Bullet Hell Power-Up Systems

[MathU]

Frankly, I've been out of the shoot em' up loop for a while now, but I hope I'm not the only one noticing a disturbing trend in modern shoot em' ups, particularly bullet hell shoot em' ups.

They have completely useless or uninspired power-up systems. They seem to be there only out of necessity. Take, for example, the Donpachi series. It's like the power-up system was put in only to give players a superficial sense of accomplishment. Yes, your weapon becomes more powerful as you grab more, but collecting power-ups serves a purpose for about the first 5 minutes of gameplay and that's it. When you die you drop enough or almost enough power-ups to bring your weapon right back to full power. What's the point?

What happened to the good ole' days? Blazing Lazers, Gradius, Raiden? If the power-up system does next to nothing for the gameplay, then why bother putting one in at all? People seemed just fine with Ikaruga.

[Rob]

What happened to the good ole' days? Blazing Lazers, Gradius, Raiden? If the power-up system does next to nothing for the gameplay, then why bother putting one in at all? People seemed just fine with Ikaruga.

I agree with the last sentence (Ikaruga as a good example of phasing out this needless element) even though there are less games like DP now, but the "good ol day" examples are atrocious aside from Gradius. Too much power at max, too little to start.

[sfried]

What happened to the good ole' days? Blazing Lazers, Gradius, Raiden? If the power-up system does next to nothing for the gameplay, then why bother putting one in at all? People seemed just fine with Ikaruga.

I agree with the last sentence (Ikaruga as a good example of phasing out this needless element) even though there are less games like DP now, but the "good ol day" examples are atrocious aside from Gradius. Too much power at max, too little to start.

This is also the reason why I hate many of the Touhou games. They expect you to be too much of a perfectionist in order to enjoy.

[PROMETHEUS]

I agree the power up system is almost useless in DDP / EspRaDe / Guwange, but it does give a slightly different taste to the first stages. You have less power, you don't destroy enemies as fast, so the stages are designed with this in mind and they are played differently than the later ones because of this. So I'd say it does add a bit of flavor to those games, but that's it. It's already something though~

[Icarus]

Weapon and powerup design is considerably more refined now than it was in the "good old days". Now games give you a choice of a few weapons (or even just one primary and one secondary) which are carefully balanced around the gameplay and scoring systems. The old games just threw in as many weapons as they could with no thought to balance. Too many weapon systems in old games were useless, while a few were overpowered.

Given the choice, I'd rather have today's balanced weapons and powerup systems.

[BulletMagnet]

To some extent I do miss powerups being something other than a "formality," for lack of a better word, but at the same time I also like the increasing amount of shmups that don't guarantee death after near-unavoidable death if you lose your firepower at a bad spot. Better for powerups to be out of the picture completely than to get in the way, I say, though methinks it's possible to hit a pleasant medium in there someplace.

[JoshF]

The old games just threw in as many weapons as they could with no thought to balance.

[professor ganson]

I think the old-style of having a real ascent with power-ups is fine as long as there is plenty of rank involved. To echo BM's point, I just feel naked and exposed sometimes when I've lost my power-ups. And sometimes I lose the power-ups precisely because the power-ups are too powerful and I get slightly bored and lazy.

Of course, this rant might plausibly be read as my making excuses for giving up on Compile games instead of playing them through to the end, like I should. I think the only one I've actually played through is Zanac Neo. Given how much I like the Zanac series, I really should be giving my Compile games more playing time.

[-Bridget-]

This one's been on my mind lately as well.


Mushihime does this, and it always bugs me.....


The powerups DO things for the first stage and a half; by the time Im at the stage 2 boss, I have full weapon, and at least 2 option-bugs....

Once I get all of the bugs, then the ONLY thing the powerups do is let me switch from trace to formation or back again....... on the rare occaision when I actually care to......

Particularly since when you blow up, the game drops all of the items you already had in an easy spot for you to grab them again......




ESP Ra.De, I actually kinda liked that one; You collect the "P" icons until your weapon is at max; once that's done, THEN you can start getting the actual score-icons.......

And if you should get hit, your weapon powers down...... therefore you cant get the score icons again till you fix the weapon first; more incentive NOT to get hit.

And just the fact that once your weapon is powered to full, the P items go away, being replaced by things that make alot more sense.

[powerfuran]

Mushi imho stands perfectly in the middle of "powerup aren't necessary at all and "powerup gives you gameplay depth ecc". But I think "weapon choice" would be more appropriate than "powerup". The fact is that in all 3 modes players noticed that W-power should be used forever, and they noticed it from day one. What really matters is the trace/formation choice; btw the insanity dvd showed us that well-known, extreme maniac mode strat of committing suicide in order to change the weapon.

I'd like to know what Ketsui players think. I just played ketsui twice, but watching other players and videos and dvd's and all that stuff it seemed that yes, powerups are maxed near to the end of stage 1, then who cares? But it's only a guess.