STGT2k7- Week#3 Darius Gaiden

[Skyrandia]

Skyrandia - Cyber City Team - 8 781 050 - ABDHLQV (ALL) - MAME




My retarded panic bombing habits spoilt this score a bit but I am still faily happy with it

Was such an enjoyable game and its hard to believe that some people actually hate it!!

It is their loss....

[BulletMagnet]

Not bashing you here, BulletMagnet. Just trying to expand on my points a bit...

Not a problem, I was hoping you'd reply.

And the fact that the weapon power down from dying has been changed, and that there are more levels to the missiles and main gun.

Noted, forgot those.

I was thinking more along the lines of getting points for taking riskier paths, for trying to pick apart the bosses, and for going after those tough to grab orbs that control the mid-bosses. Also, most of those big end bonuses can't be gotten unless you take risks. This isn't a Compile game

Okay, that makes sense.

While I can't speak on your experiences, I can say that every death I've had in DG, I've seen what killed me... be it a bullet, a small outcropping on the foreground, or a speedy enemy that came flying up from below. I've never once had a bullet or enemy blink out on me ala Blazing Star.

"Blinking out" is more of a hardware problem, I'm more concerned with stuff you can't see against the background (or when it gets mixed in with your own shots) - an early example are the tiny gray needles that the prawn-ish mid-sized enemies toss at you in the first stage (among others). Not completely impossible to see, but when there are several of them tossing them at you at once later on, not to mention other enemies' shots, it's a real pain. I can say with confidence that there are several points at which I've had no idea what's killed me. Maybe the scaling/whatever issues on the PS2 port are partly responsible, but not completely.

I've also never had a problem with the game's hit box, as I've squeezed through some very tight spreads and situations without getting hit... and I could even see my ship partially touched by what I was dodging. Perhaps this whole "modern day shmups having a two pixel hit box" thing has dulled your old-school dodging abilities a little?

Heh, I won't deny that I personally prefer a more lenient hitbox and more stuff to dodge as opposed to the opposite, but a lot of spots, particularly at the bosses, seemed pretty much completely undodgeable to me - some of the earlier ones you could possibly just pin on my lack of experience, but I still recall a superplay of Storm Causer that I watched, in which the guy dances circles around the boss for most of the fight (mostly using safe spots), but at one point can't completely avoid a certain bullet pattern - he positions himself dead center between the two farthest-apart bullets and still takes a hit (if he hadn't had a shield, it'd have been an unavoidable instant kill). And if this guy can't wiggle his way out of it, I thought, what chance does someone like me have?

This sort of thing is rather tough to judge "objectively," but in any event I never felt very secure trying to weave through anything in this game - as you say, though, apparently it's not impossible to feel differently. Heaven only knows how long I'd have to glue myself to the screen to get to that point though...

So many shmups punish you with a powering down upon death, I don't see why this game would be one to piss you of with it. I've played very few shmups that didn't suck away firepower when you died. It's just part of the genre, for better or for worse. Even games like the almighty DoDonPachi drop your weapon power when you bite the dayglo-colored bullet.

It's not the fact that you power down in itself that bugs me, but rather how absolutely vital staying powered-up is, I suppose - for one thing, certain enemies pretty much require your shot to be at least partially poweed up to have a prayer of passing them (to whit, encountering some gunpods hidden in particularly tricky spots behind obstacles without a wave shot, or those starfish things without a piercing shot...and that's not even mentioning the bosses). On another note, unless I'm missing something in Rando's guide, dying doesn't lower the rank at all - if you enter a stage powered up enough to activate the "high" rank, it stays that way no matter how dinky of a pea-shooter you end up stuck with halfway through. As I said, sometimes it seems that after dying you might as well just give up.

(EDIT - ZA says that dying does lower it, and he may be right, but I honestly didn't see it - I could keep the rank down by avoiding powering up deliberately, but not by dying and powering down. I noted this a handful of times in Zone B - if I made it to the boss without dying, but purposely not powering up to the "wave" level, I could usually keep him at a manageable level (at full power he was too hard for me). If I ended up dying and arriving with a pea-shooter however, he seemed just as tough as before, and I couldn't pierce through the main body to get at his parts either, which made him even harder.)

And well, bosses are supposed to be hard. If you can kill it fast without a good fight (or a serious adjustment like what we've got here), then it wasn't much of a boss. The fact that DG's bosses do put up a fight when playing the game normally is one of DG's positives in my opinion

"Challenge" isn't really the problem, "repetition" is more like it...especially if you've got a weak weapon (and ESPECIALLY if the rank's up) you'll be seeing those same attack patterns for minutes at a time before you finally blow a piece off of the thing and change things up a bit (i.e. add another layer or two to those same attacks). Not to mention the "you're still at high rank even with weak weapons" thing mentioned earlier, which make some bosses, without proper weaponry, incredibly frustrating.

Anyhow, as you said, it's tough to put oneself in another's shoes when it comes to gaming experiences...guess it gets harder when a lowlife like me addresses a top-tier type like yourself, heh heh.

[Icarus]

Perhaps I'm the odd man out here, but I remain thankful that these "design decisions" have been largely abandoned by now (disclaimer - no, I am not saying that I wish horis would disappear forever). As far as I'm concerned, this didn't happen by chance.

Abandoned?
You were complaining about the very same things in the Death Smiles thread.

No other rank setup (Raizing included) has ever made me feel more like I'm being completely robbed, and that after dying once I ought to just reset.

Darius Gaiden has quite possibly the most obvious and easiest to manipulate rank system I've ever seen, and if you're even partly familiar with a Raizing system (with regards to weapon limitation, see Soukygurentai and Garegga) then DG should present no problems.

Ah, the spectre of the ever-elusive "win button" fantasy that's ruining hardcore shmupdom again, been awhile since that one's surfaced. Come on Icky, be reasonable - something doesn't have to be dull, drawn-out, and frustrating to be a satisfying challenge. Frankly, I'm not sure how the two could ever be one and the same.

How can any boss in DG be long and drawn out? Even with excessive milking, a typical boss fight for me lasts less than a minute and a half. If you're taking more than that to knock off something like Prickly Angler or Double Header then you're doing something extremely wrong.

Either that or your weapons are underpowered, in which case, use a bomb or something.

P.S. Mouth of boss = weakpoint. Hit it for MASSIVE DAMAGE. ;P

And I am especially careful to avoid criticizing members, or their tastes, instead of the games themselves. What anyone else likes to play has no effect on me - I do not see this, however, as a reason to not say what I think, in a civil manner. I'm not sure why you constantly detect personal slights coming from me, and act as if I'm some sort of stealthy, fork-tongued rabble-rouser who only you seem able to see through (the rest of the forum's under my spell, apparently, and doesn't know when it's being insulted).

Because you're you, BM, and criticising people for their tastes in games is what you always do, whether you realise it or not. Even when you don't directly aim a comment at someone, you somehow manage to disguise it via eloquent rewording.

[Twiddle]

I think Darius Gaiden is a boring AND broken game. I have no serious problem with the rank system - what I do have a problem with is how they used it to cover up the glaring difficulty imbalance between the bosses in different routes. Exploit it, and suddenly the hardest path (all down) is the lowest scoring path.

G-Darius tried to fix this, and was somewhat successful. Not surprising that I think it's the only entry in the Darius series worth a damn.

[Icarus]

Hardest path is all up, IMO.

[BulletMagnet]

Abandoned?
You were complaining about the very same things in the Death Smiles thread.

That I was, seeing as those things making a comeback would be an enormous and completely unnecessary disappointment in my eyes. Thankfully, however, my concern seems to have been largely a false alarm, as more info's come out.

Darius Gaiden has quite possibly the most obvious and easiest to manipulate rank system I've ever seen, and if you're even partly familiar with a Raizing system (with regards to weapon limitation, see Soukygurentai and Garegga) then DG should present no problems.

It's simple, yes, but far less forgiving than most any Raizing shmup as far as I'm concerned. High weapon power is so vital here that almost any benefits of powering down are negated by being ill-equipped for particular challenges, especially later on.

How can any boss in DG be long and drawn out? Even with excessive milking, a typical boss fight for me lasts less than a minute and a half. If you're taking more than that to knock off something like Prickly Angler or Double Header then you're doing something extremely wrong.

I suppose it bears repeating that I had to play without autofire. Even at that, even in superplays the player spends half the battle staying out of the way of near-undodgeable attacks, which usually means hanging in safe spots where you can't hit the boss until the coast is clear. In any event, few games I can recall have ever made me feel like their boss battles were so much drudgery.

Either that or your weapons are underpowered, in which case, use a bomb or something.

P.S. Mouth of boss = weakpoint. Hit it for MASSIVE DAMAGE. ;P

learn 2 play?

Because you're you, BM...

Uh...I'm sorry?

...and criticising people for their tastes in games is what you always do, whether you realise it or not. Even when you don't directly aim a comment at someone, you somehow manage to disguise it via eloquent rewording.

So am I too thick to realize what I'm doing, or too slick for anyone else to realize it? It'd be a tough feat to pull off being so dumb and so insidious at the same time, methinks.

As I've said before, if I really do want to get someone's gander up, they'll know it beyond a shadow of a doubt. Constructing a case against someone's core character based on their tastes in video games isn't exactly my type of venture. I'm a casual shmupper with a big mouth, and I'm afraid that all I can do is ask people to take that at face value.

[Twiddle]

All up: 3 easy stages, 4 easy bosses. Compare to all down, which has two of each.
A very slight variation of the up path also gives you the easiest path. lulz

someone tell me the next time we aren't playing a shitty and broken game

[Luis Redsun]

http://img207.imageshack.us/my.php?image=9915100gp3.jpg

Redsun - Pelé Shooting Team - 9.915.100 - ACFJNSY (ALL) - MAME

[Icarus]

That I was, seeing as those things making a comeback would be an enormous and completely unnecessary disappointment in my eyes. Thankfully, however, my concern seems to have been largely a false alarm, as more info's come out.

Disappointment to you perhaps, but for people who are well-versed/experienced in hori gameplay, it's just more of the same.

It's simple, yes, but far less forgiving than most any Raizing shmup as far as I'm concerned. High weapon power is so vital here that almost any benefits of powering down are negated by being ill-equipped for particular challenges, especially later on.

Not necessarily. I've seen players fly through the game without even going near the red wave weapon. Weapon power can be important, but IIRC the rank ceiling is lowered if you can keep your level surpressed, which adds benefits such as weaker bosses, slower and less numerous bullets etc.

I suppose it bears repeating that I had to play without autofire. Even at that, even in superplays the player spends half the battle staying out of the way of near-undodgeable attacks, which usually means hanging in safe spots where you can't hit the boss until the coast is clear. In any event, few games I can recall have ever made me feel like their boss battles were so much drudgery.

Gah. I had some practice with AUTO5, and the game is a tiny bit harder due to lack of firepower, but even then bosses took maybe an extra five seconds to kill. Darius, like a number of horis from that time, is all about pattern study. If you flail about without any thought to where to be and what to do, then I'm not surprised bosses take ages to kill/you die repeatedly.

learn 2 play?

Yup.

So am I too thick to realize what I'm doing, or too slick for anyone else to realize it? It'd be a tough feat to pull off being so dumb and so insidious at the same time, methinks.

Not as hard as you think.

As I've said before, if I really do want to get someone's gander up, they'll know it beyond a shadow of a doubt. Constructing a case against someone's core character based on their tastes in video games isn't exactly my type of venture. I'm a casual shmupper with a big mouth, and I'm afraid that all I can do is ask people to take that at face value.

Yes, and your big mouth is not your most attractive feature. I've lost count of the amount of times you've used the "LOL, you am Raizing player, not qualified to talk about Cave" slight, most recently in the Death Smiles thread. Personally, the more you use that argument, the more I think you're sorely lacking in some creativity.

[The Coop]

Anyhow, as you said, it's tough to put oneself in another's shoes when it comes to gaming experiences...guess it gets harder when a lowlife like me addresses a top-tier type like yourself, heh heh.

Lowlife? Not at all. You played DG and didn't like it, I played it and did (and thus continued to play it). Nothing more, nothing less.



And me, top-tier? HA HA!

Mid-tier maybe... on a good day

[sikraiken]

sikraiken - Team Apes - 12,569,460 - ABDGKPZ' (ALL) - MAME

I guess 13M won't be happening for me.

Also, I'll have all my stuff available (videos + write ups for all five weeks) at midnight (eastern standard time) on October 22nd. There will be a link in my signature and I'll make a thread in the main forum about it then.

[Zigfried the Trizealot]

Zigfried - Turbo Team - 2,560,600 - ACEIN - PS2/TM

I played this a lot years back. Would have probably done better if I'd applied myself. I could blame my own laziness, but I'll blame Warriors Orochi instead.

//Zig

[BulletMagnet]

Disappointment to you perhaps, but for people who are well-versed/experienced in hori gameplay, it's just more of the same.

As I've said before, just because it's a hori shouldn't mean that it can't evolve past 1988 gameplay conventions.

Not necessarily. I've seen players fly through the game without even going near the red wave weapon. Weapon power can be important, but IIRC the rank ceiling is lowered if you can keep your level surpressed, which adds benefits such as weaker bosses, slower and less numerous bullets etc.

Rando mentions this, and during (some) bosses it can (sometimes) help, but it cripples you royally during the stages when obstacles become a factor. Also, off to the side, can you provide any enlightenment on whether/how much rank goes down when you die? As I said, the ST doesn't mention it.

Gah. I had some practice with AUTO5, and the game is a tiny bit harder due to lack of firepower, but even then bosses took maybe an extra five seconds to kill.

I dunno, the prevailing opinion seems to be that cranking up the autofire rate significantly lowers the game's challenge (I heard the term "broken" used at least once). I can't say much more about it myself, since I've never tried it with auto, but I'm not just making this stuff up outta nowhere.

Darius, like a number of horis from that time, is all about pattern study. If you flail about without any thought to where to be and what to do, then I'm not surprised bosses take ages to kill/you die repeatedly.

The same goes for most any shmup, methinks you'd agree, and yet somehow, even when playing most other horis of the same period (or even older) I just don't feel the same sense of "why am I playing this?" as I do with this game. Can't really put it any other way than that, for whatever it's worth...

Not as hard as you think.

I can't help but chuckle a bit at how genuinely offended you seem to get at my supposed slights against you, seeing as you've always been incredibly blunt when it comes to expressing your very personal displeasure with me, as with the above comment, and offer no apologies for it - neither have I ever demanded any from you. I do rather wish, however, that you'd grant me a sliver of the leniency you grant yourself in this area. Or do I need to add a few more 1CCs to my repertoire before I earn that privilege?

Yes, and your big mouth is not your most attractive feature.

Once again I ask you, what would you prefer, that I never criticize anything on here, because somehow I always end up making it personal (both accidentally and on purpose, apparently), and insult everyone I disagree with, even though only you ever seem to be upset by it? What exactly would you have me do?

I've lost count of the amount of times you've used the "LOL, you am Raizing player, not qualified to talk about Cave" slight, most recently in the Death Smiles thread. Personally, the more you use that argument, the more I think you're sorely lacking in some creativity.

My memory must be going, as I can only remember using it in the Death Smiles thread, but if it bugs you that much I'll make a note not to mention it again.

And me, top-tier? HA HA!

Mid-tier maybe... on a good day

Yeah, and where'd you end up in the rankings last year, again?

[Rob]

Turbo Team throwing in the towel.

[KBZ]

Kingbuzzo - IWST - 1,360,320 - ABEI - MAME


Hey, in the IWST we spend most of our time working, not playing games. I guess the other members must have very demanding jobs...

[Twiddle]

Real score this time.


Twiddle - Turbo Team - 9,077,920 - ABDHLQV (OWL) - MAME

where da bombs at? Ask my fully powered up state.

[Twiddle]

Rando mentions this, and during (some) bosses it can (sometimes) help, but it cripples you royally during the stages when obstacles become a factor. Also, off to the side, can you provide any enlightenment on whether/how much rank goes down when you die? As I said, the ST doesn't mention it.

It doesn't go down if you die.

It also doesn't go up in later stages (than 5) if you max out your power by stage 4 and pick up powerups while maxed in later stages.

However, if you do die and you power back up in a later stage, the rank goes up.

Awesome game isn't it?

[Kyper]

Kyper - let's destroy stgt07 - 8,550,000 - ABDGKPZ' - MAME

I must have tried for hours trying to get down a milking technique, but after all that, I can barely get by 2 passes. And apparently I like to overshoot the last 3 captains after their orb is dislodged.

[coffeejoerx]

coffeejoerx - Pelé Shooting Team - 10.655.640 - ABDGLQV (ALL) - MAME

Congratulations to all members from Pelé Shooting Team!

[P_HAT]

DG RANK SYSTEM CAN SUCK BALLS OF STEELLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL!!!!!
RAERAEJRUIAEORHAH:LRALH:RH:AIUO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!




P_HAT - Team Downrank - 6.009.140 - same as above (ALL) - MAME

[Rob]

--

[KBZ]

Kingbuzzo - IWST - 1,844,570 - ABEI - MAME

[Ayanami]

Ayanami - Great Lakes Avengers - 9,057,340 - ABDHLQV ALL - Saturn

[Rob]

Rob - Turbo Team - 6,881,600 - ABDHLQV - MAME

lowest 1LC on chart

[Arvandor]

Gah. I had some practice with AUTO5, and the game is a tiny bit harder due to lack of firepower, but even then bosses took maybe an extra five seconds to kill.

I dunno, the prevailing opinion seems to be that cranking up the autofire rate significantly lowers the game's challenge (I heard the term "broken" used at least once). I can't say much more about it myself, since I've never tried it with auto, but I'm not just making this stuff up outta nowhere.

Let's put it this way. When I first got Darius Gaiden for my Saturn, I played it for a few hours (12-20 runs or so maybe?), and never got past ABD. Shelved it until this tournament, fired it up with auto-fire, and got the 1cc within 7 runs. Is it because I've improved that much in shooters over the past year? Hah... I could only wish. Auto-fire breaks this game.

I keep meaning to tap as fast as I possibly can for about 10 seconds, find an auto-fire rate that resembles my own rate of fire, and then play some Darius Gaiden so I can experience it without breaking it, and without giving myself carpel tunnel.

[1up]

1up - Team Downrank - 2,648,860 - ABEIM - MAME

[DarkWolf7]

DarkWolf7 - Turbo Team - 9,303,780 - ABDHLQV(ALL) - MAME

[Herr Schatten]

I have to side with Twiddle and BulletMagnet. Darius Gaiden may not be the crappiest game ever, but it has plenty of glaring flaws that suck any enjoyment out of the game, at least for me. Basically, it keeps everything I always disliked about the Darius series and adds bad bullet visibilty and a retarded rank system. Yay!

Frankly, I never understood why people liked any Darius game in the first place. (Exclude G-Darius here, because it changes the formula quite a bit with break lasers and whatnot, even though that doesn't make me like it any better. But in this case I can see why others might like it, at least.)

I like big mechanical fish as much as the next guy, but the Darius games have always had sloppy level design that constantly changes from bland to repetitive to chaotic and back again. Darius Gaiden is no exception. There are cheap deaths galore, both during the stages and at the bosses. The boss fights indeed tend to be terribly drawn out (think TF4 when you've lost the only weapon that can hurt the boss somewhere during the stage) and later boss patterns don't up the challenge in any clever ways, they just add difficulty by putting more and more incredibly uninteresting patterns on top of each other. No japanese games ever got closer to feel like a bad euroshmup than the Darius games up to and including Gaiden. While I'm at it: Typical euroshmups always get a lot of flak for using a lifebar to cover up weaknesses in the game design, and rightfully so. But the Dariuses use the shield extra in much the same way, yet they never get criticized for that. How come?

For me, Darius Gaiden boils down to "Don't lose your shield!", accompanied with "Don't lose your wave shot!" in the second half of the game.

Sure, there's at least something to like in the game: The silly boss warnings, parts of the presentation (the fish look great and so do some of the background graphics, while the majority of the backgrounds looks really really shitty) and the music, which, at the very least, is original, even though I'd be hard pressed to say that I actually like it.
Sadly, none of Darius's strength have much to do with the gameplay, though.

Just my two cents. I had to get it off my chest before playing another round of this.. this... awrgh!

[ED-057]

Auto-fire breaks this game.

Indeed, most of the bosses are dead before they do anything even mildly threatening.

[The Coop]

Last update before bedtime...



The Coop - Old Schoolers - 11,584,000 - ABDGLQV - Saturn