STGT '09 Last Year's Straggler Week 2, RFJet - thoughts

[Aquas]

I was really glad to get back into RFJ for this playing week. At first I played it in a local arcade and I was mystified and fascinated by it as I hadn't discovered I really enjoyed shooting games yet... about three years ago before I joined this site. I played it for survival but knew I was missing something when I watched others play with a slave ship that I didn't know how to access. After some time I came back to the arcade and watched better players than me somewhat often, and I began to learn some things: activating special medal mode and quickshots and so I played a lot. Fascinated by the concept of going for the high-score, I beat all the scores on the machine except for a Raiden-MK II score and a 100M slave score. I never met that "DJW" guy who had the MK-II score!

It's funny that I spent so much time across the span of a year or so, hanging at that arcade with friends and getting more than a few credits in each visit, that now some people play it for a week and smash my score. Albiet it was about having fun for a while, untill I got obsessed with the game and would sometimes take hour bus rides to the arcade to spend half the day playing. Even now participating this week, I had a blast learning tricks here and there for scoring and have dived deeper than I ever have before, referencing ycw's replays. Because I had played the game primarily in the arcade before, I also got a slight case of restart syndrome because of playing on MAME. I wouldn't do that in the arcade, it'd be a waste of a quarter!

It's been a lot of fun to look back and enjoy the game that got me fit into this genre. I've been able to embrace other great games like this one but I mostly discovered that I'm a big nerd for Gradius games I'd also like to think I finally beat that 100M slave score but only if the machine was still in that arcade.

[crithit5000]

I enjoyed RFJ a lot, but what I want to know is:

How the fuck do players figure out more these more obtuse scoring systems?

Edit: And by obtuse, I don't mean any negative connotation. I quite enjoyed RFJ's medalling and hidden stuff. It's just not as obvious as other games' scoring systems...

[Aru-san]

I enjoyed RFJ a lot, but what I want to know is:

How the fuck do players figure out more these more obtuse scoring systems?

Edit: And by obtuse, I don't mean any negative connotation. I quite enjoyed RFJ's medalling and hidden stuff. It's just not as obvious as other games' scoring systems...

1) Over 1000+ hours of play time from the first time to now.
2) Extensively studying superplays.
3) See Twiddle.

[sunburstbasser]

The only two shmups I've actually played in arcades in recent memory are Aero Fighters 2 and Raiden 2. I put one quarter in Raiden 2 and fell in love. RFJ is, in a sense, a bit nostalgic for me because of that. I'd never played it before this week and not only enjoyed it, but actually had that "one more credit" thought more than a few times as I bit the dust, something that really hasn't happened since I played Battle Garegga the first time. The only downside is the music; it seemed a bit overbearing on the replay video I watched. And all I could get on MAME was nasty digital static, I assume because the sound isn't emulated properly yet.

Excellent game and I wish I'd gotten into it sooner.

[crithit5000]

1) Over 1000+ hours of play time from the first time to now.
2) Extensively studying superplays.
3) See Twiddle.

2) might be accurate for western players, but I should of clarified how any players figure out stuff like "collect enough medals to make big gold medal, grab said medal, then somewhere later have 9 medals on screen explode and then profit afterwards". Option number 1 and tons of experimentation can probably explain this, I guess. That could work for RFJ...but how the hell did anyone figure out something like Bakraid's system? This could probably be its own topic, but I'm curious about it really.

[Ed Oscuro]

I went back and forth a bit, but on the whole this STGT has drawn me back into shmups, almost in spite of what I was initially feeling. So instead of going "yay I am free of shmups" now I'm actually trying to play them right and get better at 'em. :O!

[Herr Schatten]

Despite my emulation issues, I had surprisingly much fun playing RFJ. There's actually a lot to like about it. Good bosses, solid level design, you name it. If I hadn't been playing for score, though, I might have enjoyed the game even more. The scoring system is simple enough, but the stunt you have to perform to actually activate it can only be meant as some kind of elaborate joke. Seriously, this is completely wacky and makes some of Raizing's scoring systems look intuitive.

I think that the game is maybe a little over-ambitious, with all the different stages you reach depending on your performance. The idea itself is good, I just don't think that the execution is all that phenomenal. The alternative stages you're sent to when performing poorly pretty much all have significantly duller level design than the main stages and usually really lazy graphics, too. (Nothing more than repeating patterns of desert sand, waves, etc.) Speaking of graphics, they vary far too much in quality. Some stuff looks really good (Sim 15, all bosses), but stuff like the badly digitized satellite view photos in the backgrounds of Sim 30 and Phase 1 looks really out of place. Artistically, I think that all that gritty military stuff is just a little too generic.

Other issues: There are too many useless ships to play with. Also it puzzles me to no end how developers put so much thought and creativity into an elaborate score system, but can't be arsed to get the basics right and, for example, ensure that you can see the damn bullets throughout the whole game. Additionally, RFJ isn't very well suited for a one-week tournament, because too much of your score comes from knowledge of tricks and secrets instead of raw skill.

[Zaarock]

Speaking of graphics, they vary far too much in quality. Some stuff looks really good (Sim 15, all bosses), but stuff like the badly digitized satellite view photos in the backgrounds of Sim 30 and Phase 1 looks really out of place. Artistically, I think that all that gritty military stuff is just a little too generic.

I still find the Phase 1 background to work fine, its a dark orange cloud background that doesnt get confusing or intersect with the bullet colors. I like the art style on the level a lot, its a super fast "cloud chase" level which is a cool theme. Sim 30 had some nice ideas too but the background went too confusing. I like the overall graphics style a lot.

Triggering the special medals is weird indeed, but I just think it makes the first level a bit more interesting when you know what to do. I wonder what the game would be like with a mode without the special medals, seeing as the medal system at the start is just "used" on the first level, waste of a scoring system.

[Ed Oscuro]

Sim 30 is indeed quite doable after a few goes; I'm no longer too scared of it.

[unsane]

This week's Top 7:



I came into this week with RFJ as my current fave shmup of alltime. Note that i'd put in about 30 hours grand total previously, and had not glimpsed any strategy threads or superplays, having a record of 37M. I read and watched everything to be competitive, and was a little afraid that it'd ruin my enjoyment of the game. I have to admit i'm a little sick of constantly restarting stages 1 and 2, but overall the game is still great for me. I plan on trying to 1cc it in future, and maybe even hit 100M.

I should of clarified how any players figure out stuff like "collect enough medals to make big gold medal, grab said medal, then somewhere later have 9 medals on screen explode and then profit afterwards". Option number 1 and tons of experimentation can probably explain this, I guess. That could work for RFJ...

I had figured this out from my previous 30hr in plays. It's not too bad, you kind of stumble across it eventually, step by step. I hadn't realized you could get it in stage 1 tho, since of course i had no clue where the miclii were hidden.

Edit: Forgot to mention, i played the Chaser 2000 slave most of the week, and tried to switch to the Judge Spear slave near the end but couldnt even break my top 7 with it. Went back to the Chaser slave and broke my records for the first few stages (resulting in the Lv 20 and 30 scores above), but was unable to beat my hiscore in the allotted time. In future i'll solely be playing the Judge Spear slave (i like the blazing speed), and i'll definitely be beating my hiscore with very little effort.

[Zaarock]

I'd never played the game before last week and liked it a lot, though I got a bit tired of restarting the three first levels but eventually learned how to go past them more safely. Too bad I kept losing two lives on the level30 boss, probably could have gotten 60mil on one of those runs. After using Ixion in this game other shmups' ships feel so slow.

About someone finding out how to trigger the special medals, it doesnt seem that strange to me: upgrading a medal to max gives the highest score value so people will do that, then 7 medals will very probably show up at the same time in a game to trigger it and the players will eventually realize how it is triggered.

[Danbo]

on one hand, the scoring system is pretty inventive and has some very satisfying moments. on the other hand, the speed of the game and visibility of the bullets on certain stages make it very frustrating... having to know where fairies/micluses are is also a less nice part of the game.




we have to play varth again this week?

[Zejiro]

This would have been a fun game if it wasn't for the first stage, and the medal collecting (the first medals that fly around, that is).
I didn't play very much because of that. Oh well.

I'm still hoping for a good game. Never played Thunder Dragon 2, let's hope it gets me interested.

[Arvandor]

I really REALLY enjoyed RFJ. I could end up playing this one alot more, good times. However, there were a number of things that bugged me about it, both in general, and just for a one week competition. I actually didn't mind the absurdly fast bullet patterns, as I was able to start seeing most of them more quickly than I thought I would, requiring less memorization, and the couple that did, I'd just bomb shamelessly ^_^

-Mean learning curve on unlocking the special medal mode. I spent the entirety of the first 3-4 hours playing just getting this down. THEN it was on to learning the rest of the game. Ugh. It is pretty fun once you get it down though, one of the more interesting first stages in a game.
-WTF hit me deaths, especially in phase 1.
-Very specific memorization required to survive, let alone score, later on. I felt like I was playing Dangun Feveron for score, only I had to do it for survival too.
-The "border" system with getting different stages depending on how well you're doing gave it a wicked learning curve for the time I could get in one week. Had a really good run and was like "all right, let's tackle this next sta... ice... I dont' remember iOMG THE PAIN!"
-Worst... Music... Ever...
-The fact that the slaves make for the best ships seems kind of silly, but that's just nit picky =P

[Ravid]

The branching stage paths made this less than ideal for a week competition. I hated all of the bosses; since many of their patterns are too fast to see and react to sensibly you just have to learn how they work and, for the most part, blindly tap to dodge them. Sim 45 boss was the worst offender, and since I was only reaching Sim 45 consistently at the end I never got the chance to get any decent practice in (the 1-bomb strat used by NER seems to fail fairly often, resulting in death). Also, lol at the sprite malfunction in Sim 30 some people were getting.

That said, this was a pretty fun game overall, and a nice change from what I usually play (Cave). Phase 2 was the best stage, it was just a shame I rarely reached it (no extends?)

[Davey]

I never played this game for score before the tournament. I purposefully avoided the scoring system because I knew it'd turn me off (I'd trigger the gold bars in early stage 2 and try my best to keep them up to 100k, but that's about it). I can see the comparisons to Dangun because of the speed, catching falling objects, and having to quickshot certain enemies, but Dangun is more about just blowing shit up. Mindlessly killing everything as fast as you can obviously makes for much more shallow gameplay, but it's more enjoyable for me.

I certainly don't think it's a bad game, it's just too advanced for my skill level. Also, getting raped by Varth the week before had me feeling pretty drained before I even started with RFJ.

Long story short, I didn't have much time to play, my scores from the first part of the week were invalid (duh ), and by mid-Saturday I had more or less given up. Also, through a combination of my laziness and crithit5000's forgetfulness, my score was effectively 0. It wasn't a top 3 score anyway.

Zaarock, I should have just caved and played VOOT with you instead of playing this.

[emphatic]

I don't like the game, so I was secretly glad none of my computers were fast enough to play it. My laptop sucks ass, and my HTPC doesn't have enough USB-ports for me to have both a keyboard and my arcade stick connected at the same time. Did play a few credits @ sven666' meet, but didn't take a picture of my 22 something million score, so I couldn't post it.

Hopefully, my laptop will be enough for Thunder Dragon 2. If MAME fails, I'll have to use Raine instead. This game looks very fun though, graphically very similar to P-47 Aces.

[Dragoforce]

I like it a lot. Me and most of the swedish guys actually played it for a swedish STG competion earlier this year too.

It takes some getting used to though, with the speed and all. But once you learn how to manage that, discovering where how to trigger micluses and fairies it's great fun. The music is still awful though.

[mrtie]

I enjoyed it, after playing ixion for survival exclusively before the tourney , to switching to slave and really watching some superplays, I was pretty happy with my score even if it's middle of the pack. Like my team mates I forgot to submit my final score which was only about 3 mil more, but that's ok. I enjoyed this week.

[TodayIsForgotten]

I didn't like that RFj was chosen, since i had spent some extensive time trying to replicate the superplays (minus the grazing). Through the first 3 or 4 levels I had the superplay pretty close in score, but i was daunted by the ice level. After about 20 hours i gave up. Playing RFJ about 5 times during the whole week for the tournament made me want to eventually go back and beat the game on one-credit.

I am with the majority. also do not like the lesser levels when scoring poorly, because that's exactly what you get in the levels to come, no score. Although the one sand stage you get quite a bit, but with no bombs - no.

The memorization is a bit daunting on some levels and can easily lead to frustration and not enjoying the game. Taking a long break does alleviate that, as i didnt mind restarting or missing a section i could previously do with ease, but that not wanting to do this anymore feeling did start to appear.

Good game overall.

[Necronopticous]

Great game. Unfortunately I was only able to play on Labor Day weekend.

[Kyper]

Having previously played and enjoyed RF1, I guess it's no surprise to me that I would like RFJ. Heh I even have to restart a lot in both games 'cause I keep screwing up the special medal unlocking on the first stage. At least the ship select music is somewhat pleasing to listen to...

[RGC]

I played this for 11h47m04s. It really didn't feel like that long though, and somehow I never got bored despite the constant restarts, and failed score-trick consistency. I wish we had 2 weeks on this one. Most addictive game I've played in a while (aided, no doubt by the context of competition). I'll be picking this up for the 360. 9/10!

[Twiddle]

Didn't have any time to play this so I wasn't able to break 100m and take a piss, but I have a couple pieces of advice for new players:

-Watching a superplay of this game and trying to copy it is a swift road to disaster. What you want to do is see what is easier to pull off derived from a variety of replays (the 200m superplay is horrible for this; but you can derive smaller chains from the 189m available on super-play, YCW's, Alluro's, and alamone's plays are even better for this as they pull off simpler chains.) and when you get comfortable doing the smaller chains reliably, you can slowly improve them by changing a small element in your chain.
-Sim 30 and RB 1 are going to kill you if you do NOT play offensively. Only the popcorn enemies shoot right away, and there's quite a bit of time before the other plane types fire. In RB 1 the margin of error is a little shorter, so the key to that one is to memorize most of the striker locations.

[Sonic R]

I didn't have any time to play this week
I only spent one day and mustered up a 22 million score, and didn't even submit it. I apologize to my teammates…

Thoughts on RFJ…

I started to play this game last year upon release on the Japanese 360 and straight away, I started to play for score. I enjoy this game and enjoy playing for score, but I demand perfection, so I am always restarting the game if I make one mistake early on. I have probably spend more time playing the first two stages than the whole entire game! RFJ was one of the games that was predicted to be selected and is why I decided to enter the tourney and I don't even submit a score!

RFJ is one of the very few games where I actually enjoy playing for score, and because of that, I cannot play it any other way. I have deep regrets that I didn't get any more time to play this and improve my score, and when I did play last weekend, I spend more time restarting as I would manage an error on the first stage - miss a medal, miss a quick shot, collect the medal on accidents, a silly death… On the 360 I have buttons set for quick restart which I hit with my pinky and this was done more than play time. I will return to this again. I had been playing on normal mode since I own it as it is default, but will now spend more time to improve my arcade mode score from here on out at my lesuire.

Again, I apologize to Team Oldschoolers for failing to even submit a score on a game I had full intention to play and play decent

[captpain]

If I hadn't been required to tend to some family business this weekend, I'd have scored 70 mil or so.

RFJ's a great, super fast-paced game that lends itself well to the obsessive replaying required for a 1-week tournament. I don't care for the weird bullet visibility issues, but apart from that, I enjoyed the hell out of it. Awesome game.

[antron]

question I never bothered to ask: how do you play with a fairy or slave?

[captpain]

question I never bothered to ask: how do you play with a fairy or slave?

Insert coin, hold down B, press start. Select whatever ship you'd like, and it'll be Slave/Fairy.

[Aru-san]

I wasn't able to play for a couple of reasons:

1) My brother had the 360 at his friend's house the whole time, so I couldn't play via RFA.
2) My computer hates RFJ, of all games.

I guess I lied when I said I'd play all weeks.

[nash87]

[quote="Ravid"]patterns are too fast to see and react to sensibly you just have to learn how they work and, for the most part, blindly tap to dodge them.quote]

I've been playing this game for years and the bullet speed of this game can barely be called fast, except for maybe real phase 1 and 2, and even then it's not that fast. It's not like psikyo games where the speed is just straight up your ass.