BareknuckleRoo wrote:current gen pressures while trying to implement enough gaming nuance
Hahaha, what? I've seen early 90s shmups with better scoring systems than this steaming pile. It's especially bad seeing as how its special abilities are ripped off from games that had scoring designed specifically around their use! The reason this game is hated isn't because it's literally the worst shmup ever, it's because it's a painfully mediocre effort from a company that attempted to massively hype itself and should have really known better than to release it with so many glaring issues that you don't expect to see in a modern shmup.
This is exactly the sort of game I'd expect to see from someone who wants to make a shmup but has never actually played them seriously and has no idea how to implement good gameplay, so they just focus on the graphical side of things and hope nobody notices how badly unpolished the game itself is (which is usually a recipe for success if mainstream reviewers are anything to judge by >:/ ).
Your favourite thread.
You have played the game, correct? (Because I hadn't).
Pretentiousness I don't know about and don't agree with. Hipsterness the same - I wasn't actually aware any of that stuff was what the game was getting ribbed for, and I never heard the 'rebooting the genre' soundbyte. Under the circumstances, none of that stuff makes sense or is necessary, but in selling a shmup to a bunch of spoonfed childrens playing Call of Duty, I'm sure they figured the commercial hyperbole was a do or die thing. If they were marketing to us, for instance, they probably would have sold ten copies.
This dovetails into the game itself. Scoring who knows, there are plenty of opportunities in the structure to have implemented a decent system - if they didn't (and I haven't looked into it that far) then it's their loss. But what's leftover isn't as horrible as you make it sound. It plays and handles well enough, the bullet patterns and time manipulation aren't worthless gimmicks, and there's actually more going on in terms of dodging than your average current-gen 'hold-R-to-perform-incredible-acrobatics' chimpanzee is going to be able to deal with easily. So when you say these things:
painfully mediocre effort
It really doesn't come across that way.
It's especially bad seeing as how its special abilities are ripped off from games that had scoring designed specifically around their use!
Bad that they didn't do more with scoring mechanics (for diehards like us), but borrowing ideas is what creativity is all about.
This is exactly the sort of game I'd expect to see from someone who wants to make a shmup but has never actually played them seriously
Not entirely. I've played worse, believe you me - it doesn't appear to be an STG where the dev took zero influence from other examples in the genre. Suicide bullets on maniac, arcade mode, reasonably dense patterns, destructible boss appendages (tied to a timer mechanic) and Galuda's slo-mo. Some notes were taken, and it's not a disastrous stew, just perhaps one lacking a little flavour.
and has no idea how to implement good gameplay
Well it plays ok! Fairly good fun keeping the timer in check and finding things to shoot, loosing off missiles and slowing stuff down. It works as it should. Doesn't redefine the genre or shake up the world, but you can have some with what's there.
so they just focus on the graphical side of things and hope nobody notices how badly unpolished the game itself is
Lamenting the lack of a decent scoring system is a negative to highlight, but saying it's 'badly unpolished' is strangely inaccurate. We know what's missing, we know what it needs more of, we can see it's not perfect. But what they did do they worked on to a decent shine.
I should note, I've only played the demo - that's one full stage and one full maniac stage additionally. It might turn into a completely boring frustrating pile of nonsense if I ever tried to play it through.
But based on what I have played, it feels like we've gone way over the top in this thread. There are fuckload of Euroshmups that are worse than this.