STGT 2010 - Cyvern and Xexex thoughts

[Aquas]

Hey there fellow STGT'ers!

I just noticed I neglected to post a thoughts thread for Week 1 and 2, as I have done in the previous 2 years. So this thread will combine Cyvern and Xexex, and next week will get it's own thread. The purpose of the thread is pretty simple, what do you think of the games? the competition? your progress? Or any miscellaneous things regarding the tourney like posting end-week replays or trash talk from the teams!

Links to last years thoughts threads if anyone's curious: Varth, Raiden Fighters Jet, Thunder Dragon II, Strikers 1945 II, Battle GARegga

I'm just a generally nice guy, myself. But if you get in my way I'll fucking KILL YOU! (LIMP)GAYS! (PUTRID!)TACOS! UNDER(BITCHES!) Wait, that's not very nice. Sorry, I'm just pissed because I lost a billion dollar aircraft for the army and their taking it out of my bar tab at the base. Joking aside...

My thoughts on Cyvern and Xexex.

Cyvern was a pretty neat game. I liked the feeling of a mix of Raizing and Psikyo. It kind of felt like a friendly intro to a Raizing game with the 1 million extend bonuses. I haven't really played any Raizing games to much extent personally but I had a good time. Colorful and busy game. Though, I only had a few hours to play but I'll probably revisit it sometime. The bosses were cool.

Xexex I am loving. I have a soft spot for Konami shmups I guess. It is still unreal to me that I've spent 100 hours playing Gradius IV, a game that is underappreciated on this forum but you can see I feel a bit at home with Xexex, another Konami shmup. Xexex is just oozing with goodness, the backgrounds and music are amazing, the game kind of feels like Salamander 2 which was released close to Xexex, but a little bit more busy with the flint system. The flint is pretty amazing too, after a while she's like a buddy you can count on (SPOILERS!!!!). It gives me a feeling of smugness, just turtling behind those tentacles. I like the array of weapons, but search laser can go to hell. Not a big fan of that one, leaves you very venerable in the hyperspace stage when popcorn rushes you.

The stages are classic, the hyper space stage reminsicent of a Gradius high-speed stage. Coming in and out of hyper space creates some tension too, like an intense chase! Konami presentation value for ya. The stages are more alien, which reflects R-Type a bit more than Gradius. Frankly, I'm kind of surprised at the originality of the stages. Xexex is a labor of love so they say. In stage 3 you can almost feel the waterfalls dashing off the visor of the flintlock.

So what's up STGT? And what's up newcomers to the forum? Been seein' the lots of ya for this tourney!

[CptRansom]

I wasn't a huge fan of Cyvern. Xexex is pretty fun and I can see myself playing it even after this week is over. I wish I had time to play more, though. Work is really kicking my ass this year. =( I spent about an hour on Cyvern, and I've maybe spent an hour and a half on Xexex. Here's to hoping I can find more time in upcoming weeks!

[clp]

Cyvern is a great game for stgt , decent scoring system for people to improve on but nothing to complex to drown people new to the game . Xexex is a terrible choice for stgt the fact it shits out random 1ups varying in every game makes it mildly unfair .

[sirmax]

Didn't like Cyvern at first, but now I'm really into it. It's quite hard, it makes my stresslevels go crazy, but that's something I can cope with after hours of training. Unfortunately the exact opposite is Xexex. I hated it the instant I saw it and I'm going to hate it 'til the end of time, mostly because of the mobile ground-to-air enemies, which are able to walk thorugh solid walls and "you die, you lose all your stuff"-gameplaymechanic.

[Battletoad]

Cyvern is great. I haven´t played much Raizing (just a very little bit of Garegga and Batrider), but Cyvern´s score system was very fun, perhaps even a little better. At least for now, I favor the stationary medals and the fact that you can choose which ones you uncover. It´s quite a hard game, but the permanent extends and the encouragement to use your bombs make it more motivating than frustrating. The bosses are awesome, very hard though.

I didn´t have great expectations for Xexex, but first it turned out it´s not bad. The flint is fun to use and the first two stages (as well as level 4) are ok, though not offering too much replay value. But when it comes to the free vertical scrolling in stage 3 and 5, I just hate the game, become frustrated and don´t have any fun at all. What a jump of difficulty... There´s enemies everywhere which want to jump on you, bullets coming from outside the screen (kiss my ass) and the visibilty of the direction you´re heading is too less. To me the flint is a little too passive, often it doesn´t attack an enemy that is quite close. The boss fight in stage 3 was horrible at first. I have mastered it quite fast, but what the hell... the control feels sooo sloppy because of the vertical scrolling and the lack of foreground objects to get a feeling where the hell you and the dragon are moving. It should never ever be that way in any shmup. Of course the random extra lives are a bad joke. You could really use (score based) extends because you´re not as badly powered down as in the Gradius series.

[njiska]

I've played neither title before and was pleasantly surprised by Cyvern even though I had very little time with it. The Raizing style power-ups, Raiden Fighters style medal system and the condition based level bosses melded nicely to create a fun, though hardly original, play experience. The only real problem I had was my inability to figure out the dragon's hit box location. Felt like it was longer than it was wide and almost seemed to shuffle a little when you were in side-to-side motion. Probably going to go back and play more when the tourny is over.

Xexex on the other hand has reminded me why I hate many Konami shmups. Half the weapons feel completely useless and speed power ups are too prevalent and must be avoided at all costs. Even worse is the fucking one hit kill walls. I hate these things with a rabid passion. It almost feels cheap that I can survive a whole stage of enemy onslaught only to die at the last moment because I had too much speed and a quick tap drove me into a wall. The octo-pod is kind of a neat feature and introduces a number of ways to play, but ultimately it fails to save a title that could be a lot better. Sad to see a hybrid of Gradius and R-Type produced a such a sterile, deformed hybrid.

Also what the hell with the wild difficulty jump in Stage 3?

Here's hoping Week 3 brings us some gold.

[Skykid]

Cyvern is like some bastard child of Psikyo and Raizing, with a touch Raiden Fighters thrown in for good measure. I'm not sure how much I enjoyed it - it was a punishingly hard game and the rank was extremely frustrating. What I considered to be a meagre score got me into my team's top three, so that goes to show just how painful it was.

Still I enjoy a challenge and it had plenty, but I can't see myself going back to it.

Xexex has grown from being dull into being great fun for me. I can sort of look past the duff extend system simply because I've never once yet received an extend

But I like the learning curve, the visuals and the atmosphere of the game, and enjoy finding ways of making the pod effective. I can see why some people don't love it, but I don't think hate is warranted.

[Bananamatic]

Cyvern was pretty cool and not too complex

Not even going to try Xexex because I hate these gradiuslike hori shmups.

[Herr Schatten]

Cyvern was great, excellent choice for a tournament, too. The scoring system is intuitive and easy to get into, while it's hard to master. That's exactly how it should be. I'm not a big fan of all the boss milking, though.

Xexex is just a terrible game. Random extends aside, the difficulty jumps all over the place (stage 3 being much more difficult than stage 4, for example), most of the weapons are fancy-looking useless crap. Worst of all: Why are enemies allowed to shoot me from off screen? I also don't get why Xexex is usually ragarded as beautiful. I think the visuals look utterly terrible. They are a poor mish-mash of different styles. While most Gradius games (bar V) feature wildly different level themes, they still always feel like they are part of the same world. In Xexex, there's no coherency whatsoever.

[Davey]

I didn't have time to play Cyvern last week. It sounds like something I might have (gasp!) actually enjoyed.

I probably could squeeze in some time to play Xexex this week, but I think it's pretty much the antithesis of what I like in a shmup.

[Battletoad]

I also don't get why Xexex is usually ragarded as beautiful. I think the visuals look utterly terrible. They are a poor mish-mash of different styles. While most Gradius games (bar V) feature wildly different level themes, they still always feel like they are part of the same world. In Xexex, there's no coherency whatsoever.

That´s exactly what I thought.

[njiska]

I also don't get why Xexex is usually ragarded as beautiful. I think the visuals look utterly terrible. They are a poor mish-mash of different styles. While most Gradius games (bar V) feature wildly different level themes, they still always feel like they are part of the same world. In Xexex, there's no coherency whatsoever.

That´s exactly what I thought.

Seconded. It has about as much consistency as a Parodius title, only without the justification.

[THE]

I also don't get why Xexex is usually ragarded as beautiful. I think the visuals look utterly terrible. They are a poor mish-mash of different styles. While most Gradius games (bar V) feature wildly different level themes, they still always feel like they are part of the same world. In Xexex, there's no coherency whatsoever.

I always considered Xexex more as a presentation of video game art. The inconsistency is clearly on purpose. The game itself can't be taken to serious...the Asian manga style and the R-Type stage (final stage) are awesome though...back in it's time it was a technical masterpiece too, cool fx and stuff.

[Kollision]

Cyvern was brutal but fun, I wish I had had more time with it.

And Xexex is pure gorgeous.
Theme consistency aside, it's just beautiful to look at. I'm really not being able to play it as much as i'd like this week, but I'll surely get back to it when STGT is over.

[TrevHead (TVR)]

Cyvern was allot of fun Im certainly gonna return to it after the tourney. Scoring and balancing my banish is a bitch to do but makes it more intresting imo.

Xexex on the other hand is a mixed bag, hate the off screen bullets and random lives bullshit but really like the overall presentation and flint / power up mechanics. Travelling thru fabiously detailed and varied levels is something that a hori does really well, Something i dont get to see much of as i mostly play verts.

[Vyxx]

Xexex was way ahead of its time and is an absolutely gorgeous shmup, although it does have it's problems.

[robivy64]

Xexex was way ahead of its time and is an absolutely gorgeous shmup, although it does have it's problems.

Agreed.

It's a shame that the PCB is so finicky, otherwise I would have it in my collection. All XEXEX PCBs will experience sound failure at some point (and a majority already have).

[Bananamatic]

Was Cyvern really that hard? It always seemed like the stages were no problem, but the bosses ate lives like crazy. Also never realized what actually makes you drop your chain.

Dunno how would it compare to Dimahoo in that way...which was the expected game for that week.

[njiska]

It's a shame that the PCB is so finicky, otherwise I would have it in my collection. All XEXEX PCBs will experience sound failure at some point (and a majority already have).

Is this a failure that can be repaired by replacing a chip, or once it dies is it dead?

Also never realized what actually makes you drop your chain.

Miss a ground unit. I know for certain you'll lose it if you don't destroy the unit, but i'm not 100% certain if you will lose your chain if you just miss the medal.

[VorpalEdge]

Also never realized what actually makes you drop your chain.

Letting a medal drop offscreen.

Cyvern was fun. Xexex I liked at first, then started to hate as soon as I had to play it, and now it's growing on me again. Who knows where it'll end up. I'm still disappointed that this week wasn't dangun feveron main mode though. :(

[mesh control]

Cyvern was a pleasant surprise and a great introduction to a MAME noob. I really liked the Raizing-ish boss battles, and the patterns really reminiscent of Psikyo games. Can't say that I'll go back to it after the STGT.

I'm a huge Xexex fan, so I was very excited when I found out that Xexex was repeat(very clever)week's game.

Not much else to say.

[Dave_K.]

Cyvern: awesome choice, fun week improving my old score, and watching others get pretty far.

Xexex: terrible choice, too many problems, the only good thing is that now its not eligible for any future STGTs.

[TLB]

Cyvern I like and don't like at the same time. Weird, fun-ish game, but I don't think I'm coming back to it.

Xexex is annoying.

[Sasupoika]

Cyvern liking,
Xexex hating.

[Octopod]

I liked Cyvern but it is hard as hell. I only made it to stage 3 once. *sigh*

Xexex not so much. The randomness of the extends is very annoying. Once I got two extends off the bat on the first stage, most of the time I get none. I am not getting far in this game either. I am just not good at these games I guess.

[MX7]

Cyvern is amazing. I've really been getting into Psikyo games, and this feels like a Psikyo game with every extends and a more complicated scoring system, which is the stuff of dreams for me. Alas alak, I only had an hour and a half to play it.

As sod's law would have it, I have had a full free week to play Xexex, which is glitchy, unbalanced, unfun, and frankly unfinished. But still, the music and sound effects are great, and the the rapey cut scenes alleviate frustration.

I hope there's a good, solid vert next week

[lgb]

Cyvern is kinda eh, I don't want to play it. Xexex is one of the best STGT picks ever. The next person to complain about random extends is getting mentally blown to bits because you, are, not, really, playing, this, game.

Xexex and (X-Multiply) are the kind of games that make me go "fuck 'solid' yet still broken but boring boring boring verts". You want a REAL vert? Let's fucking play KUUGA next week.

Oh and another thing, learn to throttle.

In Xexex, there's no coherency whatsoever.

and there isn't supposed to be

the Asian manga style

orz

[kernow]

I thought they both sucked balls but it was good to play them to find out, thanks STGT

[Kyper]

I didn't put in as much time into Cyvern as I wanted to. But with the little time I did play, I found it enjoyable. I like the medal collecting and having to balance/plan out your use of the banish attack.

This week I'm playing a little more. After some credit-feeding/save state practice with Xexex in the first few days, I felt like I would see a bunch of 1st loop clears pop up on the scoreboard. It doesn't seem too hard to me once you overcome the ''cheap crap" factor (which I honestly can't seem to find as often as others). Hopefully I can get a 1st loop clear in time.

[lgb]

they find the cheap crap factor (which helps them), then they call the game cheap because they then refuse to seriously play the game without finding one which means they hate the game because it's random, or something; but this totally sounds (il)logical