It looks like a mainstream-ish gaming site and it fleshed-out support for shooting games as a whole. His post is on the home page and everything; "Editor's Blog' even
I've never seen non-game-review honest support of the genre from any widescale gaming site before....that...you know...didn't need a translator.
'kinda brought a smile.
-also links to a few wicked (probably seen) Ikaruga doubleplays with controller inputs.
Aaron Linde wrote:
Here's one way of putting it, though it borders a little too closely to that screwy new games journalism way of seeing things for my own comfort: shmups are about as close to purity as games are bound to get, and the opportunity for mastery that they offer is something that I sincerely believe to be exclusive to the genre. Kicking the everloving shit out of a shmup is a completely different sort of experience than pwning n00bs in Halo 2 and, I'd wager, one that marks and sets aside the truly "hardcore" from the rest of us.
hmmm, a "hardcore gaming blog" that shows signs of actually being hardcore.....
In the basic simplicity and purity of shoot 'em ups combined with the rewarding experience provided by the effort it takes to accept their challenge and master them lies the secret and beauty of this genre. That's why we continue to play and love them and why they never get old.
It's interesting to see comments from people who play shooters but don't really play for score or are dedicated to them. Like the one person who commented about Ikaruga being a memorizer but R Type Final being played however one wants to.... this one in particular caught my eye.
"Why can't they create a SHMUP with multiple difficulty levels, where at least on one setting, the average guy can play and actually complete?
Just watching that video of Ikagura makes me stomach churn. It looks so hard that I don't even dare buy the game to try it, no matter how many people rave about it. It just looks too ridiculously hard."
I think that's the general, casual (Dare I say "mainstream") gamer consensus. They may find the genre interesting or like the gameplay, but they can't stomach the difficulty. In turn, it goes back to what he mentioned earlier; the difference between gamers who like to win games and the gamers who like to play them.
I'm not sure I would view playing shooters seriously on the same level as dominating an untamed beast as connoted by various phrases in that article. However, I'm sure that the article is indeed 100% correct in describing the intensity by which the top players in the world feel when playing shooters.
Anyway, I wouldn't say that shooters have had their difficulty ramp up over the years. Rather, it's simply a different type of difficulty, from purely memory-based to partially twitch-based.
However, Mr. Linde's reference to time-based challenge as opposed to effort-based challenge is a nice rewording of the classic "modern games are easy" statement.
Interesting article. I also enjoyed reading the replies of these guys who seemed pretty open for shmups in general. I think a lot of mainstream gamers are not that biased about shoot em ups. They mostly get afraid of the bullet hell type, they think 50 bullets on screen are unavoidable for a regular human. I remember pretty well the first time I played DoDonPachi. At that time I found this game pretty cheap and I was blaming the developers for just sucking your quarters so unfair. I often try to introduce friends of me into shmups, but i never start with cave or a manic one. I'll give them Gradius, R-Type or some console shooter to start and most guys start to appreciate these games to some degree. And later I might show them DoDonPachi and try to tell them to just focus on shots aimed at you, don't panic by all those bullets.
I think a good solution to get new people interested into shmups is making an intelligent rank system, which will stay fairly "easy" or letting you play the easy stages when you haven't performed so well. But make the rank system transparent and obvious for the player. Something like the route system of Starfox 64. Or an interactive change of the level, depending on how well you score or the rank increases for completing certain tasks in game. And rewarding for good players so that a higher rank will give them way better chances for scoring, reveal new enemy types or bosses or entire levels. And newcomers could faster make some progress, keeping them longer interested. They'd also be motivated to see what secrets they can reveal in the levels for doing well with the rank.
I think there are some very good possibilities to implement such a rewarding system and still keep the shmup gameplay as pure as it is. And I'd like some developers doing this, because I think the reccent shmups are pretty hardcore. At least way too hardcore for most newcomer to this genre.
Edge wrote:I think a good solution to get new people interested into shmups is making an intelligent rank system, which will stay fairly "easy" or letting you play the easy stages when you haven't performed so well. But make the rank system transparent and obvious for the player. Something like the route system of Starfox 64. Or an interactive change of the level, depending on how well you score or the rank increases for completing certain tasks in game. And rewarding for good players so that a higher rank will give them way better chances for scoring, reveal new enemy types or bosses or entire levels. And newcomers could faster make some progress, keeping them longer interested. They'd also be motivated to see what secrets they can reveal in the levels for doing well with the rank.
They did all that in Psyvariar.
I think the PAL version sold like five copies...
Still, this article made me feel all warm 'n fuzzy inside.
No matter how good a game is, somebody will always hate it. No matter how bad a game is, somebody will always love it.
Good article; it's always nice to see some genuine enthusiasm for the genre.
Poor use of "hardcore", though. Sure, as a genre it most certainly is, but the article is (and many of us here are) interested in getting lapsed fans and newcomers on board. Not only does "hardcore" make the genre sound unnecessarily intimidating, it also connotes a flaccid, sniveling pissing-contest mentality...
Applying shooter principles to other games, those other games become hard -- play for the highest score and try beating them on a credit.
That whole article sounded like a guy who just discovered shooters and was trying to make them appear to be above every other genre.
Tournaments for fighters, shooters and FPSes require an incredible amount of skill -- sure, it differs between the genres, but none are more hardcore than the other. Devote enough time to any single thing and you'll become a master at it.
Yeah, I agree the author got a bit carried away whith the term "hardcore". You could get the impression that shoot'em ups are only be played to show how hardcore you are. Which I think wasn't intended that way, because he also mentioned how making progress is the fun and how thrilling the games are when you try to survive.
I wouldn't like the shmups community be called TEH HARDCORE or TEH l33t. Playing shmups for score or survival or for whatever reason is rewarding in it's own for the player who enjoys this kind of game. It is not to prove anything or to show off.
Still, this article made me feel all warm 'n fuzzy inside.
I didn't know that.
So, yeah they need a way to make a game more known to the masses, maybe through portals and online services. People might try some shmups if they can dl them for cheap. The retro love going on is good for the shmup scene as well, so are the XBLA or the Wii Console games. But if some necomer tries out a shmup and just sees 100 bullets thrown at him he'll find the challenge just ridiculous. So that's why I say make shmups easier on easy settings or lower rank and I mean way easier then they are now.
Offcourse getting a western market, even a real niche market, for shooting games is almost impossible.
But not entirely impossible. .... ... the hope dies last.
When was the last time Destructiod mentioned any news about upcoming shooters?
All the shooters mentioned in the post had releases on the PS2, but you make a good point. Somewhere, the editorial policy seems to be that even if you have an indie section that shooters don't cut it.
It looks to me like he's trying to widen the scope of the site, which is not a bad thing in my view.
Vokatse wrote:lol, maybe he's trying to appeal to shmup fans.
Yeah, either R-Type or Gradius for old school. Other games don't exist to some people (not the author of the piece in particular, but really).
I've never heard of this site before, but a decent article. I really don't want to criticize a guy for introducing folks to a genre which basically hasn't been around for well over a decade in the US, and the time is right, what with all these shooters popping up all over 360's marketplace (though I hate two-stick shooters).
Yeah, his trying to classify shooters as some hardcore-only thing is a little bothersome, but I'm guessing it's what his readers like to hear, so no big deal for me. At least it's one more person who can beg for US releases!
In the past year I've been noticing steadily increasing 2D shmup enthusiasm on a variety of gaming sites, blogs and podcasts. I think there's a slowly increasing amount of mainstream gamers getting excited about the genre again, who want to include casual play of shmups in their gaming diet. It reminds me a bit of the minor resurgence in mainstream interest that occurred when Ikaruga was released on the Gamecube. This latest surge of interest may possibly be credited to Geometry Wars 2, and the increasing fans of Xbox Live Arcade and Wii Virtual Console who are now looking everywhere for similar games.
"Thunder Force VI does not suck, shut your fucking mouth." ~ Shane Bettenhausen
icycalm wrote:When was the last time Destructiod mentioned any news about upcoming shooters?
He mentioned in a post that "Radio Allergy" is coming to the Gamecube in the states possibly on February 15th. Maybe he doesn't import? Or just doesn't keep up on the scene much? Or maybe is attempting to get people hooked on the genre, and doesn't want to overwhelm their poor minds with importing right off the bat.
Or maybe he is a hypocritical bastard -_^ Good article though. I've always objected to the use of "hardcore gamer," and it was indeed especially bad here, otherwise enjoyable.
That really puts to words exactly how i feel about shmups. Exspecially the part about shmups being hard EVERY time...and never being able to find a "noob" to beat like on Halo or even fighting games. Every time you a shooter you have to be playing at your best you never get an easy win
icycalm wrote:When was the last time Destructiod mentioned any news about upcoming shooters?
He mentioned in a post that "Radio Allergy" is coming to the Gamecube in the states possibly on February 15th. Maybe he doesn't import? Or just doesn't keep up on the scene much? Or maybe is attempting to get people hooked on the genre, and doesn't want to overwhelm their poor minds with importing right off the bat.
Or maybe he is a hypocritical bastard -_^ Good article though. I've always objected to the use of "hardcore gamer," and it was indeed especially bad here, otherwise enjoyable.
The scope of the site seems to stay only on the U.S. Therefore, as American-ly speaking, the only shmup news to report is in-fact that one game.
It'd probably hurt the message if he had to hint the only good way into the genre is the import scene.
Read it. Loved it. Doesn't matter to me if he used 'hardcore' a little too much. (He only used it on the first 1/3 or so of the article anyway). Always nice to see shmups mentioned almost anywhere.
