Ok, tried the demo. It cuts you at around 11 minutes in the middle of the game. Do not like, would've preferred an end of stage cut.
I didn't spot any TAGES files within the demo unless they are installed somewhere else, I'm searching through my files though. Any help is welcomed.
My impressions regarding the whole menus and presentation: pretty damn slick. Now, it detects your locale and forces the language no matter what so I had it set in spanish without an option to put it english and whatnot. I appreciate it's in my own language, but my english is slowly getting rustier and rustier so I want to read and train myself as much as I can. Especially now that I'm learning japanese.
edit: the tutorial is also pretty terrible. The action get cuts suddenly. I would've preferred an html/image/text tutorial. There are videos you can technically watch but, since I don't appear to have the proper codecs (despite I installed that CCC pack with most codecs), I got a black screen.
The game isn't packed with achievements. It's freaking LOADED with them. In the first 5 minutes I got like 11 or more of them. Not gonna complain about this, it gives an instant sense of gratification, heh.
Now for the really bad: I had my regular, generic USB pad (a PS2-like with d-pad and no analogue sticks) and it didn't recognise any input. I put my USB 360 pad... and it did the same, despite being the obvious pad choice!
Whatever. Maybe it'll work next time.
Graphically, I have to agree and say the cover is a lie. There is no ship in there! It does indeed have an Osmos feel because you are a shiny ball that gets smaller the more you shoot... Music is fine, your typical euro fare, some nice guitars too nothing fancy. Backgrounds are really boring though. Rather than a hori, it feels like you are playing a tube shooter. It runs like a charm as well, so the requirements are bloated "just in case". XNA is (apparently) like that though, so better safe than sorry.
It's packed with modes and stuff but is definitely NOT for someone who plays CAVE games only or simply dislikes anything that hasn't nihonjin (yes, gratuitous japanese insert!) as the makers.
It's nothing to "wow" about really, but definitely not that bad either. As for western efforts, I liked Steel Saviour far more, as well as Söldner X (but I will NEVER forgive them for what they did to the PC).
Conclusion: if it weren't for this stupid TAGES scheme and DRM shit I would've already bought it just to show there is an increasing interesting in schmukmups on Steam and because I want Duality ZF, Score Rush and others jumping the bandwagon too.
It's a pity, but this game will be remembered more as an example on how to fuck up an indie release with DRM rather than for its time manipulation mechanic.
As it is now, I'll wait until they hammer down the price so I can stomach dealing with that retarded activation shit... That's what you get by signing a contract with the devil.
Last edited by Observer on Sat Jan 15, 2011 10:36 pm, edited 1 time in total.
NOW REACHES THE FATAL ATTRACTION BE DESCRIBED AS "HELLSINKER". DECIDE DESTINATION.
Tigershark wrote:Played it. Don't like it. Hate the inertia of your ship. There's no place for intertia in a proper shmup.
For a second i thought it was you trolling us in that steam forum thread but then i noticed hes Tigerhawk and youre Tigershark lol.
Conclusion: if it weren't for this stupid TAGES scheme and DRM shit I would've already bought it just to show there is an increasing interesting in schmukmups on Steam and because I want Duality ZF, Score Rush and others jumping the bandwagon too.
As it is now, I'll wait until they hammer down the price so I can stomach dealing with that retarded activation shit... That's what you get by signing a contract with the devil.
I probably wont buy this game no mattehow cheap it is because my loathing for TAGES DRM is greater then my desire to see shmups on steam (or atleast is is atm)
I suppose one good thing to come out of all this is that hopefully we will be seeing some xona games shmups on steam in the future karma is at work once again in the shmup world
Gamepad config is totally buggy. Won't detect anything past the first button you assign in the config screen. It finally started working after I tried configuring for the third time while the game had started.
First levels were so boring I couldn't take it anymore. Enemies did not fire on me even once. The idea that this game is a challenge is so laughable, I don't even know what those kiddies on the Steam forums are smoking.
Unbelivably boring backgrounds and music, etc.
I kind of liked the idea that your health is constantly going down and you need more bonus items to not die. It would be a good addition to a real shmup, with the health completely seperate from the usual one-hit-death mechanic.
Last edited by Udderdude on Mon Jan 17, 2011 5:40 pm, edited 2 times in total.
i hate being turned off to a game before i ever even get to the gameplay.
fget the mechanics and weird controls [inertia], this thing is just ugly.
why does this product exist?
hey guys, gimmickry defines GAMES NOUVEAU, and this (stupid) time travelling mechanic spared this thing a quiet, indie death.
kid aphex wrote:i hate being turned off to a game before i ever even get to the gameplay.
fget the mechanics and weird controls [inertia], this thing is just ugly.
why does this product exist?
hey guys, gimmickry defines GAMES NOUVEAU, and this (stupid) time travelling mechanic spared this thing a quiet, indie death.
fuck anyone who drops $$ on this game. fuck you for suggesting there's an audience for this kind of mess
To show how you can make people completely ignore a game (no matter how good or bad it is) and start a massive internet war on Ubisoft for putting DRM on a $10 title. With reason.
Either way, agreed on the pad config option not working properly. Perhaps this was already fixed in the full release.
Besides also pointing out the game costs the same as this one (840 yen is around $10~$11), is also provided digitally, has no DRM and can be purchased with PayPal.
edit: in fact, go buy Cloudphobia
NOW REACHES THE FATAL ATTRACTION BE DESCRIBED AS "HELLSINKER". DECIDE DESTINATION.
I would say cater casual shmup players. From my observations, in this forum only I am a casual shmup player.
There's no standards in shmups. Only what most people prefers.
Euroshmups are inferior, but not all of them sucks.
Jap shmups are superior, but not all of them great.
I know I probably can't convince you to give Zeit2 a change, but I wanted to let you know how the game actually plays and what you are right about and what are wrong assumtions.
First of the demo doesn't give you the slightest idea on how challenging the game get. The demo is actually very week and boring, but not so the full game. I guess the devs tried to do a compromise to reach casual players and hardcore players. Since the mechanics are so different the whole first level eases you in.
The arcade mode is not that challenging when you just try to get through. You can always startover where you left of and advanced players will probably get through that way after playing for 2 hours. [edit: when you try to get through all 16 levels AND the 4 bonus stages without dying its freaking hard. If one of you could do it they had my respect for sure. I am still struggeling to get through the bonus levels.]
What makes the game so challenging and lasting is:
- A clever bonus system that lets you push your high scores more and more.
- 70 challenges, some of them I am sure will take you days or even over a week to beat.
- Different game modes. Especially the wave mode and time limit mode are perfect for high score hunting and score squeezing
One of you guys I think said this game is mindless on the steam forum. It is the oposite of that. I never played a shmup that is more tactical. That is because of the way the time travel and your extra weapons work.
Well I could detail the mechanics and reasons why I think the game is so good but you are probably anyway just going to troll me haha. If you want to know my reasons let me know.
Ohh and for the inertia. You have to get used to the shield draging being you a little bit but there is almost no inertia to the actual ship in the center of the sphere and only that part hast to dodge bullets.
After all this game is very different to most shmups and you might not like it if you just like cave shmups but it is definitely an awesome game. The only thing I am not a fan of is the boring backgrounds but some ppl like that style.
BTW. I didn't even notice the DRM. I would love to have it DRM free but there was only a msg popping up that I have a valid copy that's it. I don't even need to be online to play.
Ohh and another downside is that the gamepad config seems to have a bug somehow. i had the same problems you guys described just that my xbox gamepad is working fine.
Disclaimer: I am the lead programmer at Xona Games for Score Rush, Duality ZF, and the Decimation X series, working with the XNA Game Studio toolset and a Dream Build Play participant and top-6 placer, and looking to get Duality ZF onto XBLA. I am also an acquaintance with Thomas Bedenk, the developer of Zeit2, who also uses the XNA toolset, placed in Dream Build Play, and has brought his game over to XBLA. So we have close ties.
Having said that, I am going to be as honest as I can be:
Zeit2 is an intellectual game. The more you play it, the more you realize it's about intellect. And one of its game modes is actually based all around an intellectual challenge, the Tactical mode. But the other modes already have a lot of tactics involved. If you think it's just a shmup game where you shoot down enemies, it's not. I would sooner describe it has a tactical puzzle game heavily based on arcade mechanics, but of course, the shmup core is so obvious, it would be hard to call it anything other than a shmup.
The time travel works in reverse and in fast forward. The game has bonus scores for just about everything that you can do, and I realize the importance of this (Decimation X series makes use of this, but Score Rush is based solely on ass-kicking ability). If you like score bonuses, then you'll like all of the score features in this game. The game doesn't have time travel just thrown in, it was the base foundation of the game. Their 3 day old demo had it in there from the get-go. It's not a rip off of Braid due to time travel any more than Score Rush is a rip off of Geometry Wars due to multi-directional shooting. I understand it's human nature to look for patterns, and unfortunately it makes games appear to be clones of other games. Even when there's a core design that is based off of a classic, as in the case of Decimation X series, it doesn't mean the gameplay is. And the gameplay is where you have your fun, and enjoy the intellectual side of it as well as skill based accomplishments.
Zeit2 has the standard 200 Gamerscore achievement points from 12 achievements on XBLA, and has 70 achievements on Steam, but the XBLA has those achievements in-game, as well, so they are still there, and one of the 12 'real' achievements is to score a certain number of those in-game achievements, which is ingenious. Also there are dynamic achievements, which change, and there are always extra achievements to get past the 70 original. It was the achievement (Challenge game mode) that really made me start to see the longevity of this game. I have to be honest and say that I am a true shmup fan, I just want to just kick ass, so that's why I made Decimation X series and Score Rush, and Duality ZF is going to incorporate all of the right of those games. From this standpoint, Zeit2 is not my game. But I did play it and get all 200 G, for 12 of 12 achievements on XBLA, so I have put it through the tests. If the game was the style of game that I wanted, the pure skill based, ass-kicking, bullet hell mania that Score Rush is, and Duality ZF will be, then the longevity aspects of Zeit2 would have kept me coming back forever, since it almost did despite it not being a style of shmup that I want to play. This is NOT to say that the game is horrible, it's just not my own personally desired shmup.
It is very frustrating to see reviews of games that look over it for 5 minutes and give a break down of the game. Any fool can do that. I can do that. You all can do that. Reviewers are supposed to provide an extra effort to play the game and reveal what a 5 minute playthrough has missed. And I did this, completing the game in its entirety, even having the 4th highest score on the leaderboards (XBLA). And I can tell you there is a lot more to this game than the first few levels showcase. If you think, "oh the enemies just fly by and don't even shoot", it's because you're thinking it's a standard shmup, and it's not -- it means you are missing the point. This may or may not be for you, personally for me, it's not for me, but you may like it. I was surprised at a comment on here in which they liked that the health depletes as you go (in fact, it only does so when you fire), which is similar to Silpheed, which is something today's gamers usually hate. I love that Zeit2 really broke some ground and tried something totally new. Even if the shmup style isn't your cup of tea, as it wasn't for me, you'll see that the game really does pull you in much more than you'd first suspect. I recommend trying it.
For bullet hell fans, you'll be pleasantly surprised that the bosses are very much bullet hell format. While I didn't enjoy the fact that they are very often not even on the screen (as well as some of the smaller enemies, grr), and that they perform crushing attacks (personal pet peeve of mine), the bullet patterns were varied, unexpected, and tough. The game's difficulty is up there, and it allows you to continue at any point. But you'll have to start at the beginning if you want a high score.
Note that the enemies, while moving past you, seem harmless, the point of the game is to kill everything. If you let an enemy past, it sucks energy from you. And some enemies can only be hit in reverse time. Some enemies can not be hit in reverse time (although they are not colored any differently, so I find this annoying, since I expected my time reversals to take them out as I deal with other enemies).
Also, the time reversal is NOT BRAID. You can control a new destiny once reversed, but your past still does what it did. So there's two of you. Think Marty McFly. And you use this (need this) to succeed. And you can interact with your past self. This is used for screen clearing bombs, and for bonus points. Even the powered up beam can be used with this. The game actually has a lot of depth, and the learning curve is quite steep actually, so there's a lot to it.
Note: XBLA version has a bug in that it listens to the Xbox default control scheme for FPS and flight games, so that it'll invert Y if you have that setting set. A patch will surely fix this, but for the time being, change your profile defaults to their 'normal' setting and the game will play fine.
Last edited by Jason on Sun Jul 10, 2011 4:34 am, edited 2 times in total.
Observer wrote:Conclusion: if it weren't for this stupid TAGES scheme and DRM shit I would've already bought it just to show there is an increasing interesting in schmukmups on Steam and because I want Duality ZF, Score Rush and others jumping the bandwagon too.
If you show support by buying bad games all you're doing is showing you support bad games.
It's not that it's a bad game per se but rather that it won't appeal to many shmuppers and won't get people intersted in shmups in its own right. If people want a decent puzzle shmup suggest they wait for RSG....or they could jsut simply download the shmups already available.
Jason wrote:It is very frustrating to see reviews of games that look over it for 5 minutes and give a break down of the game.
I don't need to have a drill stuck in my leg for a day to tell you that it sucks, about 1 second would do the trick.
There are serious issues with the game in the first minute or two, disregarding the bland backgrounds and graphics generally. The first of these is inertia, which is the cardinal sin in shooters and responsible for ruining a great many games over the years. The second is frame rate issues even with mild amounts of enemies on screen, it just makes the game feel like a scrappy mess. It makes me not want to see any more, and that is a problem the developer will have to think about next time.
The bottom line is that the full game can be hardcore as fuck (Maybe some youtube links would help convince me and others, I doubt it), but if the demo is boring, serious players aren't going to bite. They didn't even make an attempt to reach out to players here in terms of making something that would convince us to buy it. The DRM awfulness is just the icing on the cake.
when you try to get through all 16 levels AND the 4 bonus stages without dying its freaking hard
20 stages in a row is what's known as quantity over quality, doubt it's worth it. Even games with 5 stages+1 loop are considered lengthy these days, around here.
chris.j wrote:One of you guys I think said this game is mindless on the steam forum. It is the oposite of that. I never played a shmup that is more tactical. That is because of the way the time travel and your extra weapons work.
Yea that was me, although I did make an post after that stating that I was I was talking about (in both forums) were euroshmups in genral and not just Zeit2 which I havnt played. Maybe I didnt make myself clear enough as I did have an axe to grind over the DRM. (ive gone back and edited it)
In all honesty the Time travelling mechanic seems quite intresting and I would like to see how it is implemented in the game but sadly the DRM and (depending how bad it is) the inertia put me off playing it.
I do kind of feel sorry for the devs that this thread was linked to the steam forum as imo the tastes of the denizens here and the average steam gamers are quite different and even though we do like to think of ourselves as the defacto authority when it comes to shmups there are different types of gamers out there
Udderdude wrote:The bottom line is that the full game can be hardcore as fuck (Maybe some youtube links would help convince me and others, I doubt it), but if the demo is boring, serious players aren't going to bite. They didn't even make an attempt to reach out to players here in terms of making something that would convince us to buy it.
I feel for this one, since I just bought Microbot, and the demo left the game very lacking, but I knew the game had more, since it was obvious that there was a significant upgrade system available, and that drew me in, as well as the graphics and concept (something I've actually wanted to do since elementary school, actually, so I am attached to this biological shmup idea of mine for decades). After buying the game, and playing through the whole thing, I agree the game has many issues, but I feel for the developer that there's not a great way to show off the crazy later stages in the game when the game is about incrementality. Duality ZF is also going to have some crazy shit going on in later stages, and a significant campaign mode, and we're running into the same problem. THIS is where a reviewer steps in to say "hey, you're missing something". But I agree wholeheartedly that the developers need to show off the game in the first minute. Just like songs need to show themselves off in the first 10 seconds. Gamers are impatient. I know. I'm one of them. And we have a lot of games to process, so we can't give them a lot of time like we could back in the NES days where you'd rent a game for a week and play the crap out of it and nothing else, even if it sucked, since you had nothing else to do.
As far as the time travel thingy goes, I'm much more interested in how it will be implemented in Sine Mora. As far as I'm concerned, I'll wait to see what Suda 51 does with it, plus his game will probably be whacked out in some way, and have much higher production values.
Considering how long it took Zeit2 to come out, the game falls flat.
edit: missed the space bar/rewound time to fix it.
If you're selling "re-wind time" in a shooter you had better show it off to it's fullest in the demo or most people interested in the genre will just see it either as a gimmick or a pain in the arse.
xris wrote:Considering how long it took Zeit2 to come out, the game falls flat.
But... why does the time have anything to do with it?
Consider: Duality ZF has been on and off production for 2 years, because there are issues getting in with Microsoft and Steam, and financial issues, working on other projects. Things get in the way. This is pretty standard. Even Dishwasher took this long, and the game was already done enough 1.5 years prior to XBLA release that it won the Dream Build Play contest. You may be underestimating the causes of time delay. The developers are not allowed to work on the game right up until the day before release. It has to go through months of testing even after it is feature complete, meaning nothing new can be added, and even once the game is 100% tested and done, it's up to the publisher and Microsoft for when it's released. During our talks about Duality ZF, we can't tell them, "release when it's done". They have two months out of the year that are possible slots for release. We need to pick one. The first is too soon, so we pick the later. But we cannot just work on Duality ZF until then, we'll be out of money. So we need to work on side projects (i.e. Decimation X3 and Score Rush), and now that it's pushed back again (which can be equally attributed to us and the way the industry and XBLA works -- no fingers pointing, it all makes sense, it's just the way reality is), we may need to do some more work to provide more funds, so that we have an option to finish Duality ZF without going bankrupt.
If you guys want a real idea of how intense it is for a couple of guys to get a game, pretty much already built over 2 years, onto XBLA, take a peak at this: Podcast: Edmund McMillen -- Super Meat Boy
It's an hour or two, but it will give you some real insight. Very enjoyable and enlightening.
I'm well aware that it's a pain in the ass to get stuff on XBox Live Arcade. Honestly, it kind of sucks that you need to go through that sort of hell to get your game to a wider audience, but them's the breaks.
Tigershark wrote:Do a game for the Dreamcast. You know it makes sense
I wish I could just port everything to every system just to see! In Japan, the install base of the PS2 is 6 times that of the Xbox 360, so sometimes it's better to go for the older consoles. I know a lot of shmups came out on the Dreamcast long after it 'died' because it was still alive.
Observer wrote:Graphically, I have to agree and say the cover is a lie. There is no ship in there! It does indeed have an Osmos feel because you are a shiny ball that gets smaller the more you shoot...
That ball is your shield, which moves in a delayed manner. You can move your ship around in a small circle and have the shield barely move. The most shield health, the bigger the shield.
Udderdude wrote:They could have easily included part of one of the later levels for immediate access in the demo. Wouldn't have been that much of a stretch.
I agree, Making demos that appeal to different gamers is a problem shmup (or any arcady game) devs need to come to grips with. As the average gamer doesnt mind their games starting off slow infact laying all your cards on the table may even put them off, while us gamer types who are used to playing arcade games that give the player the maximum amount of enjoyment from the second they put their credit into the machine all the way through untill the ending credits 30 mins later if the player is good enough or credit feeds it.
Maybe a good way of pleasing both sides is to have the demo run from the beginning but also include a video of a run of a later stage to show off high level (score) play . That should be enough for us to atleast get a gist of weather the game is worth our time or not.
In this games case there is only a trailer which while been a good trailer is too cut and paste to get a sense of how the game plays like and the demo. There is nothing else, no gameplay videos on YT (although lets plays will eventually show up) and on the Steam page all thats there is a few simlar looking pictures. (For someone who tends to use gameplay vids instead of demos as a way to judge games having no videos on steam really bugs me). I can imagine theres gamers checking the game out on steam will go to the forum page because the Zeit2 store page just doesnt give them any info about the game, there they see all the DRM threads, that thread linking this forum and quickly make their minds up not to buy the game even before theve played the demo or watched a video of it which theyld have to go to another web site to do. Ideally the gamer should be caught hook line and sink before he finds out about the DRM.
I will get this, for the innovation alone.
I don't mind it not being the bullet-fest everybody hopes for every single time a different shmup is released.
Regular shmuppers are people too, you all know that, right?
We have feelings, we enjoy some casual stuff from time to time.
karma is at work once again in the shmup world
would be great on the DC :3
