I think I hate traditional shmups now

[Ganelon]

Indeed, backgrounds are rarely a threat in verts while there's constantly the rock formation jutting out from the top and bottom in horiz that threaten to blow your ship up.

Anyway, I thought only bosses and mid-bosses used bullet sprays? Or maybe I'm not understanding the term correctly.

[Super Mega C]

I've been playing Gunbird2 quite a bit for the past couple days and two of the things that make dodging the bullet sprays so hard are, one: the bullets in the sprays change direction and cross over each other, this maks pinpointing a path through the spray extremely difficult, and two: multiple sprays together or even worse dodging through a spray as the boss or sub boss fires aimed shots at you . Yet despite all this and even though I play it on level 7 it never feels cheep to me. I always feel that maybe if I had been just a little bit faster or a little more skilled I could have made it. Also learn to use all your weapons on the fly. Don't just shoot and use a bomb every once in a while. Learn to use the charge shot and close range attack also. Personally I find that thinking of the bomb as a panic button helps a lot in getting the most out of it's use.

[zimeon]

It seems that most posters here have been attempting to categorize verticals. Horizontals, which are a whole other major division, deserve their own sub-categories separate from how we see the verts.

My categorization was apart from the hori/vert aspect. Theoretically speaking, I see no reason to separate verts from horis when it comes to bullet threat.

Although I admit it's more normal with background (or scroll-) threat in horis, I see no reason why a vert could not contain this aspect. As a matter of fact, System 3's Dominator for the C64 was exactly this: a "crash"-vert in which the enemies themselves and the background was a much greater threat than any bullets.

And I have seen quite some horis with coordinated bullet patterns. No need to tie them to verts.

Anyway, I thought only bosses and mid-bosses used bullet sprays? Or maybe I'm not understanding the term correctly.

What I personally mean with "bullet sprays" in my post is the sort of bee-swarm, a chunk of bullets you're supposed to avoid as one; a chunk impossible to dodge through. A lot of non-bosses in Gigawing 2 uses bullet sprays.

[GaijinPunch]

The original poster was mainly stating that it felt strange going from a Cave shmup to Gunbird 2. I used what categorizations there that not everybody agreed with. Putting Gunbird into the same category as Ketsui or ESPGaluda just ain't going to happen though.