Sounds fairly free-roaming, the playstation blog post said 'metroidvania' elements, physics, and shows some pretty Itano circus inspired missiles.
Made by the Skulls of the Shogun team.
I think it's looking pretty good, I just hope there's something more interesting to fight other than tiny angular boxy things. The animating screen showing the lava reminded me a bit of PixelJunk Shooter but it doesn't look like it's focusing on the fluid physics as much as that.
Making an action platformer with a transforming grappling hook: ChainStaff. Also made a shmup with multi-ships: Shoot 1UP DX, and more .
It looks ok and apparently the main effort is aimed at giving the enemies strong and complicated AI, guaranteed euroshmup but might be interesting.
The usual 'reinventing the genre' spiel it has attached to it is a big turn-off for me though, they're acting like this is the first modern take on shoot 'em ups since Gradius and the 1980s.
I'll cut them some slack on that since apparently it's an indie studio, but still.
Edit: game is also very similar to "Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet" that came out about a year ago, which makes the spiel even stranger
ciox wrote:
The usual 'reinventing the genre' spiel it has attached to it is a big turn-off for me though, they're acting like this is the first modern take on shoot 'em ups since Gradius and the 1980s.
I know, I know, that sort of broad "no one has touched the genre in 30 years, so we'll take up the mantel" is definitely off-putting in as much as it doesn't acknowledge all the other games that came before it and claimed (and/or done) similar things. But hey, maybe they can deliver on the big talk with something fun in the end!
Making an action platformer with a transforming grappling hook: ChainStaff. Also made a shmup with multi-ships: Shoot 1UP DX, and more .
I think there needs to be a new rule that any game developer claiming to "Reinvent the genre" needs to either post here explaining themselves or have all threads related to their games locked .. >_>
Udderdude wrote:I think there needs to be a new rule that any game developer claiming to "Reinvent the genre" needs to either post here explaining themselves or have all threads related to their games locked .. >_>
I'm inclined to agree, but I think including free exploration as well as metroidvania elements counts as reinventing.
BryanM wrote:You're trapped in a haunted house. There's a ghost. It wants to eat your friends and have sex with your cat. When forced to decide between the lives of your friends and the chastity of your kitty, you choose the cat.
I watched the gameplay video, it looks like a complete sloppy mess. And it looks like it controls more like asteroids ..
Kind of reminds me of Sub-Terrania on the Genesis, actually. Except executed far worse. So no, not reinventing anything or really doing anything new. Sorry.
Let's see...
HP bar... Inertia... 'Physics'... 'AI'... I also expect that attacks are not really fully avoidable either... 'reinventing the genre'... And i don't see any hint of scoring either...
Ew, POS in the best case, and i would not even talk about worst case.
Not realy twin stick, is it?
To be fair, according to the hype it's not meant to rehash coin-op experience; just to have this kind of twitchy controls. Sounds like Starscape to me.
The rear gate is closed down
The way out is cut off
Game is starting to look really great — the physics and weapons effects look fun to toy around with, and the enemy AI seems to add a unique angle to the game. You can be stealthy if you want, or herd enemies into opposing factions. New video:
ciox wrote:
>'reinventing the genre'
>it's an indie studio.
Those are two terrifying keywords already. Most of studio that throw these buzzwords usually don't really know this genre and make stuffs that is not up to par most of the time.
I know i am really bi-assed by saying so but let's save the final verdict until i get to try it.
(also, -5 point for using Japanese language for title name while they are based in USA)
I've read some interviews with the developer. He has actually lived in Japan, and did so while working on Rez. He also mentioned a love for classic mecha anime. So he's not just some nobody throwing Japanese around, as far as I can tell. Also, while he did seem a bit dismissive of traditional scrolling shooters, the manner in which he did so was much more hopeful than "these games suck": he was coming from a position of "I've played a lot of scrolling shooters, I've played a lot of bullet hell shooters. I don't want to play them anymore and I don't want to make a traditional shooter because there are already so many out there and I don't want to further saturate the genre."
Time will tell if this is a good game, but just from watching videos, I think it looks to play great. It'll come down to whether the roguelike nature of it is fully fleshed out and sits well with everything else.
Last edited by Special World on Sat Aug 16, 2014 3:55 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Special World wrote:I've read some interviews with the developer. He has actually lived in Japan, and did so while working on Rez. He also mentioned a love for classic mecha anime. So he's not just some nobody throwing Japanese around, as far as I can tell. Also, while he did seem a bit dismissive of traditional scrolling shooters, the manner in which he did so was much more hopeful than "these games suck": he was coming from a position of "I've played a lot of scrolling shooters, I've played a lot of bullet hell shooters. I don't want to play them anymore because there are already so many out there and I don't want to further saturate the genre."
Time will tell if this is a good game, but just from watching videos, I think it looks to play great. It'll come down to whether the roguelike nature of it is fully fleshed out and sits well with everything else.
Ah! that was good reason then! hopefully this will plays well.
"Roguelike" has long since passed the threshold of meaningless marketing buzzword. This will probably be yet another vapid, disposable indie "experience" that creatively writes too many checks it can't cash.
I was watching the trailer and could barely see shit. I suppose it would be interesting if it was just one level (even then, it'd be a pain in the ass) but I'm not too sure I like what I see.
BryanM wrote:You're trapped in a haunted house. There's a ghost. It wants to eat your friends and have sex with your cat. When forced to decide between the lives of your friends and the chastity of your kitty, you choose the cat.
Galak-Z releases August 4th on PS4, devs just revealed you can transform into a MECH and throw shit around + slice with sword, looks like a lot of fun,
Usually I'm right there with shmups forum on "meh, another popular shmup that just doesn't get it," but this game looks so damned good. Really excited.
"Beyond its technical merits, I'm also intrigued by what it brings to the admittedly over-saturated roguelike genre. It's a highly technical and extremely difficult shooter with a very small margin for error, but its action is much more elegant than the average indie roguelike; and once you get the hang of it, it's quite amazing what you can pull off."
According to Eurogamer the mech can also parry shots with its sword, which should be pretty great.
Anyway, the game looks interesting so far, I don't know what I was on about earlier.
BryanM wrote:You're trapped in a haunted house. There's a ghost. It wants to eat your friends and have sex with your cat. When forced to decide between the lives of your friends and the chastity of your kitty, you choose the cat.
Been playing this pretty heavily for the last two days. I think it's really quite good, and definitely not at all Euroshmuppy.
For starters though: Yes it does have roguelike elements, no it does not have scoring, and no it is not a traditional shooter. I loathe the typical Western shooter output as much as anyone here, because I think most Western shooters completely miss the point. But I don't think Galak-Z goes about things like, say, Sine Mora, which tries to ape a Japanese style without the skill or know-how to pull things off. Galak-Z is very much its own game, and it accomplishes everything it does very well.
The gameplay is completely rock solid and really fun. There's a good bit of depth to it, too, as there should be in any proper space dogfighting game. Because that's more what Galak-Z is: A 2D space dogfighting game. Everything's really streamlined and well laid out, but sometimes in the heat of battle my hands flub up all over the place because, well, any dogfighting game needs to be a little complex. You're thrusting, boosting, reversing, locking on with missiles, strafing, juking, firing, etc, all at the same time, and things can get really crazy when there's more than one or two enemies onscreen. Plus, that's without even considering that you can transform back and forth between the ship and the mech at will.
I really enjoy the stealth element as well. That's probably something that sets off a red flag for a lot of people, but I think in the past few years games have overcome "hard stealth" and settled on a sort of soft stealth where you can use it when you want, and ignore it when you want. It gels really well with the roguelike elements, because you're not sure what kind of ships you'll be up against. When you draw close, colored arrows will alert you which faction you'll be up against (bugs, imperials, raiders, etc), but not what size the ship is. So you give yourself one last boost and drift forward through space, because if you speed right in they'll hear you. And if you see that it's too much to go up against, you give yourself light backwards thrust and (hopefully) make an undetected retreat. Your ship has a noise indicator bubble and enemy ships have vision cones, so it's a nice little system that isn't horribly intrusive. And when you do fight, things are fastpaced, fluid, and fun. It's a great combat system.
As for the Roguelike elements, they're pretty light. There are randomly designed levels with randomly placed obstacles and powerups. There's not a ton of different assets, but everything that's there works well and each element feels well-planned. Plus there really are a lot of different powerups to keep things interesting, and the mech mixes up gameplay as much or as little as you want. I prefer the game how it is, because if it were just a straight, tightly-designed game in this style, going through levels and checkpoints would get kind of repetitive. It would turn into "Okay, I sneak past here, get this thing, then fight this small group of enemies." As things are, it's pretty dynamic and keeps you on your toes. There are five "seasons" to play through, and each season is a series of five levels with a boss at the end.
I know these forums are pretty rigid with what they want out of shooting games, and I definitely sympathize with that. But Galak-Z does its own thing, and it does it well. I'm not a proponent of games like Sine Mora, Really Big Sky, etc, which try to "re-invent" the genre while screwing up the fundamentals. Galak-Z is doing its own thing, from a couple of different genres. And it does them with flair and, most importantly, solid foundational mechanics. A lot of thought has gone into this game, and it really shines in the moment-to-moment shooting.
I'll also say that the devs weren't fucking around—the enemy AI is really great. They take evasive maneuvers, shoot at where the player is going to be, and retreat when their shields are popped if they have backup. And each enemy ship type has its own weapon and movement patterns; the void raiders can be particularly crazy when they race at you with their short-range shotguns.
Yes and no. It's 60 fps but highly variable, with a lot of significant dips (of the framerate drop rather than the slowdown variety) when there's a lot going on onscreen. It also occasionally hitches for one or two seconds.
Yeah, the game's smooth but then every once in a while it'll hiccup. At one point I was getting a ton of stutter and I don't know why. That was the worst it got though. It's not an ever-present thing, or even something that will always happen when a bunch of action is onscreen, but it does happen every once in a while.
