Which shooters click with you?

[Illyrian]

Dimahoo - I like the medieval design, and I never get tired of hearing "WORRY! WORRY! BE CAREFUL!" or "HERE COMES...THE SOMEONE!" or "GET THE BAAAWWWMB!"
Also the music is really badass, especially the Gigafacer music.

Pink Sweets Arrange - So damn satisfying, brilliant mixture of scoring and survival, and the voice acting on the final boss is fucking hilarious with the "BOMBBAAA! BOMBAAA! BOMBAAA! HADOU----GUN!!" Superbly fun game and the best arrange mode ever!

Futari Black Label (original/Maniac) - the scoring systems are so tight, the mix of different elements is just perfect. My first arcade game clear, a brilliant experience

DFK on my ipod on the way to work and sometimes at home - my ride to work on the tube is 23 minutes. DFK 1.5 is a 23 minute 1cc roughly, and when I hit the second loop I continue that on my lunch break. I have found a new appreciation for this game since I got my iPod.

Same thing with Mushihimesama.

[Ruldra]

"HERE COMES...THE STRONG ONE!"

Fixed.

[TrevHead (TVR)]

Recca is terribly overrated.

I quite like Recca, one aspect that it is overated, is in its difficulty, as its quite easy for those who know how to use its shield and homing weapons correctly

Ild say that most shmups click with me to some degree but these games especially.

Rayforce / Kamui: I just love the lock on system.
Exceed 3rd Black Package: One of the few shmups that I got heavily into playing for score
Futari Original: I just love the bullet streaming in this game.
Crimson Clover: Kamui lock on, with an outrageous special fire, great bosses.
Mar Matrix: After trying to chain in DDP, this was a breath of fresh air.

[EPS21]

Ones that are character driven and have lolis

[Eaglet]

"WURRNING! WURRNING! BE CAREFUL!"

Fixed.

[Illyrian]

MY MIND IS BLOWN!

[Eaglet]

MY MIND IS BLOWN!

BOOOOOM!!!


OnT:
Ga-re-gguh.
Everything about it is just awesome; it's oppressive, it's deep, it's hard, it's badass, it's got Detroit techno, it's got Black Heart...
Yeah.

[Connor]

DeathSmiles IIX. Don't judge me.

[Ed Oscuro]

Odd Mobs is pretty cool, it's mostly about bomb management though. No horrendous scoring system to complicate things - just survive and try to shoot the most down / collect the most coins possible, so it's not merely survival.

Games that I want to like but end up being troublesome include XII Stag and Omega Fighter Special (with their insane sideways point-blanking score systems). Psyvariar seems pretty good and fun, though it's still too abstract in the looks department.

Raiden Fighters games are pretty cool - especially 2 and Jet, and the medals / Miclus / fairy stuff is overwhelming at times. I'm not sure why I like these, but I do. However, the default ships are pretty worthless. Sometime I will try playing through with Chaser 2000, though.

I don't enjoy many horizontal shooters, but I enjoy Sengoku Blade quite a bit. Bloodreign has been trying to get me interested in Taito shooters generally, but we tend to emphasize totally different ones. Still, games like Insector X and some really colorful one from Namco with an annoying powerup shop system that is hard to get into, but not terrible. These appear to be more intent on telling stories and being pretty, but that's not a mark against them. It's worthwhile to try out types of games I would normally not think to play, and incorporate those with ones I do - Chuka Taisen, Mega Blast on the one hand; Ryu Jin and Fighting Hawk on the other.

Strikers 1945 Plus (the Neo Geo one in horizontal format, vertically scrolling) actually is starting to ingratiate itself with me, after I dissed it years ago for looking terrible (lol). It does look terrible - the color and detail conversion did not work well for the Neo Geo, which has plenty of good looking prerendered 3D and hand-drawn games, but it seems to do better with more saturated palettes and stronger outlines. Sengoku 3 / 2001, which I dissed for similar reasons, is far ahead in the looks department. Selecting Ascender is a pain, too. Whatever the case may be, Plus plays much better than I had given it credit for. Speaking of SNK, I have been messing around with Chopper 1 / Air Cavalry (what's up with early SNK games being "(name of armed vehicle) 1" ?) - totally memorization based, and oh god the shot noise is terrible, especially with autofire. Still interesting though. I much prefer Sky Soldiers and Sky Adventure, of course.

Need to get back in touch with some console shooties.

[Hagane]

Sengoku Blade: just like most Psikyo games it has simple rules, that are really hard to master and make for a complex game. Scoring is subtly done and very well integrated with the game's mechanics; a lot of games encourage you to take risks just to make it more likely for you to lose a life, giving you higher multipliers / score in exchange for a risky action; Blade forces you to take risks (get in close) in exchange for higher firepower (in the form of powerful charge shots and / or much higher fire rate), which in turn lets you kill things faster to make extra enemies come out (that can boost your score a lot).

This also has a strange but really nice side effect; you are actually safer taking this "risky" approach all the time (being able to kill dangerous enemies fast obviously makes survival easier) if you can execute things well, but any tiny fuck up at that range can mean a quick death. So you can occasionally get in close to dispatch that huge annoying enemy and then back off for a safer approach, or you can stay on the offensive most of the time and get higher scores as a result with not many threats if you do things right, but mess up a bit and you'll die due to the fast aimed bullets, especially on the second loop.

Speaking about the second loop, suicide bullets in Blade are a very nice scoring mechanic. You can either take a safer approach and not shoot the popcorns that fill the screen with suicide bullets (which will hurt your score but make survival easier), or kill them and risk getting trapped in an inescapable pattern if you do it at a wrong time / place.

Another thing I like is the character variety (one of the things that I love about Raizing games too). Every character has a very different type of shot, bomb, charge shot properties and charge time, etc. And the strategies for each of them are usually very very different. Games with little ship variety tend to bore me.

High bullet speed is also a plus.

Despite all that tl;dr I'm quite open minded when it comes to shooters. But Psikyo games in general and that one in particular just perfectly fit with me in most aspects.

[Cuilan]

Deathsmiles
Deathsmiles 2X
Trouble Witches Neo
Mushihime-sama Futari 1.5
Senko no Ronde Rev.X
Senko no Ronde DUO
Noiz2sa
Space Giraffe
Raiden Fighters Jet

[Ed Oscuro]

Sengoku Blade: just like most Psikyo games it has simple rules, that are really hard to master and make for a complex game. Scoring is subtly done and very well integrated with the game's mechanics; a lot of games encourage you to take risks just to make it more likely for you to lose a life, giving you higher multipliers / score in exchange for a risky action; Blade forces you to take risks (get in close) in exchange for higher firepower (in the form of powerful charge shots and / or much higher fire rate), which in turn lets you kill things faster to make extra enemies come out (that can boost your score a lot).

I didn't realize that it had something in common with caravan modes. You're right though...thanks for that tip

[silvergunner]

Zanac Neo. Although it's one of the PSX games broken on the PS2 (extra laggy controls), I could play it literally all day long, with said input lag.

Which controller in use?

I play the game on the Ps2(Slim) too and I don`t have this problem.
Use the Sega Saturn Controller for Ps1/Ps2

[mesh control]

Controller doesn't matter, the lag is created by the PS2's emulation.

[Obiwanshinobi]

A regular DualShock 2 (vibrations are actually useful in Zanac Neo). Maybe, just maybe Neo isn't laggy on EVERY PS2 (some of such incompatibilities are model-specific), but yeah, the controller shouldn't have anything to do with it. My PS2 is SCPH-7704 PAL (slim with an external PSU).
Mind you, the 8-bit Zanacs (Special Version included) are NOT laggy on my setup; it's just Neo. Out of curiosity I tried it with the PS2 texture filtering as well (looked ugly as expected and glitchy at that, and the lag was still there).
Another PSX shump I laggy on my PS2 was Strikers 1945 (Japanese) and some people reported this being the case with Night Raid played on their PS2s (I've only played it on ePSXe).

[Kiken]

Another PSX shump I laggy on my PS2 was Strikers 1945 (Japanese) and some people reported this being the case with Night Raid played on their PS2s (I've only played it on ePSXe).

Night Raid for me is laggy on both my J-PS2 and my Debug Station (which you figure, if anything, it shouldn't be laggy on a debug console).

[neorichieb1971]

Esp rade, Viper Phase 1, Flying Shark are my favourite 3. Battle Bakraid comes in 4th, Mushimesama 5th.

[Zengeku3]

Ketsui. The only scoring system I've truly enjoyed working on. Playing for score in Ketsui makes it so much more entertaining even though I probably don't have a clue about what I'm doing. I dunno, my record going out of Stage 1 is around 16 million. Stage 2 is about 37 million. 65 million after Stage 3. Haven't done too much practice on S4. Its hard to gather the motivation to practice scoring for me. Even if its a system I find enjoyable. I enjoy playing a lot of different games instead.

The thing about Ketsui's system that makes it appealing as opposed to DOJ's is that it doesn't feel as 'all or nothing' as that game. No chain that suddenly breaks because i killed enemies too fast. The DDP systems are badass but they just come off as frustrating to me.

Other shooters that just clicks with me would be the Touhou games. I have multiple reasons to grudge them as they have many flaws in my opinion but they still have an appeal to them that overrules those flaws for the most part.

[MovingTarget]

I'm so in love with the whole style of Esprade. Even despite me running into so many bullets and enemies for reasons I don't understand. Hopefully some day soon i'll learn to avoid the stupid deaths in this game, because its just so awesome I don't want to hate it.

[Jeneki]

I like score systems that reward taking down enemies fast. Also medal chainging, not sure why but I love grabbing stuff. Stuff like Raiden Fighters or Dangun Feveron appeal to me a lot.

[cools]

I like my shooters like I like my women: beautiful, unpredictable and unforgiving.

Ibara.

[CptRansom]

Long post because I'm bored at work and I feel like it. Feel free to skip this shit; it won't hurt my feelings at all.

Games that click for me from the beginning because they're easy to pick up and play:
Raiden I-IV - Shoot things, don't die, don't bomb, pick up shiny stuff. Fuck yeah. (Okay, III and IV add in the multiplier for speed kills which starts to feel suspiciously like chaining, but it isn't anywhere close to being as all-or-nothing as a DDP game.) I'm not good at these games at all, but that's more for lack of practice than being unable to grasp the scoring systems.

Futari 1.5/BL - Already been discussed almost to death, but Original (and Ultra, but I never play it because I can't beat the first stage without lolbombspam) is awesome in how simple it is. Maniac and God modes are fun too (but took me a little while to understand). It's more difficult to work with cashing in the multiplier, but it's pretty damned satisfying when I can do it right.

Mars Matrix - Just go play it.

Gradius/R-Type - I actually like the checkpoints because they really force me to learn the parts I have trouble with. Again, simple scoring mechanics are fun for me.

Eschatos - Original is easy to pick up, but can be quite difficult to master for scoring. Some of the waves are very difficult to completely shoot down, and the multiplier suffers for it. I can't say anything about Advanced because I haven't really played it.

Games that click because I've put a decent amount of time into figuring them out:
ESPGaluda/ESPGaluda II - These gave me a headache for a very long time, and then something clicked. Now they make sense, and they're a lot of fun. I'm going to be spending more time with both of these this year for sure.

Raiden Fighters JET - Great game, but the multiplier system takes some getting used to and a whole lot of practice to execute properly. The 10k medals at the end of the first stage can be a pain in the ass (sometimes, I can only get two of the three big tanks to trigger even though I'm sure I'm getting all the quick shots), and they're unfortunately pretty much necessary to score well.

Hellsinker - I still don't fully understand all the scoring mechanics, but I understand enough to make the game fun for me.

Games that won't click for me no matter how hard I try, but I can't seem to quit trying to force them to click because I feel like they SHOULD click for whatever reason (probably because I really WANT them to click for me):
Any DonPachi game - I understand the concept of chaining. It's simple. I just can't bring myself to actually do it. Playing for survival is difficult enough to be fun, but the scoring just eludes me.

Ketsui - My score is utter shit no matter what I do. I spent about 20-25 hours on this game, and my shitscore on the scoreboard here is the best I could do. Shit.

Crimzon Clover - Just... ugh.

Deathsmiles/MBL - Pretty much word-for-word copy of my thoughts on Ketsui. I just can't wrap my brain around effective scoring in this game. The recharge mechanics are evil but obviously necessary.

Garegga/Batrider/Bakraid - Aside from medal chaining, these games just never really clicked with me for score. I like the aesthetics and the challenge of just trying to survive them, though (despite knowing that I'm gimping my survival by my inability to score decently).

Ikaruga/Radiant Silvergun - See DonPachi above.

Reading over this, I've come to realize I spend most of my time trying to force myself to understand games that don't click. I should probably just give up on them and focus on getting better at the games that DO click with me instead. I think I just solved a lot of pent-up frustration with STGs through a really long post. Go me. Woo.

CLICKCLICKCLICKCLICKCLICKCLICKCLICKCLICKCLICKCLICKCLICKCLICKCLICKCLICK

[tinotormed]

Raiden Fighters series - Crazy bullet patterns, hi-intensity medal scoring, scoring objectives and Raiden-style sniper tanks make this series so much crazier. I do prefer the first two in terms of playthrough and JET when playing for score, although I haven't played through JET yet.

Caravan modes - I really enjoy the fast-paced actions of the Soldier series' caravan modes, where you kill stuff, time eye destructions before the boss, score faster, etc. Blade Buster included! All-time favorite is Super Star Soldier's 2-minute mode!

Strikers 1945 II - What makes this so much fun is the timing the medals by picking them up while they're shiny, the crazy boss patterns (although they take a while to practice before attempting a 1cc), and the Psikyo awesomeness!

Giga Wing - reflect + big ( ) score + bullet spams = CRAZINESS!

[iconoclast]

Any shooter that lets the player get really creative with scoring strategies tends to 'click' with me, I guess. Stuff like building a multiplier and cashing it in (Futari Maniac/God, Akai Katana Shin), manipulating bullets to cancel them most effectively (Espgaluda II, Akai Katana AC/Zetsu), leeching as many score items as possible off of enemies in Death Smiles 2, et cetera. I like simple games like Futari 1.5 Original as well, but I tend to get bored of them much faster.

[professor ganson]

Zanac Neo
Battle Garegga
Terra Cresta
Ibara
Shikigami no Shiro 2

and I absolutely love cute-em-ups!

[Special World]

Mushi Futari Black Label: Original mode is a no-nonsense eye-candy adrenaline rush that adapts to your skill as a player and rewards crazy risk. Maniac and God keep things relatively simple while offering bonkers bullet-canceling cash-ins.

Gate of Thunder: The ultimate in classic side-scrollers. Switching sidearms front-to-back-to-front is clean and original. The elegant weapon system is also praiseworthy, as the shots are perfectly balanced to their separate uses and never feel underpowered after death. Plus, keeping them at max rewards you with screen-clearing bombs.

Mars Matrix DC: A real ballbuster, but likely responsible for teaching me the joys of scoring. The shop shines, forcing you to eke out every millisecond of combo time to finally nab that next gallery pic, score attack stage, or replay. Mars Matrix is loaded with content to keep you coming back. The scoring system is original and works hand-in-hand with survival, playing toward the capabilities of you ship and feeling at once both crushingly strict and refreshingly open.

[Marurun]

ITA, it's a very addictive and well done mode, dare I say an improvement on 1.00/1.01. The main draw is that it's not damn near impossible like the original mode is (from stage 5 onward).

I think that's half the reason it clicks with me. As much as I like the non-arrange mode in PS it becomes so difficult later on(especially stage 5 and 6) that I don't feel like I'm having as much fun anymore. At least in PSA I'm able to get high scores - 6th place on the leaderboard so far. I need to post that in the high score section soon.

I remembered a couple other games that just click with me. Muchi Muchi Pork being one of them. There's something satisfying about collecting all the gold that makes me feel like some greedy pirate. The other game is Aero Fighters 2, the first arcade shmup I ever played. It's just charming to me in a way because of the nostalgia factor, but the quirkiness of the characters, short yet challenging levels, and giant, mechanical bosses never get old for me.

[Deca]

I do love me some caravan. I hope we get another one in this years STGT, they're really most fun with direct competition.

[Bananamatic]

Psyvariar/Homura: Because Skonec actually knew how to do intuitive non-anal scoring systems that don't require split second precision

[Special World]

I really wish modern companies were dedicated to doing justice to Caravan modes. Imagine if somebody released a no-nonsense Caravan shooter with 10 or so stages. It would be a blast. I don't even think it would be hard to do compared with what bullet hell devs are putting out these days.