Ok, who actually liked playing Blazing Star?

[Davey]

Based on the commentary in the score thread, I think this could be interesting.

Personally, I enjoyed the competition aspect, but found the game itself more irritating than fun. I have a feeling I'm not the only one. But the game does have its fans, so I'm curious to see what popular opinion says.

Please only vote if you participated (or if you chose not to because you didn't like it )!

[Fighter17]

I like the game, but in the bottom third.


I like Blazing Star better than Pulstar. TAKE THAT PULSTAR FANS!

[Rob]

I forgot how much I hate timed competition. If not for that I think it's a good game with a tendency to be too boring in the early stages (esp. the first 2). At this point it's like 30 minutes to get to the one spot that makes or breaks the game. I don't like that.

Though the scoring system is simple with a few easy to grasp layers, which is good.

[sven666]

not at all my favourite game, but yeah i had some fun with it, got to clear the damn thing too (added bonus a decent score too!) which was nice

it was pretty damn frustrating at times tho, having all that text show up for every powerup etc is one hell of a design flaw if you ask me.. killed me dead more than once i can tell you..

now i concider it a closed chapter, havent played the game much but now its really gonna gather dust.

ed: im sure alot of the badmouthers in the HS thread are just overreacting because of irritation, ive been known to call DOJ "the worst piece of shit ever made" on more than a few occations tho we all know that isnt true

[Belmont]

I thought the game was ok but i just couldnt get into it. It became even less enjoyable for me once i learned how the medal system worked...

[Icarus]

I'm indifferent to it. Its fun in a way, but I still prefer Pulstar over it.

[Twiddle]

I wouldn't have a problem with the game if they didn't stick all of the difficult parts in stage 6, most of which should have been more evenly distributed in the previous 4 stages.

[zinger]

Imbalanced, text all over the screen, flickering bullets, enemies that ram into you from out of nowhere etc etc. I found it real frustrating but fun nonetheless, music and graphics are pretty damn sweet.

[The Coop]

Not a bad game. Nice (altough grainy) CGI graphics, decent tunes, a nice variety of ship choices, and a pretty good weapons setup. But the fact that you have objects becoming invisible shows a lack of thought for the system's limitations, and that drags the game down a bit. It's no fun being blown up by something you can't see.

And I think I'm in the top third. Guess I'll find out tomorrow.

[freddiebamboo]

Take out stage 2 + 5 and you've got a pretty decent game.

You've got a pointless (literally) extra 10 minutes on a credit with those stages.

Makes replaying after f**king up stage 3 or 6 a bit tiresome.

[BulletMagnet]

BS has lingered near the bottom of my Top 25 for the duration of my time here...I find a lot to like about it (lots of ship choices, several scoring mechanisms, good presentation, etc.), but also several frustrating elements (cheap deaths, screen overlay, no extends, etc.) which tarnish the experience somewhat (the disappearing bullets are the hardware's fault, so I can't really blame "the game itself" for that...having to milk a lot when playing for score also doesn't agree with me too much, but since playing for score is optional it's not as big of a deal as it might have been). Not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but still a very good shooter, imo.

[Herr Schatten]

Before the tournament I thought it was nothing special, but at least had some funny engrish in it. When I started playing the game seriously I first began to appreciate it more.

In the end, though, I think it's not a very good game. It's badly balanced in more than one aspect. The difficulty curve of the stages is totally off, stage 6 is ridiculously hard. Milking bosses for score is boring and no fun at all. The graphics are a crude mixture of beautiful hand-drawn bits (the grass and tree-trunks in the foreground of the first boss fight come to mind) and awful looking pre-rendered stuff. Overall, this makes the game artistically dissatisfying. This is a minor gripe, though.

And then there are the many terrible design flaws the game has: Invisible bullets in three flavours (bullets that blend in with the background, bullets that are obscured by captions, bullets that literally become invisible), slowdown all over the place that makes the rapid fire stutter, useless and annoying captions obscuring important parts of the screen, bonus gems that disappear behind the scenery, the list goes on like that.

So, yeah, the game may have some promising stuff in it, but it's poorly executed. It's crap and I hate it.

[Ghegs]

In the end I had fun with the game, but I'm not sure how much of that fun can be attributed to the thrill of competition and community. It was nice to talk (read: swear like a sailor) about the game to other people going through the same motions.

I don't think I'll be returning to Blazing Star, though, except maybe to totally ignore scoring and just get the ALL. It's kind of a burn-out to play it so much under a strict deadline, though in some way I liked it as it forced me to keep at it actively instead of a more leisurely approach.

But yeah, this was a very nice experience. My shmupping mindset has changed some which might make me more competitive about the genre as a whole. I actually liked item chaining and the milking, it was very satisfying to see my score explode after a successful, er, milk run. And even though I didn't do quite as well as I had hoped and there's still a bit time left in the compo, I might finish in the Top20. That'd be cool.

[DEL]

I liked the game, came third.


Rob wrote:

I forgot how much I hate timed competition.

That's the discipline

If not for that I think it's a good game with a tendency to be too boring in the early stages (esp. the first 2). At this point it's like 30 minutes to get to the one spot that makes or breaks the game. I don't like that.

Though the scoring system is simple with a few easy to grasp layers, which is good.

I agree with the annoying 30mins to reach the make-or-break X128. A good run can be demolished by a mistimed X128 on ST6

Apart from that, I grew to like the game.
The weighting of difficulty was up the spout, but it was fun.


Regs, DEL

[mulletgeezer]

i started off hating the game but have grown to enjoy certain aspects of it - the scoring system is rather good but there are shitloads of annoying flaws in the game and only 2 of the stages (4 and 6) are actually good. I originally really wanted Sexy Parodius to win the vote - i've been playing both SP and BS this week and although SP is easily the better game i think it would have made for a less interesting competition.

[elbarto]

Hated it at first, parts of it have grown on me, now I just find it annoying.

Don't know if I'll bother to play it any more.

[Edge]

Bought a new keyboard. So finally a new spacekey.
It's a cheap one it still feels strange, but after 3-4 days I'll get used to it.

Yeah, I first thought Blazing Star would be very annoying. But after this week I don't think this game is that bad. I probably won't play it anymore now, but for one week this game was fun. The worst problem for me are the unfair spots like invisible bullets.

I guess I should have tried to get a low rank run and milk boss 6 and 7, instead of increasing the rank in the beginning to get more points out of the early bosses and stages.

[DEL]

Edge wrote;

I guess I should have tried to get a low rank run and milk boss 6 and 7, instead of increasing the rank in the beginning to get more points out of the early bosses and stages

This is what I figured out on Day 1.
You've got to 'find your own path' through games, and not blindly follow the Jap Replays.

[Edge]

This is what I figured out on Day 1.
You've got to 'find your own path' through games, and not blindly follow the Jap Replays.

Didn't watch any replay, this was my own way.

[DC906270]

i think my mistake was, i didnt get how to trigger the Yumechan. so i didnt accrue many points even though i collected all the gems st 1-4.

[Shatterhand]

I always hated this game before this week. When I first played it (In a local arcade) I thought it was incredible.

When I had it at home (through emulation), and could play it more, I grow to hate the game. I actually used to think the game was cheap and damn impossible., and flawed in many aspects (And this was actually BEFORE I joined those forums)

In here I begun hearing about people who could 1cc the game... I remember when I heard about this, I tried the game again, and just found it too frustrating again.

When the poll came, I voted for Sexy Parodius because I didn't want to play Blazing Star again.

But actually this week I LEARNED to play the game, understood how it works, and actually had lots of fun with it. Yeah, the game still is flawed as hell, but now I find it to be a fun game, in spite of its flaws.

So, I liked it, and was in top third

[Marcodlb]

for me the game is very good......i enjoyed it but i did not make a huge score althrough

[Rob]

This is what I figured out on Day 1.
You've got to 'find your own path' through games, and not blindly follow the Jap Replays.

This is true. I lost a few hours trying out rank increasing and noticed a minimal improvement (this basically just increases the breakable bullets of a few enemies, score-wise) while I was having trouble surviving as long (faster, more invisible bullets). Not a great trade-off.

[Smraedis]

I've hated it for a very long time, and wasn't too happy with playing it in the tournament, but I still played it and got a alright score for the team.

[Randorama]

Found it to be very, very, very boring. The lack of time and patience to study the stages has also helped in making the experience frustrating. I would have really preferred Sexy Parodius, honestly...any games with tens of seconds without anything going on = no no in my book.

[Davey]

now i concider it a closed chapter, havent played the game much but now its really gonna gather dust.

I guess this was one of the things I was trying to get at. I've been wondering if the games in this competition will have more active score boards in the long run (i.e., after the competition is over). Blazing Star got more exposure in the past week than it probably has in years, and I'm sure a few people who never played it much (or at all) will want to keep playing it (not me!).

[Rob]

I will convulse if I ever see the opening to stage 1 again.

[namagomi]

I liked it and will play it some more. I'm a bit bummed I didn't break 2.000.000 but the last few days I didn't have much time to devote to playing. anyway, pretty fun game though quite frustrating as well.

[Zigfried the Trizealot]

At first, I thought Blazing Star ruled. I was sending people IM's about how awesome it was and everything. But then after playing it just a few times, the first level felt pretty pointless. And then, a few times after that, the second level really grew tiresome. I enjoyed the game, and I'll almost certainly play it again if I ever get the chance (already deleted it), but at the end, I was forcing myself to play.

//Zig

[landshark]

I have a feeling this game might grow on me if I were to continue playing it over the next 6 months - the only stage that really grabs me is 6 - it feels gradius like with the turrets all over the walls and I like the music.