Next touhou: Shoot the bullet sequel "Double Spoiler"

[argelius]

I still don't get why so many people had issues with 3-4 ._.

Well yeah, it's easy once you've figured it out of course. Then again the rule of thumb in StB is "if a solid thread of bullets is aimed at you, stream while charging, break the thread and dash to the other side of it" (Photo 5 in Ten Kings Bar, Lunar Incense, Yuyuko's flower petal, etc.).

I used another strategy that is also quite easy to do. I dash up to the lower left of the boss, then I circle her first clock-wise and then counter-clockwise switching direction every time I snap a photo.

[null1024]

Gah, 3-4 is still annoying. I get into my rhythm, I'm doing fine, finger slips, the spread is now totally going crazy and I DIE. And then I need to get back into a rhythm.

Although just flying around it like a maniac has been disturbingly viable [by way of pure, unfiltered luck] until the 4th shot... then there's too much crap to dodge at the speed you're moving.

[SockPuppetHyren]

Is it weird that I found 2-6 harder than 3-4? I figured the trick to it out pretty quickly.

[Pirate1019]

Although just flying around it like a maniac has been disturbingly viable [by way of pure, unfiltered luck] until the 4th shot... then there's too much crap to dodge at the speed you're moving.

For shits I did it like that for a while. I managed to live until the shots start ricocheting and there is slow-moving shrapnel everywhere. I think that's after the second picture is snapped.

[Momijitsuki]

SP-9 is a ton of fun.

EDIT:

[SockPuppetHyren]

I am simultaneously shaking my fist in envy, and suppressing the urge to make a bad valley-girl-Matate joke.

Either way, good job!

[lgb]

no need, shrinemaiden/pooshlmer and their silly translators have the idea applied and it will probably be set in stone

[SockPuppetHyren]

The funny thing about it is that the general reaction from users on pooshlmer was "What the fuck is this shit?!"

[Zweihander]

>girl in Gensokyo with a fucking cell phone

WHAT THE FUCKBERRIES.

[Momijitsuki]

The funny thing about it is that the general reaction from users on pooshlmer was "What the fuck is this shit?!"

I love how everyone's throwing a fit about it. It's really not a big deal at all.

[nZero]

The funny thing about it is that the general reaction from users on pooshlmer was "What the fuck is this shit?!"

loli haet shmups

[Taylor]

They all had cellphones in SA.

[Zweihander]

They all had cellphones in SA.

SA now confirmed for total garbage on every level.

[Pirate1019]

SA now confirmed for total garbage on every level.

It wasn't already?

[Zweihander]

SA now confirmed for total garbage on every level.

It wasn't already?

It was, but cellphones in a fucking fantasy setting make it even MORE garbage.

[moozooh]

If anything can make a game bad it's cellphones in a fantasy setting. Good job.

[Momijitsuki]

It's a fantasy setting in a modern-day environment in a parallel world. ZUN can do whatever the hell he wants with it :V

[lgb]

not even a modern-day environment. more like "oh look an iPod" or even "let's go raid a Wal-Mart"

[Enhasa]

Wasn't there some thread where some guy wanted a shmup with save states? That dude should try STB or DS, as close as he'll get and much more brilliant.

I didn't know there was anyone who liked AOS more than Senko, find it hard to imagine really. I don't care for AOS, but the original Suguri is ace! (FYI: sequel coming out) Just doesn't lend itself well to versus IMHO. orange is right, boss mode is the worst part of Senko, but Senko is way better outside of boss, and that's the vast majority of the game so yeah. BTW whoever doesn't know, boss mode is actually very similar to ultra in SF4 if you couldn't ever possibly land random ultras. They're kinda dumb in execution but it's good they exist, it's to represent a threat. Newbs think they're overpowered but in reality they are rarely used (and only for punishing or desperation) because they are actually too weak! But it's better that way of course. Another misconception is that Senko is slow. I grant that AOS is faster (although it's been awhile, dunno for sure), even though it's more like Psychic Force anyway, but I swear that Senko is even faster than VOOT. It certainly doesn't look as fast, and you might not even input actions as fast, but in terms of rapidly adjusting and dealing with threats, more of these happen per second.

Oh yeah and Ernula's boss is really shitty unless the other player is new or something. Trust me, playing as Ernula and having someone come inside and violate you has to be the closest feeling to getting raped (literally) as possible in gaming. Would be highly uncomfortable if I was a girl, and also don't want to think of implications wrt Ernula's character, lol. Mika's is the best because it actually has survivability after multiple patches (first version had hilarious safe spot) and you can fence people in with your exploding arm lasers and make people deal with satellites and final boss can release that awesome bomb. Karel's is good too, because the arms help defend and esp B type has good subweapon move that the Japanese really underestimate (looks way easier to dodge than it is) and can't be easily barraged, so it actually kills people often.


Ok now about this game, lol. Probably too much. But I want to get stuff down now before I forgot this all later.

After the first night of playing, I was kinda bummed. At that point, I had 58/106 (every scene cleared through level 8, I do them in order without skipping) and wasn't really feeling the game. I didn't think there was much creativity, but wow, I thought this game was the nuts difficult and wasn't really sure if I wanted to keep playing for now. I mean, 6-8 was tougher than most scenes in STB, level 7 overall was about as hard as 9 in STB and 8 was about as hard as 10. And I'm thinking: shit, I've still got half of these to go?! How am I ever going to deal with 11 or 12, let alone EX?? If you told me at that point that many people were asserting DS was easier than STB, I would just laugh at them. I mean, STB dicked around at first, not putting up the first sign of resistance until 7 and first real wall at 8, and I never got frustrated until 9. DS skips the foreplay and ramps up a lot more quickly. I also hated every last one of the control differences. Unlike others, I thought STB controls were perfect. I used Z and X. In DS, Z and Shift were required, with X being a new function, which messed me up incredibly. Not being able to charge and let go of slow to shoot, is slower, less efficient, and messed me up again since that's how I used to do it. Also, when already at 100%, hitting charge would accidentally shoot for me in DS, while it wouldn't in STB. Even the tilting messed me up, since running sideways or away and shooting was ok in STB, but results in the completely wrong angle in DS. Bugginess was annoying too. Once I literally was at 100% and could not shoot. I stared at 100% on the screen, then stared at the Z key as I mashed it. After a couple seconds a bullet hit me, last shot of course.

The first thing I did the next day was use AutoHotKey to remap keys so at least my muscle memory wasn't so screwed up anymore. And as I played through the rest of the game, I understood DS's difficulty curve. It didn't really get much harder than 8. In fact, 11, EX, and spoiler were probably easier. And you know, since this is the level of difficulty I like, I appreciated this. So that helped me like the game more. Although spoiler being easy was actually quite a letdown. People seem to love it but I wasn't impressed. The enemy camera was just a wide-area attack, nothing special. And even Hatate was as uninspired as possible. I was expecting novel shit (easy and not very imaginative examples: bullet time after you take pictures, super long-range pictures, wide circle picture around her, faster movement while charging), but she's rather similar. I wonder how she'll be incorporated into the next game. And since I played UFO for the first time after DS, I am actually semi-looking forward to the next game. (UFO being my favorite mainline game by FAR, pleasant surprise)


Overall I like DS a lot (good enough to bump something else off my top 25), although not quite as much as STB. Definitely infinitely less innovative, but nothing wrong with that. Again, my biggest problem was lack of variety. In not a single scene did I ever switch from landscape to portrait except before the very first shot. A nice back and forth would have been cool. It seems like there was a lot less puzzle ones, or getting chased, although I cleared DS much faster in real time so maybe they just blended in. I forgave STB for the timer never mattering, because it was new and hard to balance (you don't want to release and then everyone complains about the timer, so err on side of caution), but it was more annoying that it was still the case in DS. Also don't like the tilting camera, especially the new portrait orientation, because it makes getting pictures too easy. I like moving into position and in DS, it seems you can be further away. At least you still need to get close to score well.

I also liked how there were no standout brutal scenes in DS and also far fewer standout gimmies like some of the ex in STB. So in that perspective the balance was a lot better. But the ordering was very strangely (poorly?) balanced, maybe it was intentional mixup. Because in STB I agreed with the level orders, but DS's was all wacky.

Oh yeah, I just looked on wikia and Hatate's translation is totally awesome, even if likely horribly mistranslated. Still like Aya a lot more, but now there are actually two whole Touhou characters I kinda like now, haha. Maybe after the next STB installment, there will be up to three.


Notable scenes for me:

7-5: this grid scene was pretty cool
10-3: same with this walls scene, one of my faves
12-2: the clone was a clever idea
12-3: the umbrella scene, wow... my favorite by a ton in either game, if this scene didn't exist I would be a lot lower on the game as a whole, seriously... the sheer audacity and "aha!" moment when realizing what you have to do was priceless, like going "no way, can I really make that jump?" in a game like Umihara Kawase or some 3d swinging platforming game or something
12-6: technically took the most shots on this one, but only because of how glitchy it was... I would just spontaneously die for no reason at all times, including on final shot, and replays don't even synch... this game is really buggy, funny because some people said STB was buggy even though I never encountered anything
12-7: everyone and their mom said 9-6 was the hardest in STB, never agreed with that since it was definitely ex-4 for me... so I don't know any consensus about this game but I was glad to hear that Heartbeam (shmups.com Touhou player extraordinaire) said he took the most on 12-7 because I did too, it's surprisingly and genuinely tough
12-8: this playstation one was really fun, not sure why
ex-4: anti-shot one was really cool, also great fun... the best part is how impossible this seems at first, worst part is how it seemed to be glitchy like 12-6 at first but was actually intentional, lol
ex-7: I love chase scenes, this one was awesome and tense, and you had to lure Reimu into the middle so you could survive after the shot
ex-9: incredibly fun and awesome looking, this one seems so complicated at first when in fact it's so simple... I will admit this is a strange selection for the final ex though

I can't believe I wrote this much but it's not like you had to read it I guess.

[spineshark]

Anybody know where this game keeps the progress/save file? I was playing on my younger brother's computer off an external HD and when I took it to my older brother's I was back at 1-1 =/ So it'd be handy to know so I can grab that the next time I see my younger brother again.

Anyway, I'm only like halfway through and probably won't make any progress for a while but I do have everything through EX unlocked. It honestly took me a little while to get back into the mindset for this game since it's pretty easy to forget how many times I died going through STB. I mean, I know offhand that there were some scenes where I took a TON of shots, but those numbers don't really mean a whole lot in the abstract =p

I thought 6-8 was easy though, haha. My favorite scene until 12-3 though, for the "lol IaMP" factor. 12-3 itself is unbelievably cool but I have no idea how to not die after the beginning. And there's a lot of other stuff I don't understand, or do but somehow fuck up every time, which is kind of frustrating. Still really like it though!

Seriously though, after like 200 shots I just want to kill 5-1 =( fuck zun and his touhou lasers

As for the view-switching thing, there was one level where I did it a lot (8-4 or 8-6, forget which lol, it's the one where the suns just drop straight down at you). Really clumsy, slow strategy, but it worked

And since I played UFO for the first time after DS, I am actually semi-looking forward to the next game. (UFO being my favorite mainline game by FAR, pleasant surprise)

Huh, this is really interesting, because I was 100% thinking after I saw level 12 that I guess I shouldn't have skipped UFO. 11 was just...really bad though, aside from a couple of the bosses, so I really wasn't interested. I got bored of dying at the end and having to play the boring-ass-even-for-Touhou stages every time.

[Heartbeam]

http://touhou.wikia.com/wiki/Double_Spoiler:_Miscellaneous#Portable_Double_Spoiler

Starting with Double Spoiler, data (such as config, scores, and replays) are stored in the user's profile directory.

Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\ShanghaiAlice (for Vista and 7)

Documents and Settings\<username>\Application Data\ShanghaiAlice (for XP) directory to <DS directory>\user\ShanghaiAlice.

Make sure hidden files are showing.

5-1

It's static.

[spineshark]

Thanks!

It's static.

So was EX-4 in StB, and that took me more than 3400 =/ (Highest shotcounts here so far are about 600 on 9-7 and 370 on 12-6, and I think I only had one glitchdeath)