turn poker into chess.
This was achieved by adding to shmups the most possible unexpected elements, and basically three ways were used to do this:
- adding difficulties to destroy ennemies (limited ammo, weapon management, etc...)
- adding difficulties to control the ship (ship control taking care of gravity or inertia, etc...)
- adding difficulties in the level design and gameplay (traps and everything that requires a complete anti-natural behavior)
So euroshmups are basically games that tend to give the bigger possible malus to players who rely on skill. They usually are insanely difficult and frustrating for who tries to beat the game by playing it like an action game.
Euroshmups are NOT fun for any normal member of the human kind. But in the end, if you're really looking for a definition, they have only two real caracteritics:
1. They try to fight for some artistic value by being original and prettily drawn.
2. They are designed so anyone who's not a chess grandmaster will not pass level 2.
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qmish wrote:I posted it before, but it suits this thread better...
So, there was a relatively big forum where i'm a frequenter and of course there was a thread about shmups. And after some discussions there i gathered data of what "usual gamers" want from shmups:
- prefer health bar instead of life count
- hate being pushed back to checkpoint or level start when you die
- hate starting game from beginning when loose all lives
- would love to have something that will make game more diverse for multiple walkthrough (different routes like OutRun/Darius, or even randomised patterns/levels every time) because it's boring and shitty for them playing the same game over and over trying to learn patterns over and over (and NOPE, they dont give a thing about your complex scoring)
- disagree that game over is game over unless it's permadeath roguelike (double standards?)
- would like to save at every level/start playing from any level
- they honestly think that you, guys, who spend 10,20,50,100+ hours in shmup and then can sit and virtuosly 1CC game are insane/out of mind/have too much time to kill
- wanna have long single player campaign with different levels and everything (and big NOPE to loops, of course)
- demand weapon system like in fps/tps instead of power ups
- constantly whine about lack of A.I. of enemies in shmups
- say that game should have both "mode for normal people" and "for those crazy 1cc guys"
The thing is that it wasn't a forum of you average Uncharted 5: Call of Infamous fans. No, that was damn freaking forum of old-gamers. Though, mainly PC oldgamers. They play Jagged Alliance 2, X-Com: Ufo Defense, Planescape Torment, Doom 1-2 on Ultraviolence (or sometimes at Nightmare), Blood, Warcraft II, Fallout, Carmageddon, Hexen etc. So you can't just go out and call them a bunch of "modern casuals". Yet they criticize shmups for many things and consider them having "simplistic and foolish game design" (if i m not imaginating things) and , yes, that "lack of content" problem.
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qmish wrote:On a 2nd thought - yeah, too bad this idea was buried into debate whether author was a troll or not
edit:
Some occasional finds.
You could go one further than those traditional composites, and have a creative SHMUP by having an organism that shoots a specially chosen projectile at biomatter to alter it into another form, or have the player character be immobile in a traditional sense, but be able to move by shooting a spore, which becomes a new incarnation of the player character.This is where they take what appears to be `the genre formula` and basically do exactly the same thing without going outside of the box. That means, boring enemies which fly in a sequence following a preset animation path and shooting hot little bullets in the direction of the player, then flying off-screen. I mean.... almost every one of them does that the same way, with no other significant AI, and it's just really boring. That's the part of it that I find to have been done to the death, and if that's all people are bringing to the table then that does make it seem like the genre is totally used-up. But that's only because people are not innovating enough.I really wish someone would do something original with a shootemup, but unfortunately what I mostly see are really boring movement patterns, predictable waves, end of level boss, various weapons bla bla bla... a bit kind of formulaic. And often the `spaceship` is just not as engaging as, say, a `character` in a platform game. So maybe they tend to be a bit cold and dull and harder to relate to? Plus they're really a super-solo experience most of the time and things have become a lot more social in gaming in general so they maybe represent a genre frozen in time that hasn't moved on very well. Anyone agree?just making some alien sprites move along a pre-designated path is not engaging. It's way too much `on rails`. I think maybe that's why platform games have survived better, because they offer puzzle elements and interactions with enemies that have some kind of AI behavior, and stuff happens much more dynamically and unexpectedly which keeps it interesting.I think it would be neat to have annual arcade-challenge development competitions for [game development] students. Thinking about what makes a good arcade game is a fun mental exercise. It's also a segment of the industry that saw a lot more stability and refinement over the years. (being one of the first large-scale applications of game design)Gaming has become a lot more social and most shmups are still single-player reflex games. You'd be hard pressed to find many 2-play or multi-player shmups at all. I can barely think of any. So they've sort of stayed in a box of isolation, and this is partly also why almost every shmup people make still stays heavily confined in a box that copies everything that was done alreadyEnemies are basically brainless moving in simple patterns rarely reacting to the players presence. The same can be said of most platform games (and heck many games from other genres for that matter) but the difference is the player has more choices available. You can jump, perhaps climb, you may do a close combat attack (even if just jumping on an enemy's head) or a range attack, you can often jump and/or duck to avoid being hit and so forth. Compared to shmups platformers offer a huge amount of choices. A greater number of ways to interact with the game world.Nearly all of them [enemies] float across the screen in fixed patterns often completely unaware of the player. One may come out, move 1/4 of the way across the screen stop and fire twice then continue on. Another may do the stop and fire pattern every 1/3 of the screen it moves. Another may move across in a straight line firing every 2 seconds. Another comes out in a wave pattern and so forth.It's from hereSend out some mindless pattern based enemies. That is fine. But then send out some intelligent enemies. Give enemies roles. Maybe you catch up to an enemy that is flying back and forth collecting power cells. It has a purpose. Then give it some guards. 4 to 5 heavily shielded enemies that fly around behind it engaging you while also trying to take everything you are throwing out. If that gatherer enemy collects 10 cells it flies off screen. It got away. At another point maybe you find a couple friendly ships that are attacking an enemy base and taking heavy damage. You need to defend them and help destroy that base. Stuff like that. Then focus on the interaction. Give the player a shield button in addition to the fire button. Give them a certain amount of energy that takes a bit of time to replenish. It is a choice. Attack or shield. Add more interaction to the game. If shield is on and you collide with an enemy you send it flying back across the screen if it collides with an enemy (or two or three) they all explode. Maybe the player can send out some kind of mines that attach to enemy ships and explode also taking out any enemies that are very close to that one.
https://forum.unity3d.com/threads/where ... ps.239566/
game dev forum, basically. 80% of thread is "stgs are all the same complaint" + 10% "nah its arcade and deal with it" + 10% of some actual ideas formulated (i bolded what i found more interesting).
Praising Super Metroid for its lock-and-key design is missing the point, by the way. One of the things I disliked about Zero Mission was the way they took several paths accessible via mere bombing in the original and blocked them off with blocks that required the speed booster. (Yes, they put in hidden paths allowing you to circumvent these blocks for the most part, but it's still annoying.)
EDIT: You might like Yars' Revenge as well. Yes, the Atari game.
EDIT 2: In a similar vein, Defender. The Atari 8-bit computer port is the best one, though I'm told Dropzone on the same hardware does the gameplay more justice.