Shmup Ticker: What are you playing RIGHT NOW?

[XoPachi]

I played the demo for that new Tatsujin game coming out. It was a surprisingly good bit of fun. I'm not terribly versed in the original 2 Tatsujin games, but Extreme at least feels and plays like a quality, genuine classic game. The visuals have that look I associate with "mediocre retro throwback" or bad remakes but it thankfully did not live up to that. When you get fully kitted out, it starts to remind me of caravan games which is a lot of fun. The music also grew on me as I wasn't feeling it at first.

Story mode seems to just be the same as the game's easy difficulty but it just has these animated comics (which is kinda neat). Arcade mode feels very old school minus the new EX feature which is a nice way to kill things quicker in a game with an a full 16:9 aspect ratio. You aren't spending a ton of time on one husky enemy on one side of the screen. You're moving around a decent bit. It also seems like items are a bit more generous although checkpointing is a little weird as they put you back to item caches but you often cannot hit some of them when you spawn. You keep your full weapon power too but I'm not sure if there's a limit on this, like if you die repeatedly, you drop in power. You do lose speed though.

The options menu sucks though. Like really bad. You can change music volume and sound volume. And that is it. You set your resolution and language when you launch the game. Options are not even accessible in the main menu. You have to be in game to access it. Maybe it's just a weird demo choice and the full release with have it on the main screen with far more robust selection of settings. But I don't think I've seen that before so I hope it is just a demo oddity.

Not that my opinion has weight, but it left a very good impression on me and I'll be picking it up when it releases.

[Jack Emerson]

Playing the progear DLC for DariusBurst. Lots of fun. If you like progear and you like Darius, you will like this. It was a little confusing to me as too what is included. But you get the progear ship and a set of 3 new missions (CSMode style). And you can play the ship in other DLC stages. I counted 40 missions that were available to play this ship on immediate install.

[LordHypnos]

Been playing a lot of Fast Striker lately. I never quite got to the point of 1ccing it when I played it way back in 2015. I've also improved my high score by a lot, like 2 trillion points, but haven't practiced the last two stages much. Also my Dreamcast is acting up (hopefully just the video cable, I think I'm missing the blue channel, currently awaiting a replacement).

In addition to that, I'm playing Monolith, which I'm quite enjoying, though I've got a few annoyances. Mostly just the fact that it's still very aiming-focused, even if it's less aiming-focused than perhaps some games are. Also I feel like sometimes you get a room that just doesn't have enough space to dodge enemy patterns. I also dislike the tendency for certain bosses and mini-bosses to try to ram you, it feels like you have to move away from it perfectly to avoid getting hit, because they are basically moving the same speed as you. Overall, though, it's a very fun game. Controlling the ship with the left analog stick (because the X360 d-pad is absolutely atrocious) is surprisingly precise, though it might still be better with a d-pad. I would say that I wish that the d-pad on my Hori Gem Pad wasn't wrecked, but the game doesn't seem to register that controller anyway.

Aside from those, I was playing a lot of Radirgy for a while, but I think the weapons system is just a bit too complicated for me. Still a very fun game. I've thrown in a few credits of Neko Navy as well, which actually has a somewhat similar scoring system to Radirgy.

[Stevens]

What up Hyp!

Good to see you round again. No shooters lately for me - knee deep in the Lies of P DLC, but I am really looking forward to Earthion.

[DarkSlayer]

Good shmups that can communicate a story without needing much in the way of words are a rarity. I think the cinematics in Rolling Gunner are also really good at that. The ending sequence in particular is amazing.

I don't mind text either though; Drainus is a great game whose story mode has a fair bit of dialogue, but it and Giga Wing aren't too bad as they're one button to skip. If I have to mash through text or hold a button for a period of time it's a bit tedious to replay (holding Ctrl to skip text in Touhou isn't as graceful as just a button to skip the text, though using the text as a chance to take a quick break can be nice too).

I also like how in Giga Wing's airport stage, right before the boss, they took the time to draw an elaborate and detailed city background, only to blow it up and have it redrawn as a smoking crater, just to really piss you off and emphasize what you're fighting against. You don't even see the background in the boss fight or much beforehand, you're in the clouds once you're at the boss, so they drew two entire backgrounds just for one dramatic cutscene.

Yes rolling gunner is definitely a good one for visual storytelling. Not a shmup, but I love Rez for the same reason, you feel like you have traveled a journey. A psydellic and physical journey!


Terra diver is another good one, must be something about the pseudo 3D games like RayForce/TerraDiver. that gets the devs thinking along these lines and outside the box in terms of stage design/story telling

Apart from devil blade, what are some other recent Shmups that do this well?

O yer, I have been playing more Gunvein recently. Some of the most mesmerising patterns in a Shmup yet

[Faith]

I think I have a problem.

Just reached over 500 hours played in Crimzon Clover.

I cannot let go of Arcade Unlimited. It is like... I have fallen in love with my torturer.

Just got my 10th 1CC for this mode today, been trying to adjust my route a bit to make it more marathon safe, haha.

This mode will never be marathon safe.

Really think only the top god tier players of this game can just start a run and guarantee a 1CC.

You know sometimes in STG's when you die one time... then it just becomes an avalanche of cascading deaths. This is one game where it happens to me the most.

Just one miss derails the whole route and makes recovery a challenge.

In the middle of this chaos, I just started playing Kaikan! Super recommended, it is quite silly but the graphics and music are both great.

I think I will start Like Dreamer soon too.

Need something a little bit... less serious... to relax.

To me, Crimzon Clover is a very serious game: very precise, very sharp, very purpose-built; and with a very tight, very specific, and very intense vision.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

I'm really close to an Espgaluda 2 clear. It's one I found maddeningly hard compared to the far more tame original. I'm getting a lot better at it but I still have to be very focused to clear is as the difficulty is much more like Mushi Maniac than Mushi Original would be. Stage 5's popcorn enemies in the horizontal scrolling sections somehow always get me and I have to be willing to just bomb them outright.

[XoPachi]

Playing Alltynex Second finally. Don't know why I didn't play this sooner, but my GOD it's got some good mechanics to it and a great pace on hard mode.
Only issue is that I wish the visuals were clearer sometimes. Gets a little tricky parsing things between the glowing effects, subtle camera angle, and the backgrounds somewhat washing out certain hazards. I also find in 3D, it's actually a little tougher to judge exactly where collisions are in games like this more than pixel art. I'm trying to get used to it all. I've put in about 6 hours so far.

That aside, I do really think it's a lot of fun. I love the weapons. I love having like 4 weapons sharing a resource. It's such a fun juggle. And I like that the special weapons are tied to mode switches. The subtle decrease in speed on blade mode makes it a lot of fun to have to meaningfully switch around quickly to get in on enemies to slash and get the most of your current chain. Really good game. SUPER well paced and high energy.

[Lethe]

Allty2nd is a very cool game and I remain baffled by how overshadowed it still gets by Kamui (which I don't like half as much).

[XoPachi]

Allty2nd is a very cool game and I remain baffled by how overshadowed it still gets by Kamui (which I don't like half as much).

I didn't know Kamui was seen as the favorite. The weakest for me is definitely RefleX though I do still enjoy all 3 games. Alltynex is definitely my favorite right now.

[CaptainKraken]

Picked up Crisis Wing during the Steam sale.
Mainly so I could feel like I was playing an old-school shmup without having to torture myself with something like Truxton. (Hey, if that's your jam, more power to ya')

I'm really liking it. Love the bonus system and the medaling. I feel like I've got a 1-all in the bag after some practice.
Checkpoints are actually a boon rather than an annoyance in this case, as I feel it makes me learn the stage/boss. Normally I just waste resources to get past annoying bits.
Power-down is not as egregious as it could be, and I really appreciate death not dropping the medal chain.

While I do prefer the smaller hitbox, increased bullet density design style normally, I think Crisis Wing falls into a nice middle ground where the bullet count is not low, but reasonable for your ship size, and there are a good mix of bullet-pattern challenges and enemy-formation challenges.

[LordHypnos]

Checkpoints are actually a boon rather than an annoyance in this case

I definitely agree with this sentiment. I think it works especially well when the checkpoints are only in place when continuing, and they bring you back to the beginning of the stage. Elemental Master is like this, and it meant that I was able to practice the later stages pretty thoroughly just using the available continues. Might work better on something like Elemental Master, where the difficulty is low enough that you don't need to do that much practice to 1cc the normal difficulty.

Power-down is not as egregious as it could be, and I really appreciate death not dropping the medal chain.

I think power downs are really what makes older checkpoint games as painful to play as they are. Like I wasn't able to beat this section with full power, you think I can beat it with a pea-shooter!?

Finally got around to drilling down on Stage 5 of Fast Striker. I figured out something important, which is that the second secret triggers of the same type of enemy as the first secret, but you need to destroy all of them (or nearly all, at least). I don't think it would be worth it for me to spend the resources needed to destroy all of those enemies, so I am planning to just ignore that secret. It seems like I can actually get to the final boss with quite a few shields left if I'm calling scoring a wash in that stage. I also figured out a good technique for tackling that boss, and the tech bonus is pretty straightforward to get, so that's good. I think I also figured out a good technique for the non-TFB S6 boss. There's a few safe spots to be exploited, though also one thing that looks like a safespot but isn't. I haven't worked on the TFB yet, and I'm actually kind of just hoping I can BS my way through it with resources, lol.

Other than that, I've been messing with my CFW 3DS quite a bit. I like the idea of playing shmups on a handheld, but I can't really justify getting a better one at the moment. While I do have some excellent shmups from before the eShop closed (especially Life Force NES and Fantasy Zone II 3D), there are some hurdles with the system. The main issue is that the ergonomics kind of suck when using the dpad. I'm hoping that a cheap comfort grip will help alleviate this a bit. The other is that the screen is really small. As such, I tried playing some older handheld shmups that are designed for a tiny screen.

The main ones that I've been playing are GG Aleste II and GB Parodius, which are both a lot of fun! the GB(C) R-Types and Sagaia also seem promising. I have also played a little bit of NGPC Cotton, after finding out that the emulator in TWiLight Menu++ seems to run at full speed (unlike the other NGPC emulator I tried), and that one also seems promising, though that emulator has one of those frames (not sure what the best term is), so the screen is even tinier, and it doesn't seem like it supports stretching it to the height of the 3DS screen. I also played a bit of Ketsui Death Label, which also seems extremely promising.

I've found it very enjoyable to have those restrictions when trying out new games. Probably never would have played them otherwise.