cigsthecat wrote:bloodflowers, I'm dying to know- what's your favorite game?
Actually at the moment, Midnight Club 3. Online, I'm one of the scary sharks that people will avoid playing because odds are high that they'll lose every single race of 20 or more. Even most of the other high rankers avoid me like the plague now, totally unstoppable when on form, and dangerous when not. There's about 5 people out of the 35,000 registered players who I have a problem with, even then the wins get dispersed. People who haven't played this with fast cars online will find it hard to believe, but this is almost twitch gaming.
However, the above is blatantly off topic bragging. Favourite shmup? Such a hard decision... Right now it's Mushihimesama - the different play modes bring so much extra to the table, it looks nice and sounds great. Other ones off the top of my head that I feel are special, would be Espgaluda, Battle Bakraid, Gradius V, Imperishable Night and Gigawing. You'll notice while all these need memorisation to conquer, you can still play them and just react to the game without totally failing. People might point at Gradius V as a memorisation game, but it really isn't - at any point there's usually only one or two ways you /can/ go, either physically or because the alternatives are clearly wrong from a point in time judgement - ditto R-Type games which get the same accusation. When I do remember things, I prefer to remember specific sections, I'm unable to memorise an entire level, and I don't even like to try. Strangely this is actually how I play MC3 too - I don't remember the tracks or the entire city, but I remember individual places and corners, and as I see them I know which ways I can go. There's the key thing again - seeing and reacting. In some Psikyo games, unless you're pre-positioned for some enemies that aren't even there yet, you're going to get screwed by them. I still play a lot of old stuff too though, including the mid 80s crowd such as Dragon Breed.
Oh, good music is essential too - I can't zone into a game unless the soundtrack is good - muting the music sees me deader than a dead thing in most games, pretty quickly (this is actually true).
What's yours?