shienryu explosion review

professor ganson · Post by **professor ganson** » Tue Mar 15, 2005 1:19 am

Bloodflowers review (accessible on the main page) has me very interested in this title. I just acquired the ability to play import PS1 and PS2 games, and so far my focus has been entirely on PS1 games. My question is: As I turn my interests toward PS2 imports, how does shienryu explosion rank compared to other available titles? (I already have everything you can get for the US PS2.)

Since shienryu explosion is relatively inexpensive and I have a real nostalgia for the first game (it was my very first game for the Saturn), I'm sure to get it someday. But are there other titles that should obviously take priority?

sven666 · Post by **sven666** » Tue Mar 15, 2005 1:33 am

what bloodflowers for some reason left out is that the game is VERY easy, i have the jap version and 1lifed the damn thing second time i played it (i do bareley count as an average player), and if the US/EU release is even easier.. gaah..

but its a good blast for you (few) bucks, also since you basically get two very different (and both are good too) shooters for the price of one its a win win situation

Ganelon · Post by **Ganelon** » Tue Mar 15, 2005 1:40 am

Well, there is no US version so you can forget about that.

Anyway, you might wanna pick up DDP:DOJ and Espgaluda first if you're into Cave since they're pretty much the most well known best arcade-to-home ports.

CMoon · Post by **CMoon** » Tue Mar 15, 2005 1:51 am

This along with a number of other reviews of late keep bringing to head how much I hate numeric rating systems because they quickly become worthless. Explosions gets a 7? What does that mean? Although Explosions isn't outright horrible, I found it quickly forgettable despite some novelties. Now there's no problem with giving it a 7, and anyone who reads the review is going to know what that means, but almost everything on shmups.com now has a 7, 8 or 9 with one or two 10s and 6s. It would be nice before more reviews got put up if reviewers were given an objective scale. For one, if nothing is going to get a review below 5, then go to a 5 point scale.

When I was reviewing for zines I always used the following:

5 - Absolutely indespensible, genre defining.
4 - damn solid, flawless, exceptional in every way (note how this is different than 5)
3 - A great album (game) with only minor flaws. Thorougly enjoyable.
2 - A good album (game) severly limited in some way by flaws.
1 - A poor album (game).

Although opinions will vary, no one is going to give Explosions a 5 or 4, and probably not even a 3. I think most would see that it is a 2 (but not a 1). This sort of scale is so easy to use and removes a lot of the fluff in a ten point scale where one persons 9 is another persons 6.

And of course the result we'd get is a lot of 3's, a few less 4's and 2's, and a couple 1's and 5's. Why would that be better? I'd know what the damn scores mean!

raiden · Post by **raiden** » Tue Mar 15, 2005 2:02 am

nice info on the scoring system in that review. I didn´t bother to play the game more than maybe an hour, so I never figured out the way the stars work.

I think this is an orphaned game. I believe it was probably a Naomi title intented for arcades when it was first developed, and that for whatever reason it was cancelled. I think they then decided to release it as a DC title, but again cancelled the plans

Shienryu 2, which was announced for DC at some point, was a completely different game. I saw a few screenshots back then, and it was bitmap graphic in tate format, with very colorful, big weapons it looked a lot like modern Cave games.

Post by **system11** » Tue Mar 15, 2005 2:32 am

raiden: Do you happen to have any link to the Shienryu 2 pictures? I'm wondering if it looks anything like Sengeki Striker.. Of course I can fix the review, if something is wrong, it's wrong. It /does/ look strangely Naomi/DC though. I mailed Warashi to ask them this (and thank them) and got nothing whatsoever in reply. Not unexpected.

ganelon: There are some strange things afoot then - I found an -american- review of Steel Dragon EX. An unusual choice of import. Will fix this too.

Cmoon: I gave the game a 7 because I couldn't honestly give it more. I would have liked to have done, it's really not very easy on hard mode for the average player (hardcore players will complain it's too easy - they always do with anything not punitively difficult, please change the record). The reason I marked it down was for those people, and due to the unfinished feel. Aside from those points everything in the game is of good quality, and -I- found it to be very enjoyable. The analogue fire stuff in particular really makes the game, and it's a perfect intro to the modern style of shmups.

This is how reviews work, it's based on the opinion of the game that the reviewer has, stacked up with their experience of similar titles. There's not going to be many people here who have played /or/ owned as many shmups as me (spanning the years from the good old days of Galaxian, through the mass of home consoles and computers, and up to new PCBs and an entire arcade in the garage), and I personally rate it a 7. If you only compare it to doujin shmups then it would probably hit 9, if you only compare it to games from the Cave/Psikyo/Seibu triad, it doesn't fare so well (pretend Sol Divide doesn't exist

. You'll always see a skew on the shmups reviews, because the people reviewing them care enough about them to actually bother - totally unlike a full time reviewer, who checks out what's handed to them, or what they have to seek out to give full coverage.

Post by **Shatterhand** » Tue Mar 15, 2005 2:34 am

Well

http://www.classicgaming.com/shmups/rev ... index.html
http://www.classicgaming.com/shmups/rev ... index.html

Both reviews are mine

Starblazer which I also reviewed got a 6 if I remember correctly. But for some reason, the review was lost or something when coming to the new version of shmups.

THe problem is that many people rate average games as 7. If average games are 7,what is 5? And then ,what would be 3?

An average game has to be 5, not 7. Then this kind of rating would work. I personally would prefer to rate game between 00% and 100% , like my old fav amiga mag The One, but I know many people find hard to see the diference between an 82% and an 83%

The other problem is that most people only review games that they like. I prefer to review bad games, I find a lot easier to bash than to praise a game

.

Post by **system11** » Tue Mar 15, 2005 2:54 am

Hehe - the temptation really is to do a review of Gaia Seed. It's thoroughly deserving of a 4 - and is significantly easier than Shienryu Explosion

However, since I don't like it that much, I find it hard to gather the enthusiasm.

My next review (for I decided to actually stop being lazy) is likely to be Imperishable Night.

Ganelon · Post by **Ganelon** » Tue Mar 15, 2005 2:57 am

Aww, I've always wanted to hear more about Gaia Seed...is the music better than Border Down?

raiden · Post by **raiden** » Tue Mar 15, 2005 3:02 am

raiden: Do you happen to have any link to the Shienryu 2 pictures? I'm wondering if it looks anything like Sengeki Striker..

sorry, I don´t have any links, I wish I would have saved those pictures, but back then I didn´t even have a computer of my own, and of course I believed the game would be released, so I didn´t see any need to save them.
I´ve also been wondering whether that might have been Sengeki Striker, since your review mentioned it, and pictures of it do look similar, but they don´t look "spot on". I´m not sure, really.

Thunder Force · Post by **Thunder Force** » Tue Mar 15, 2005 3:50 am

CMoon wrote:This along with a number of other reviews of late keep bringing to head how much I hate numeric rating systems because they quickly become worthless. Explosions gets a 7? What does that mean? Although Explosions isn't outright horrible, I found it quickly forgettable despite some novelties. Now there's no problem with giving it a 7, and anyone who reads the review is going to know what that means, but almost everything on shmups.com now has a 7, 8 or 9 with one or two 10s and 6s. It would be nice before more reviews got put up if reviewers were given an objective scale. For one, if nothing is going to get a review below 5, then go to a 5 point scale.

The fact that almost nothing reviewed on shmups.com gets a 5 just means that most shmups have at least some redeeming qualities, and people usually can't be bothered to review the few truly crap ones. Rest assured if Retro Force or Planet Joker ever got reviewed you'd probably see low numbers.

Arguing about review scores is really pointless anyway. Our values differ. Reviews are always purely informational, and are only judgmental in a personal sense to the author. Money-hungry websites and magazines pretend it's not this way, but only kids swallow that line. A DDP:DOJ fan may give Power Strike II a 3, while an old school fan might give it a 9. The description of the game is the only real purpose to the reviews, not the score.

And taking averages of review scores (metacritic, gamerankings) is equally flawed as they only tell you how popular certain journalistic trends are in the industry at the time, and nothing about the timeless value of a game.

Bloodflowers' review was informative, therefore it was good.

Ganelon · Post by **Ganelon** » Tue Mar 15, 2005 3:55 am

So basically, the scores ought to be ignored. Because you can't express the quality of a game with just a number. It also makes it so people don't tend to read the review itself and just concentrate on the score. I'm surprised Shmups still uses a numbered score system considering its reviews have always been about informative analysis rather than holistic judgment.

Dylan1CC · Post by **Dylan1CC** » Tue Mar 15, 2005 4:06 am

Just wanted to say good review, bloodflowers. It was nice to finally see what this game looked like and how it played (too bad it's not much like the 1st). I remember hearing rumours about the "Dreamcast sequel to Shienryu" waaaay back ont he old spam infested Shmups bb years ago.

Post by **Ghegs** » Tue Mar 15, 2005 7:02 am

Ganelon wrote:Aww, I've always wanted to hear more about Gaia Seed...is the music better than Border Down?

Can't say if it's better as I haven't heard BD's music, but I do like Gaia Seed's soundtrack.

I'd probably give the game a 5 or a 6 on a 1-10 scale. Or a 2 on CMoon's scale.

I started writing a review for a PCE shmup (W-Ring), but didn't get too far...maybe I should try to finish that first.

CMoon · Post by **CMoon** » Tue Mar 15, 2005 6:07 pm

Thunder Force wrote: The fact that almost nothing reviewed on shmups.com gets a 5 just means that most shmups have at least some redeeming qualities, and people usually can't be bothered to review the few truly crap ones.

I'm gonna stop talking about my '5 point scale' (isn't like I invented it anyway), but this is precisely what I love about it. Basically 2-5 are all good scores (how many flavors of suck do you need anyway). Here the difference between 2-4 isn't how much you enjoyed the game but things like originality, execution, etc. And of course 5 is for those bright, bright burning stars that guide us in understanding all other entries in the genre (that said, I hate how everyone on gamefaqs gives everything a 10 or a 1--talk about a useless scale.)

Anyway, it is a nice review for explosions, I just wouldn't have given it such a high grade since I overall found it boring--but that's where opinions come in (case in point--I really like GunFrontier...)

postman · Post by **postman** » Tue Mar 15, 2005 7:21 pm

Just a quick question: when was Sheinryu Explosion released? And there have only been Jap and Pal versions, correct?

Rummy Bunnz · Post by **Rummy Bunnz** » Tue Mar 15, 2005 7:47 pm

Thunder Force wrote:The description of the game is the only real purpose to the reviews, not the score.

Why bother having a score at all then?

alpha5099 · Post by **alpha5099** » Tue Mar 15, 2005 10:11 pm

CMoon wrote: I'm gonna stop talking about my '5 point scale' (isn't like I invented it anyway), but this is precisely what I love about it. Basically 2-5 are all good scores (how many flavors of suck do you need anyway). Here the difference between 2-4 isn't how much you enjoyed the game but things like originality, execution, etc. And of course 5 is for those bright, bright burning stars that guide us in understanding all other entries in the genre (that said, I hate how everyone on gamefaqs gives everything a 10 or a 1--talk about a useless scale.)

Even 5s don't necessarily reflect the reviewer's feelings of the games. It'd be quite difficult not to give DoDonPachi and Ikaruga 5s, they are certainly sterling examples of the genre done right that have been hugely influential. But I wouldn't give either a 10 due to personal feelings toward each.

Frankly, I think your scale is far superior to the far more subjective scales employed by most everywhere else. Not that your scale is objective, but it certainly isn't quite as based on the reviewer's whim as other scales. But it really wouldn't be practical to start a new scale, all the old scores would have to be retweaked. And you couldn't just change all 9s and 10s to 5s, you'd have to contact the reviewer to get their input on the 5 point scale.

CMoon · Post by **CMoon** » Tue Mar 15, 2005 11:33 pm

CMoon wrote: I'm gonna stop talking about my '5 point scale'

SHIT!!!

alpha5099 wrote:
Even 5s don't necessarily reflect the reviewer's feelings of the games. It'd be quite difficult not to give DoDonPachi and Ikaruga 5s, they are certainly sterling examples of the genre done right that have been hugely influential. But I wouldn't give either a 10 due to personal feelings toward each.

YES! This is exactly how I felt when reviewing lots of albums, and games aren't any different. If you ever read the old rolingstone guide reviews, you could always count on 4 star albums, but 5 stars were sometimes steril and disinteresting.

RSG and Ikaruga are definitely 5s, but how often do I really play them anymore? Are they as much fun as Garegga or Raiden? Same for DoDonpachi! If I want manic cave, I like some other Cave games better, and you know my preference for Donpachi, which might only get a 4! (especially given how many people dislike it here.) Hell, I'm surprised the uprising popularity Batsugun has, I remember a point the game got regularly dissed!

Oh hell, so anyway, I got so used to using that rating system that I got fed up with all the rediculous 10/10 crap on game faqs or whatever. I think the education system has it right now with rubrics. We're still going to be subjective, but make at least some aspect of the whole thing objective so when someone says 'why's it getting a 3' you can say exactly why and move on.

And most people can do that with their ratings now anyway, so I'm not trying to be a shithead. I just offer this all as a suggestion...

AND NOW, I will shut up!

Ganelon · Post by **Ganelon** » Wed Mar 16, 2005 12:09 am

Um, are the numbers supposed to rate how influential a game was or how much the reviewer enjoyed it? I'd probably give Resident Evil something like a 2/10 because I hate the game, atmosphere, and crappy controls. Based purely on influence, I'd have to give it a 10/10 for creating a genre.

Anyway, based purely on influence, I don't see how Ikaruga garners a 5/5 either since its only proteges have been a couple of doujin shooters that operate practically the same way.

I'd personally give each score a roughly equal piece of the scoring pie. I've always found it dumb when people attribute a 10/10 as an idealized perfect game that they'll never award since they'll never come across a game so amazing that everyone completely loves it. Some people here it seems prefer bell curves, which is also fine I guess but limits the truly great and poor games to a select few.

I also don't see why a 2/5 should be good since that would mean the scores have no negative regression. All bad shooters will get a 1/5, whether it be spectacularly crappy like Legion or quite crappy like Choaniki.

Post by **system11** » Wed Mar 16, 2005 12:42 am

10/10. I don't have a problem awarding that score, it's saying "this game has no flaws, or no minor ones that drag it down from being absolutely wonderful".

Percentage scores though, are the work of the devil. What's 85%? What's 86%? 100%? That's on a level of unattainability that 10/10 doesn't live on.

I'm actually writing a review of another game now, and I'm finding it hard to award it anything other than a 10/10. I'm sure that will upset a few people too

As for 1/10 - I can't offhand think of a shmup that was so utterly dire that it could earn that allocade, although there are probably a few from the 8-bit era that my mind has selectively forgotten to protect itself from the horror.

nullstar · Post by **nullstar** » Wed Mar 16, 2005 1:38 am

alpha5099 wrote:Even 5s don't necessarily reflect the reviewer's feelings of the games. It'd be quite difficult not to give DoDonPachi and Ikaruga 5s, they are certainly sterling examples of the genre done right that have been hugely influential. But I wouldn't give either a 10 due to personal feelings toward each.

Which I think is why Malc encourages multiple reviews of games -- though I agree two people being "objective" are going to probably cover the same content before ultimately rating things differently...which comes back to why rating things on intangibles and/or aesthetics doesn't make much sense separate from large numbers of people.

CMoon wrote:I'm gonna stop talking about my '5 point scale' (isn't like I invented it anyway), but this is precisely what I love about it. Basically 2-5 are all good scores (how many flavors of suck do you need anyway).

I actually use a similar scale for all the crap iTunes now worries about for me -- * = teh suck; ** = neutral/don't care for (but don't hate); *** = good/I like; **** = exceptionally good/I really like; ***** = not worth living without. And I'm sure no one else would rate things the same way across my entire collection...

thesuperkillerxxx · Post by **thesuperkillerxxx** » Wed Mar 16, 2005 4:53 am

I think that RSG and Ikaruga are well crafted games, and on that I would give them a 5/5, but would not give it a ten of ten. 10/10 reviews need to be taken with a grain of salt, as they ALWAYS have personal opinion factored in. 5/5 seems more utilitarian, basic, 3 yeah not to bad. But how would you rate it on a 10/10? 5? 6? 7? To much ambiguity. I also subscribe to the theory that a game wouldn't get reviewed if the reviewer didn't care enough.

professor ganson · Post by **professor ganson** » Fri Mar 18, 2005 3:24 am

thesuperkillerxxx wrote:I think that RSG and Ikaruga are well crafted games, and on that I would give them a 5/5, but would not give it a ten of ten. 10/10 reviews need to be taken with a grain of salt, as they ALWAYS have personal opinion factored in.

I agree with your point that RSG should get a 5/5 and a 9/10. As I recall, James Mielke gave RSG 9/10 when he worked for Gamespot, even though he seemed to think of it as genre defining.

I wonder, though, about the suggestion that a 10/10 must be taken with a grain of salt because personal opinion always plays a role. Surely there are some games out there, as Bloodflowers puts it above, that just have no significant flaws and completely kick ass.
(I wish that I knew how to quote multiple entries! I'd appreciate it if someone could explain this to me; I know it's lame but the few things I've tried didn't work.)
I wonder what shmups deserve a 10/10? At the moment I'm thinking Dodonpachi perhaps. This might make for an interesting thread by itself.

UnscathedFlyingObject · Fri Mar 18, 2005 3:50 am

I've read what I think are horribly biased reviews on Shmups a lot. There's too many 10 and 9's that are not really worth it, and have misled me to get games that I have quickly sold. People should be objective in their reviews and avoid their fanboy-ism, nostalgia, or other forms of bias outside the review. For example, if I was to review Gradius Gaiden, I wouldn't give it more than a 8 because I think the beginning parts of each level can feel bland after a while.

So it doesn't matter to me what scale we use as long as we are not flooded with reviews handing 9 and 10's like they were free.

Post by **Ghegs** » Fri Mar 18, 2005 7:15 am

UnscathedFlyingObject wrote:People should be objective in their reviews and avoid their fanboy-ism, nostalgia, or other forms of bias outside the review.

How's that possible?

"This is Ikaruga. You can switch from black to white and absorb bullets of opposite color. There is music. There are sounds. There's level design, too. Oh, and gameplay. Can't forget about the gameplay."

That's not a review, that's a fact sheet. If a reviewer can't say whether the music, sounds, level design, gameplay etc. are actually good or bad (since that's all subjective), he can't say anything useful at all.

Because that's what reviews are. Opinions. And opinions are subjective.

Fanboyism and that stuff should be avoided, yes, and try to look at the game for what it is.

Thunder Force · Post by **Thunder Force** » Fri Mar 18, 2005 8:04 am

Ghegs wrote:
UnscathedFlyingObject wrote:People should be objective in their reviews and avoid their fanboy-ism, nostalgia, or other forms of bias outside the review.
How's that possible?

"This is Ikaruga. You can switch from black to white and absorb bullets of opposite color. There is music. There are sounds. There's level design, too. Oh, and gameplay. Can't forget about the gameplay."

That's not a review, that's a fact sheet. If a reviewer can't say whether the music, sounds, level design, gameplay etc. are actually good or bad (since that's all subjective), he can't say anything useful at all.

Because that's what reviews are. Opinions.

No that's not entirely true. That's perhaps true of modern reviews.

A videogame review has always been comprised of two things: Information + Personal Views.

Historically in the high-quality UK-based reviews of the 1980s, the proportion of these two elements was something like 80% Information, 20% Personal Views. Traditional videogame reviews basically described what the player could expect when playing the game, and then it was up to the player to make a value judgment on whether they were likely to enjoy that or not. (Biased 1st party publications like Nintendo Power excluded.) The conduct of most journalists when giving overall scores was to only be critical of technical flaws in a game, not creative decisions taken by a game (since some people may like such creative decisions even if the journalist didn't).

Eventually this shifted, reviews started to become longer and became dominated by the personal feelings of the author, whether they were relevant to the reader or not.

Comments about music are a good example of the difference that sets apart a good game journalist. If a review describes game music as "being in the style of Braveheart", then that's a proper review of the music in the game (assuming it is a reasonably accurate statement). The reader now has enough information to decide if he/she is likely to like the music in the game. However if the reviewer writes "this game has terrible music, that tries to be epic but fails" that is an example of a new era reviewer who has polluted the review with a statement that is meaningless to anyone but himself since music is hopelessly subjective.

Of course, I picked an easy music example above to illustrate my point. But it's not always so simple. How do you describe an arbitrary piece of electronic music in a review? Not easy. In the old days they could describe how realistic the drums sounded, but now it's all digital so... it's OK to be vague and subjective about the music if necessary as long as the reviewer leaves room for the reader to decide for themselves upon hearing it. The same is true of art, storyline, and many other aspects of a game.