Shmup Ticker: What are you playing RIGHT NOW?

[XoPachi]

Trying to force myself to like these Strikers games. I was playing 2 and 3 back and forth most of the night and this morning and I think I'm...done. Psikyo is really not at all for me.

(except Gunbarich)

[Starfighter]

I love 2 and the pancake, but I have never even seen anything past stage 6.

[Lander]

I started playing Dodonpachi SaiDaiOuJou, not really expecting to get much out of latter-day animu DDP, and am pleasantly surprised at how much I'm enjoying it.

Replacing shot power with fixed styles and tying damage gain to hypers is really refreshing; it pushes survival and scoring closer together, fast-tracking the player toward figuring out routing nuances to keep their bar charged.
Less chaindeathing is a bonus too; I've always thought lowering shot power on death was lame, but not having to scrabble around recovering P icons is a real blessing, lets you get right back into the core loop.

I seem to be doing best with Type-A / Laser so far. Fine by me, since Red Ship is obviously the best girl - none of the others have a portrait of Longhena on their wall, and that shit is hilarious

The navigator / copilot chatter is surprisingly additive too; i'm always wary of dialogue in shmups, since it ends up as distracting noise if done wrong, but here it's kept terse and informative - on theme for DDP's underlying military style.

Difficulty seems like a doozy; I'm practising on the scrubbiest DIP settings available, and still getting beaten down by the time I reach the Cave-traditional St3 midboss whirligig. But progress is palpable, so it's a fun time despite Ketsui levels of intimidation

[fotozero]

Jumping around between different cave games now, haven't played a shmup in quite a while. I used to play Gigawing a lot on the Dreamcast so I'm enjoying these cave shooters a lot. Currently playing Ketsui and the OST is brilliant

[XoPachi]

Getting past the ass character designs, SDOJ is my 3rd favorite. Very close to DOJ in enjoyment for me. I think it has the best prerendered graphics I've ever seen. It's absolutely stunningly beautiful. All the effects, explosions, the incredibly smooth/varied animations, bullets, environments. It's so gorgeous. I really like it's sound effects, pace, and while it's kind of fucked, the way the scoring is intended to be used is very satisfying. But the really creepily aggressive push of idol waifus and incessant squeaky chatter is like a massive ding to it for me.

I also like it's music, but I think it's a shame that DDP ditched the live rock. I've always been kind of bummed they never really went back to that. It would have been perfect as an arrange for their swansong, final flagship title.

[Lander]

The art style is lovely; all idealistic and shiny, which is a nice reconstruction of the series' historic mechanical grit. Agree on the music - it's nice, with the St2 and TLB themes being proper headliners, but a shame to lose the series signature guitar wail.

I find the idol stuff less an issue than I did with DFK, since it's not so in-your-face as giant mechagirl bosses. Perhaps mild stockholm syndrome, since I know it could be worse though the 360 / Exa releases appear to lay it on a bit thicker with the squeaky extra girl and story mode stuff.

I only have access to the arcade OG; more's the pity, since a consolized training wheel version feels like it would be just the ticket for softening the half-way difficulty hike. Stages 1 and 2 were pretty fun to train, but that boat is up there with the one from Ketsui. There's always a god damn murderboat

[Gamer707b]

Playing some Einhander today. Trying to clear the game. I got to the 6th level. I have got to the final stage before. I feel a clear is not too far away.

[xxx1993]

Playing some Einhander today. Trying to clear the game. I got to the 6th level. I have got to the final stage before. I feel a clear is not too far away.

Good luck. Schwarzgeist and Hyperion ain't a walk in the park.

[XoPachi]

The art style is lovely; all idealistic and shiny, which is a nice reconstruction of the series' historic mechanical grit. Agree on the music - it's nice, with the St2 and TLB themes being proper headliners, but a shame to lose the series signature guitar wail.

I find the idol stuff less an issue than I did with DFK, since it's not so in-your-face as giant mechagirl bosses. Perhaps mild stockholm syndrome, since I know it could be worse :) though the 360 / Exa releases appear to lay it on a bit thicker with the squeaky extra girl and story mode stuff.

I only have access to the arcade OG; more's the pity, since a consolized training wheel version feels like it would be just the ticket for softening the half-way difficulty hike. Stages 1 and 2 were pretty fun to train, but that boat is up there with the one from Ketsui. There's always a god damn murderboat :lol:

I can respect that.
I actually prefer DFK's take on it because at least it was an attempt at something a bit more unique and you only have something screeching at you during the boss as opposed to the entire level.
They had these bizarre features to them and transformed into huge really kickass ships with excellent animations. There's also something a bit more appealing with their art style I can't really pin. And there was no stupid "sex dolls power up the ship" that never made sense. Which is worse in SDOJ than DOJ because you undress them to power up the ship further which is...Jesus fucking Christ.
If the girls were at least also the pilots, it would be a little less dumb even if I still wouldn't like them. But the fact that they're not even the ones flying the damn things is what makes it all so corny. I hate that the BiAxe has the worst Doll too. That ship's always been my favorite! >:C

The DOJ girls have this industrial, macabre appeal. Where it seems like they're part of something kind of insidious and corrupt but have to go with it. Instead of seeing them drinking wine or ass shots, you see them in really bizarre scenarios that drive home them being used and abused androids. It reminds me of ESP.Ra.De a bit actually in tone which I adore. Something that actually served a thought out purpose instead of "well Hyper Dimension and body pillows are popular". It's the difference between Ex Machina and Maken Ki.

And yes, Vinogradov and the IGS Scion are some fun as fuck set pieces. I love Cave's stage 3 battleships SO much.

EDIT: Hang on, the one thing about SDOJ having the squeaky announcer is "HYPAH SYS- HYP- H-H-H-HY-HYPAH SYSTEM...READY! c:". I love getting to stage 5 where you can just tucker her out continuously. lmao

[Starfighter]

Back on Espgaluda. I've been playing it on and off for years and years. It's one of my top three shmups and I'll never get tired of it!

But the infamous last pattern on the last boss. I just can't. I can reach it with a few lives left and everything, but I can't for the life of me get through it without dying at least 4-5 times. I dropped the PS2 version and got on Shmuparch to be able to set a savestate right at the pattern. I've been grinding a while and I'm doing no progress at all.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

If you can you get there with 1 extra life to spare you should be all set for the 1CC with a bit of strategic refinement! That's 4 quick bombs and 250 gems after you die, more than enough to tear through the boss. Both of my runs on Youtube have one death against it and then resource through it without issues, heh. The trick I find is to only pay attention to the giant blue balls that sweep up and down. The thin bullets fired from the top of the screen vertically down are a non-issue as 90% of the time the boss leaves a gap directly in front. Any time those blue balls are about to overlap as they change direction, fire a quick bomb and move to the side (bombs heal the boss in this phase), or use kakusei to slow time down and squeeze in between them to an opening. There's some really big openings at the bottom of the screen where you can just sit there and blast away.

Are you using Tateha? Despite looking like the game's weaker wideshot character, her laser that fires 2 piercing shots is actually stronger than Ageha's. You'll score noticeably faster boss kills with Tateha in the first game. I think her kakusei shot is stronger than Ageha's kakusei laser is too, but it's way harder to control Tateha when using it (you can resort to using the weaker laser in kakusei mode to control your movement). Note that this doesn't apply to the sequel and her normal mode laser is weaker than Ageha's in Esp2.

Alternatively I think with a full bomb you can actually use a bomb, and just hold it down until the meter runs dry. This will inevitably fill the boss's health bar well past any hope of killing it, but using that and then Kakusei to wait it out can result in a timeout. To minimize any need to fight it I think it takes like 2 extra lives' worth of resources, but this way you don't ever dodge anything except when kakusei runs out. Something to experiment with if you really can't kill it.

edit: never mind, it takes a lot longer than I remember to time it out

[wiNteR]

Back on Espgaluda. I've been playing it on and off for years and years. It's one of my top three shmups and I'll never get tired of it!

But the infamous last pattern on the last boss. I just can't. I can reach it with a few lives left and everything, but I can't for the life of me get through it without dying at least 4-5 times. I dropped the PS2 version and got on Shmuparch to be able to set a savestate right at the pattern. I've been grinding a while and I'm doing no progress at all.

Given that you already have some 1CCs on harder games than this, I have a feeling that you might just be doing something systematically wrong on this one. For example, in my opinion (at that time) the "wide-mode" for GWG (on PS2) was definitely harder than this.However, it does seem that this particular game can give trouble to players since there have been threads or posts about it before too.

Probably, it also depends on whether you are playing for survival (or a risk-free manner) or for big score.

I re-called writing about this many years ago [posts mentioned at the end for reference, but this post is self-contained]. Someone also mentioned another point below my post. I didn't play this game after 1CC so I don't remember it very well. I am assuming "Kakusei mode" here means the slowdown mode (which consumes gems).

Here is the summary of the posts (these points are about the final phase of last boss battle):
(1) You don't do damage when in slowdown mode. However, you want to use it to take you out of difficult situations.
(2) Also, you shouldn't worry much about your gems going to 0. I also remember my gems going to very low (or perhaps 0) in my 1CC run. It is a survival tool so you shouldn't hesitate to use it.

(3) I also wrote something like this:
"don't hesitate to use your barrier. Just move to the far right or left of the screen when you do so."
I might be wrong. But it seems that what I was trying to say here was that if you use invincibility/bomb then you don't want to hit the boss [I would guess perhaps the boss life is replenished with it], so you move towards right or left of the screen when you have to do it.


I think that, in particular, if the 3rd point is valid then you really want to be certain that you aren't re-filling the boss hp when you use invincibility/bomb to save yourself.



Reference Posts:
viewtopic.php?p=430297#p430297
viewtopic.php?p=430378#p430378

[BareKnuckleRoo]

If you're still struggling, maybe a video of what you're doing would be the best way to give tips, that's usually pretty helpful to pin down what you can do there!

Note that the boss does technically take damage from attacks when you're in kakusei, it's just very minimal damage (250 gems amount to a fairly tiny amount of damage on the boss). If the boss is nearly dead it's quite possible to kill it when in kakusei but otherwise most of your damage will come from normal mode lasering.

[Starfighter]

Thanks for all your good advice guys, it's with rejuvenized hope I'm going in to another grind this evening. If I feel I still make no progress after tonights session I'll record some footage. If I were to take a guess I'd wager I'm just not precise enough in my inputs and timings and I wonder if I'm going to improve further with time or if I've reached my skill level when it comes to micro dodging. Never say never I guess, but this is giving me a hard time no doubt!

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Since it's that time of year I'm taking a trip to Gilverado and playing some Deathsmiles. I... still don't feel like I click with it. The familiar movement is trickier to handle and I don't like how far the familiar is from the character. Rolling Gunner's movement and aiming feels much snappier and responsive to me. I also can't get the hang of the revenge bullets you can trigger by playing 5 stages at Level 3, it feels REALLY hard to get your familiar in place to block shots.

The music and presentation are really neat, but I think there's other horizontal stuff I vibe with more.

[XoPachi]

Still trucking away at Gana Blade. The EX Retro clear is one of those modes where it really isn't *that* hard at all, but there's just these those moments, man. I think this might be my favorite recent STG though. It's so extremely satisfying for some reason. Also, unless I missed something, there's exactly 10 videos of this on US YouTube so I think I'm gonna try to make some kind of content for it. What a great game.

[m.sniffles.esq]

Since it's that time of year I'm taking a trip to Gilverado and playing some Deathsmiles. I... still don't feel like I click with it. The familiar movement is trickier to handle and I don't like how far the familiar is from the character.

Reading this threw me for a moment. Then I realized I've never paid any attention to my familiar. it's proximity, or what it is or isn't doing.

Shows to go you...

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Depends on who you're playing and if you've triggered the revenge bullets as to how important familiar positioning is. Rosa has it the easiest, she fires long range piercing shots and her familiar moves freely when lasering makes it easy to hit with and reposition as needed, but moves slowly. Windia also fires long range piercing shots so positioning isn't as critical.

Casper and Follet both have close-range familiars, where Casper does more damage using the rapid shot to fire buzzsaws at enemies, and Follet wants to get her dragon in close with the fire breath attack when lasering.

And aside from just attacking enemies, blocking revenge bullets is a lot easier in Mega Black Label where Sakura has two familiars she can use at the same time, affording her a larger area to block shots.

[m.sniffles.esq]

I knew the game was easiest with Rosa, but I never had any idea specifically why (her targeting sucks, so I just figured it was a 'best for survival, worst for scoring' balance deal)

[Starfighter]

If you're still struggling, maybe a video of what you're doing would be the best way to give tips, that's usually pretty helpful to pin down what you can do there!

I managed to get through the pattern today, progress! But it was much thanks to luck, I think I've identified my main weakness: I can't look ahead. When I'm slipping in between two big bullets I have no idea what's meeting me on the other side. And it feels like my micro dodging is all over the place, some inputs are precise, some are wonky, some are short, some are weirdly long. This is the state of things as it stands this evening: video of my "successful" run

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Great work! The main thing I'd note is to try to stay towards the bottom of the screen. If you look, by about the 15 second mark the bullets firing from the left open up and leave a huge safe zone at the bottom you can hide in and only have to worry about the vertical bullets. You're moving much closer to the boss than I'd be comfortable with, where the bullets are crisscrossing a lot more!

[Starfighter]

I'll try to stay more towards the bottom in my next session. As you can see, especially in the later part, I'm not really in control of where I'm going, I just sort of pick a gap and go with it. Like I'm being pushed around.

[Lander]

I can respect that.
I actually prefer DFK's take on it because at least it was an attempt at something a bit more unique and you only have something screeching at you during the boss as opposed to the entire level.
They had these bizarre features to them and transformed into huge really kickass ships with excellent animations. There's also something a bit more appealing with their art style I can't really pin. And there was no stupid "sex dolls power up the ship" that never made sense. Which is worse in SDOJ than DOJ because you undress them to power up the ship further which is...Jesus fucking Christ.

The DFK key art of AI holding a crushed ship is cool; hits on that macabre vibe you mention, where there's something regretful and hard-to-quantify lying unspoken behind the highly extra time travel shenanigans. I just wish it came across more in-game; AI, Nexy and Shooty are solid, but Ray'n's tantrum patterns and everything about Perfect drag it down.

And yeah, the sexy costumes for expert style are shameless tack, if not quite the nadir of getting rewarded with actual pantyshots for boss kills in Ibara. Hard times in the CV1000 era!

The DOJ girls have this industrial, macabre appeal. Where it seems like they're part of something kind of insidious and corrupt but have to go with it. Instead of seeing them drinking wine or ass shots, you see them in really bizarre scenarios that drive home them being used and abused androids. It reminds me of ESP.Ra.De a bit actually in tone which I adore. Something that actually served a thought out purpose instead of "well Hyper Dimension and body pillows are popular". It's the difference between Ex Machina and Maken Ki.

DOJ is probably the least-familiar to me of the legitimate DDP games, but its art has always been great. A mournful take on the horrors of war; definitely a stronger theme for the series.

If the girls were at least also the pilots, it would be a little less dumb even if I still wouldn't like them. But the fact that they're not even the ones flying the damn things is what makes it all so corny. I hate that the BiAxe has the worst Doll too. That ship's always been my favorite! >:C

Ha, I did some heli runs earlier today, and thought she seemed bored and distracted. Not exactly great qualities for a copilot!
What's the line while approaching the St3 midboss - something like Bang bang bang bang... Are you ok? Yes love, just fine, don't mind the upcoming SS IMMEDIATE DEATH

And yes, Vinogradov and the IGS Scion are some fun as fuck set pieces. I love Cave's stage 3 battleships SO much.

It turns out I was practicing without any slowdown completely forgot to dial in proper settings for all the CV1K games, d'oh!

Still managing to appreciate the bullet-canceling barrage despite that, as a hard resource-and-strategy wall, but it makes so much more sense with extra thinking time to offset all those turrets. It seems to die faster to precisely-positioned shot too, which is a nice side bonus.

I'm also questioning whether there's something nondeterministic about how the game handles time, since the stage sequencing and patterns feel subtly different beyond simply slowing down a bit (or a lot... hell of a lot, lol) but I can't come up with a concrete example. Hmm.

EDIT: Hang on, the one thing about SDOJ having the squeaky announcer is "HYPAH SYS- HYP- H-H-H-HY-HYPAH SYSTEM...READY! c:". I love getting to stage 5 where you can just tucker her out continuously. lmao

I managed to trigger that precisely once, and it was a magical moment; dropped the Lv5 hyper before I could use it though, of course
Super cool, like a little magician's wink as you catch a glimpse behind the scoring curtain.

Though I'm still somewhat lost when it comes to balancing meter use; monkey brain is saying always spend it immediately to ratchet the hit count and get to the next hyper faster, but I get the sense that there's some sweet spot of saving until you can affort to bomb out and reset rank, balanced against the cadence of using it to manage stage setpieces.

[ThundergunExpress]

Trying the Ray'z Arcade Chronology for the first time. These games are harder than I was expecting off the bat, but once I got the hang of the basics it's not as bad, but they're all still difficult. Amazing soundtracks and some gorgeous visuals. Reminds me of G-Darius only in the way of doing gorgeous 3D polygon graphics work in shmups.

[To Far Away Times]

Trying the Ray'z Arcade Chronology for the first time. These games are harder than I was expecting off the bat, but once I got the hang of the basics it's not as bad, but they're all still difficult. Amazing soundtracks and some gorgeous visuals. Reminds me of G-Darius only in the way of doing gorgeous 3D polygon graphics work in shmups.

It's a real shame Taito are just the Bubble Bobble, Bust A Move, and Space Invaders guys these days.

Their 90's shmups were fantastic.

[Stevens]

Their 90's shmups were fantastic.

Would any of the guys that worked on Taito's 90's output find their way to GRev?

[BIL]

Their 90's shmups were fantastic.

Would any of the guys that worked on Taito's 90's output find their way to GRev?

Hell yeah

[Stevens]

Their 90's shmups were fantastic.

Would any of the guys that worked on Taito's 90's output find their way to GRev?

Hell yeah

I would kill for them to do another helicopter themed shooter. THAT would get me back into shmups full time

[XoPachi]

Playing Steel Vampire. The carnage is nice and I like the sheer amount of *S T U F F* you just grab every second. It's satisfying. I just wish your ship wasn't so goddamn big.

[Gamer707b]

Playing some Einhander today. Trying to clear the game. I got to the 6th level. I have got to the final stage before. I feel a clear is not too far away.

Good luck. Schwarzgeist and Hyperion ain't a walk in the park.

You ain't kidding. As far as stages go, I find stage 5 is the hardest and the one I'm most iffy with. Got to final level boss a couple times too, but haven't beat him yet. I'm the opposite of most. I seem to do better when I play less. Lol.