What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

[Lemnear]

I'm playing Battlefield 2042 and The Last Of Us 2 at the moment, and I'm starting to feel a bit of fatigue. BF2042 is so incredibly hectic and TLOU2 is such a long and cinematic adventure, I'm starting to feel the need to play something uncomplicated, almost mindless? And a shmup. (I still want to be challenged, but not by other players if that makes sense.)

I can't understand the success of TLOU/TLOU2, a boring film with minimal gameplay....but don't talk badly about it, they'll kick you out everywhere.

[XoPachi]

I am playing Black Tiger.

Never heard of this until today but it's amazing. It's one of those games that really show the difference between forgiving and easy. The game has a lot of small things going on that make the game feel very approachable but it is still VERY difficult with funny cheap shots and super low survivability. Your attack range is also surprisingly generous and rather quick since it resets if it hits something. You also move pretty quick. He auto grabs poles and they're spaced perfectly so that you don't really have to sit and try to time everything. It keeps platforming from taking longer than it needs to in a game like this and (so far) keeps it down to obstacles to deal with enemies when you have limited movement. And things are VERY precise. Hit/hurtboxes are really tight it seems. You have a bit of a pause before your barbarian releases poles at the bottom letting you position more accurately if something needs to be accounted for while mounted. You fall off a ledge, you go straight down. And a nice limited jump that interacts perfectly with terrain to avoid "shin bumps" that just kill you because god forbid you're off by a pixel. I'm getting my ASS beat, but it's never frustrating.

I like how the shop works in this kind of like what I remember of GunSmoke where it's very specific, one time NPC's and they must be found/remembered. I think it's more interesting here since it's up to you when you want to reach them within the constraint of the timer. So it's a nice little bit of routing with your collection of Zenny (which I learned this game is where that currency name comes from :P). And this plays into dungeons which are a place to get more money but death inside of them, locks them off the rest of the stage allowing for more risk before you decide to visit your shop.

I think I'll actually really put in an effort to clear this. I'm having a shit ton of fun.

[Sumez]

Black Tiger has the primary fault that the further you get, the easier it gets. Because you keep getting more money and can keep buying more armor even if enemies get much stronger.
It feels tough once you first get to stages 2 and 3, but almost all of the game's biggest obstacles just come down to simple memorization, and not in any memo-hell way. Just remember where biggest hazards show up and always look out for those falling rocks early on.
I do really love the game though. It has some of that faux-RPG arcade DNA akin to Wonderboy in Monster Land or Willow which I love.

I've 1CC'ed it countless time, including a live event. I think this might be the first recording I have of it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QXm6mWjl5fY

Never heard of this until today but it's amazing.

Funny enough I never heard of it *until I bought the PCB*. Back then I just for shits and giggles tried searching for Jamma PCBs on eBay and sorted by cheapest first. So I got it for next to no money then. Back in the days when that was actually possible.

[ryu]

Cronos just kept getting better. If it doesn't flounder its endgame it's going to be one of my favorite horror games of all time.