k39bk wrote:Ok, this is my first post in this amazing site/forum. English isn't my native language so pardon my unwanted mistakes.
So, I used to be (& still am I think) a huge fan of shoot em ups. Games like Gradius, Parodius, R-Type & it's clones, Thunderforce, HyperDuel, Aleste, Blazing Lazers etc. & companies like Irem, Compile, Technosoft used to be my favourite & they still are. I could 1cc (also 2cc, 3cc
) most of them in my local arcade.
Wii VC again refreshed my shmup love. I was downloading & playing PC engine shmups like mad but bullet hell never attracted me. I tend to avoid them but all of my shmup addicted friends seem to like bullet hells. For last few months I am really trying to extract some fun from Danmaku but in vain. I have borrowed Deathsmiles, E.S.P Galuda, Futari 1.5, Ibara from friends & also playing Dodonpachi, DOJ, Gunbird 2, Strikers etc on MAME. It seems small illusive hitbox, hollow level design, cute looking-slow moving random bullets & chaining system turning me off. I always have to concentrate on my ship/lolis & its invisible hitbox, no time to even appritiate enenmy design!! But I somewhat liked some of Psikyo's offerings - GunBird 2 & Sengoku Blade but I absolutely couldn't get into CAVE or Tohu stuff.
So I was wondering & somewhat confused as an old school shmups fan is there anything I am missing or overlooking, like any concept or perspective which will help me appritiate bullet hell genre. (Or is it normal not to like them although being a shmups fan?)
@ OP:
>> It seems small illusive hitbox
my introduction to Touhou (which was thanks to an Immaterial and Missing Power
video, which is ironically a fighting game, the first in the Touhou series, which I found by accident while trying to find another video I've seen in a local tournament in a now defunct arcade center and wanted to watch again. Back then, YouTube didn't allow videos which had more than 10 minutes, a thing that I didn't think of. Got to refind said video on Google Videos, but here goes the
video on YouTube, anyways) had me trying to learn how to graze in Phantasmagoria of Flower View (a Twinkle Star Sprites' style shmup), since graze seemed to be one of the series' standards back then; I even thought that "no miss" meant "killing all enemies", lol.
Back on the subject of the "illusive hitbox", post-Embodiment of Scarlet Devil (a.k.a. Touhou 6), the TH games have a visible hitbox if you use the Focus key; in latter bullet hell games (doujin or Cave's), focus mode also shows your hitbox. Back when Imperishable Night (a.k.a. Touhou
's Extra Stage
videos were new for me, I wanted to try taking on that stage, and fortunately, frustration didn't stop me from trying again. Back then, I wasn't as involved with shmups, and (before Touhou's bad endings, which tell you to not use continues) thought that they weren't supposed or meant to be beaten on one credit. What I can say, are two things:
1) as you get more familiar with the games you're playing, you get to know your own ship's hitbox and the bullets'; thus, those previously intimidating patterns suddenly start feeling like they have wider gaps in them than you last remembered them. Also, as you develop execution and reaction, you adjust yourself to bullet speeds and thus have more time to react and/or plan ahead (there was some kind of sliding bar, somewhere in the internet, which gauges how much you're close to winning or losing, based on how much you're reacting to your opponent, or how much you're dictating the pace of the match. What I wanted to say with this, is that, as a way to maximize your winning chances, you're fighting to get out of reaction and trying to create as much of a buffer for anticipation as possible, at times trying to avoid situations where you need to react. More important than this, imho, is to have a gameplan -- something that's not exclusive to bullet hells, though --, but with bullet hells, you may find yourself instinctively seeing paths among bullet patterns)
tl;dr: practice makes the games look way easier than they looked before (and when you realize that, it will be rewarding. You'll be feeling like
this)
2) you may have frustration when learning something new, but (as Gootecks may have mentioned it in his SFIV tutorial, iirc -- I have a below-average memory, though), "embrace the possibility of defeat. Accept that you'll lose some matches", or something like that. In the end, if you manage to get past the frustration phase (this also applies to real life, and other game genres), if you have a mastery orientation (rather than a performance orientation; read more about them
here), you'll find another option (in this case, a game), another gameplay system/mechanic for you to enjoy yourself with and revisit whenever you feel like it.
tl;dr: don't let yourself be turned off permanently by initial frustrations (in this case, ship hitboxes)
>> hollow level design
I agree that vertical shmups could try to look more immersive (some steps have been made in this area, imho: speeding sections, branching paths, reverse/horizontally/non-linear scrolling sections, camera angles, environment/setting changes, etc..), though most of the times I'm busy trying to solve the situations presented to me (the act of solving immediate problems in this genre is fun and rewarding imho -- some may say it's the game keeping you into the zone, where you're not bored nor are you stressed; though solving problems under pressure is also fun). Speaking of level design.. one good thing of bullet hells is that you have (imho) an average greater effective play area (due to the smaller hitbox and bullet hitboxes); also, slow bullets allow for bullet patterns that aren't possible with only fast bullets (though at times some patterns feature both speeds; note, though, that I think that if a game had only slow bullets, it could potentially become boring and monotonous); in both bullet-hells or non-bullet-hells, the games tend to get more difficult, the better you're playing them.
tl;dr: bullet hells often have different ways of using the same playing field (some even have maze-like stages)
>> cute looking-slow moving random bullets
in latter stages, the bullets become more dense, and depending on the game (and difficulty, in case of Touhou games), faster
>> chaining system
there are several kinds of chaining (this isn't limited to bullet hells, too), and several other kinds of scoring in bullet hells (and non-bullet hells of course). Galuda's and DOJ's (and GunBird 2's) are different, for example.
>> I always have to concentrate on my ship/lolis & its invisible hitbox,
http://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.ph ... a8#p246791
tl;dr: focus on yourself when you have to micrododge, look at the rest of the screen (as your first option) to plan ahead and be able to dodge fast shots and bullet walls.
>> So I was wondering & somewhat confused as an old school shmups fan is there anything I am missing or overlooking
as someone who didn't get much appeal for "oldschool shmups" (before realizing, like I said previously, that they can be 1cc'd) and liked the gameplay systems/mechanics of newer shmups, I'd say the scoring systems/mechanics help set the games apart from each other, more than playing for survival do. One example of this is the different Touhou games; Lotus Land Story (TH 4) and Mystic Square (TH 5) for example look similar (there are more examples if you look at the Windows games), but in one, you use bombs to score; in the other, you (generally) avoid using them.
Personally, I tend to prefer scoring over survival because
1) my memory capacity and learning speed is below-average, so I can't expect to be able to learn or keep two playing styles in one game, or at least not so quickly as I would want
2) I don't like if/when people drop the Touhou games just because they've 1cc'd on Lunatic on all characters/shot types, as if there wasn't more that the games could offer.
3) it's funnier for me, I enjoy using scoring systems (don't enjoy *all* of them, though) at my own pace, they feel rewarding.
4) can't ignore scoring; if I just play for survival, there will be the game constantly reminding me that I'm missing points. (I had to actively avoid point items in EoSD -- a.k.a. Touhou 6 -- until I needed them for the extends, to get my first and only EoSD Lunatic 1cc, because if I didn't avoid them, I would want to get them and risk myself more, to have a better score. I'm greedy like that D: )
