For their indy gamer column this month Eurogamer focused on shmups. The article mainly focuses on kenta cho's games, but it has some great general shmup discussion as well
While it is one of the simplest sorts of games imaginable, your response is so primal that the shooter is also the one that lends itself best to writing about in pure purple prose. Hell, I've even written (bad) beat poetry about Defender. As you dance between hell's own raindrops, a clarity consumes you, much like the elation of doing that people like surfers or snowboarders laud. There's an irony that this feeling of oneness with the universe makes Shmups, despite a deathcount which rivals the average pandemic, the most spiritually affecting games in existence.
The author of the article wrote, as a concluding line wrote: If you haven't played a Shmup in years, do yourself a favour, and remind yourself of this simple fact.
An afternoon Zen-apocalypse will do you good.
For great justice
"The only desire the Culture could not satisfy from within itself was one common to both the descendants of its original human stock and the machines [...]: the urge not to feel useless."
