STGT08 Week 3: Thoughts

Aquas · Post by **Aquas** » Mon Sep 29, 2008 4:38 am

We're done playing Rayforce / Gunlock / Layer Section...!

I dunno, it was fun. The ship's speed was kind of annoying to me, and having to bullet herd away from getting chains. I wasn't very great at scoring in this game, I didn't really have any route but pretty much nabbed the easy 8 combos when I had the chance. I submitted my score 3 or 4 days ago and wasn't able to beat it in the meantime. Had lucky and skillful run early on. I abused the save states in MAME quite a bit so I didn't have to sit through the first 2 stages every time, and I think it payed off a bit. Good job on the ALL's for those who got 'em!

The music by Zuntata was pretty cool and the presentation was pretty sweet. My favorite boss was the Stage 3 boss, I loved shooting all those cannons on the side and generally making a mockery of him. xD but I hated the popcorn ships in this game and those ships that shoot all the heat seeking missles at you from their behind (also on st.3) They would flank me and I'd be pissed. Also those ground ship lazers were also a bit annoying.

All in all, I'm ready for next week.

How'd it go folks?

Arvandor · Post by **Arvandor** » Mon Sep 29, 2008 7:56 am

This week was the most fun I've had in both the tournaments I've participated in so far. I really like Rayforce, and the music is exactly what I like to hear in a shmup.

Aquas wrote:I submitted my score 3 or 4 days ago and wasn't able to beat it in the meantime. Had lucky and skillful run early on.

This seems to be how it ALWAYS goes for me. I get my best score within the first 4-6 hours of play, and then can't beat that within the week time limit. I seem to do best when I don't know what I'm doing; once I start to understand the game and figure out little scoring tricks, I try too hard to score (and figure out more tricks), end up dying more, and do worse overall. I try to fight the urge and just play for survival, but I'm too weak-minded =P

Danbo · Post by **Danbo** » Mon Sep 29, 2008 7:58 am

I kinda forgot about it until sunday then I just had a real good day and got quite far by paying very little attention to scoring. First attempt, I noticed that the game makes you misdirect yourself by paying attention to the ground stuff rather than the actual bullets if you are trying to go for a nice score, so on the fateful real attempt i said "fuck it" and played it like a normal game with various quirks, lasering whenever i got lockons by sheer chance alone.

The ship's speed is kind of annoying, and I dunno if it's just my controller but it seems to move a little to the left after moving right, and vice versa - that was annoying. The game has no traditional bombs, but I didn't really feel like i needed them at any point in time (well, once, but that was incompetence on my part)

I'm sure I've heard the boss music before though... anyway, what's next? Doujin week? Dragon week? Famous Manic week? I can't remember

groobo · Post by **groobo** » Mon Sep 29, 2008 8:43 am

Aquas wrote:I abused the save states in MAME quite a bit so I didn't have to sit through the first 2 stages every time, and I think it payed off a bit.

So you're allowed to use savestates during the tournament?

moozooh · Post by **moozooh** » Mon Sep 29, 2008 9:10 am

groobo wrote:So you're allowed to use savestates during the tournament?

I'm reasonably sure he meant for practice. Most MAME users use it to train on the problematic parts without having to play the entire game to that point.

Post by **spadgy** » Mon Sep 29, 2008 9:38 am

While I almost hated this game to start with, it did click with me and I really enjoyed it as soon as level four came on the scene. Sadly though, that clicking happened rather late in the day. Nice to play a shmup quite different from most stuff I play, and it's left a taste in my mouth to play it some more, which never happened when it was in the Macaw Tourny.

MX7 · Post by **MX7** » Mon Sep 29, 2008 9:44 am

First of all, I admit Rayforce/Gunlock/Layercake has amazing graphics, and awesome music too. The setting is very well realised, and the sense of drama it instills is something a lot of modern shooters ignore.

Apart from that, I found it to be complete arse. This mainly boiled down to the games ungodly combination of enemy chaining (ugh, although it is only 'burst chaining' I guess) and utilising different planes of height, perhaps the biggest faux pas one can make in a 2D shooter. Also, hitbox was hueg, and I almost died laughing when the 'the fissure of consciousness' wasn't just metaphorical, but an actual fuck-off chasm

Herr Schatten · Post by **Herr Schatten** » Mon Sep 29, 2008 9:54 am

I like Rayforce a lot, but playing it for score soon became a chore to me. It's frustrating when a few well-placed lock-ons can net you more points than surviving an actual stage. I've never been a big fan of bomb-the-ground Xevious style shmups and Rayforce is no exception.

Rupert H · Post by **Rupert H** » Mon Sep 29, 2008 10:46 am

Like with every week so far, I didn't get to dedicate any way near as much time as I would have liked. I do have a lot of love for Rayforce though.

I love Taito's sense of story telling in shmups that skips the nonsense exposition of cuts scenes and keeps a tight theme and a logical progression throughout. Starting out way above the planet's atmosphere and peneatrating deeper level by level gives the game an epic feel.

I really do need to get the hang of not getting point blanked by ground enemies while targeting a X8 bonus though.

Aquas · Post by **Aquas** » Mon Sep 29, 2008 10:51 am

moozooh wrote:
groobo wrote:So you're allowed to use savestates during the tournament?
I'm reasonably sure he meant for practice. Most MAME users use it to train on the problematic parts without having to play the entire game to that point.

Correct. Sorry, I should have specified. Yeah, just to train, not in a real run.

Post by **spadgy** » Mon Sep 29, 2008 10:58 am

Rupert H wrote: I didn't get to dedicate any way near as much time as I would have liked.

Same for me. Ironically I did leave the TV in tate all week though, even though I barely used it, meaning that come Sunday PM I felt so bad about interupting TV viewing in my house all week I switched it back so my wife could watch the box and missed my last evening putting some effort in.

Next week I will spend more time!

moozooh · Post by **moozooh** » Mon Sep 29, 2008 11:19 am

MX7 wrote:hitbox was hueg

Hmm? It's roughly 1/2 the ship's overall diameter, similar to Dangun's. I call that medium-sized.

Arvandor · Post by **Arvandor** » Mon Sep 29, 2008 11:25 am

Agreed, I felt the hitbox was just right for this game. The ship could have been just a HAIR faster, but... It's close enough I suppose.

Any of you complaining about the "huge" hitbox needs to go play Viper Phase 1. Man... Now THAT game sucks =P

Turrican · Post by **Turrican** » Mon Sep 29, 2008 12:04 pm

It was an underwhelming experience - scoring system did click with me eventually, and I liked the pretty steep rank when you're fully powered up. However, the ship's auto balance to the center, floaty gravity-like controls and fuzzy flying triangles were quite annoying. Raiden ship is slow too, but this is just... too slow

I never was a fan of the series since the Raystorm days - the lock-on gameplay has nothing to do with it, bcause I love Soukyugurentai - playing Gunlock only reinforced my thoughts on the series.

(cool music though)

P.S. I hope to be more focused next week, Oldschoolers! ^_^

P.P.S. oh and Xevious / Twinbee are much better than this. At least you bomb ground targets which stay down below and still most of the time.

MX7 · Post by **MX7** » Mon Sep 29, 2008 12:11 pm

moozooh wrote:
MX7 wrote:hitbox was hueg
Hmm? It's roughly 1/2 the ship's overall diameter, similar to Dangun's. I call that medium-sized.

Naw, Dungun's is smaller.

Oh, and the ship drifting back a few pixels when you let go of the stick? That was a bad idea. Actually, maybe it was this that made the hitbox feel so big. In any case, the drifting around and the two planes of height are enough to convince me that this game sucks.

Enhasa · Post by **Enhasa** » Mon Sep 29, 2008 1:16 pm

Hey guys, I too can pick a random game and find two arbitrary reasons why it sucks. Gradius sucks because it has options and moais.

mikwuyma · Post by **mikwuyma** » Mon Sep 29, 2008 1:56 pm

This game sucks because I thought Macaw liked it but he didn't even play it last week

.

I have to defend the game though.

Big hitbox: There aren't any tight, danmaku-esque bullet patterns. All of the bullet patterns have big holes that your ship can easily fit through.

Ship speed: There aren't any super fast bullets or lasers that come after you, except maybe for those homing lasers that are telegraphed in the first place. I think the game's designers took the ship speed into consideration when they designed the bullets patterns because I didn't find any cheap, insanely hard to dodge bullet patterns.

This is obvious, but I like the game, and I think the scoring system makes it more interesting to play, even if it is incredibly lopsided towards ground targets and killing bosses

I just wish I could get a better score (though my score is pretty decent), but I was here instead of playing Rayforce most of the weekend

MX7 · Post by **MX7** » Mon Sep 29, 2008 2:20 pm

Enhasa wrote:Hey guys, I too can pick a random game and find two arbitrary reasons why it sucks. Gradius sucks because it has options and moais.

Try harder.

bsidwell · Post by **bsidwell** » Mon Sep 29, 2008 3:11 pm

Typical Taito game: Beautiful to look at, beautiful to listen to, miserable to play. This game has everything I hate about chaining (heavy memorization, rigid paths and timing, general analness) with none of the payoffs (big ol' numbers.) Seriously, a world class run gets you less than 10M points? Bleah.

MR_Soren · Post by **MR_Soren** » Mon Sep 29, 2008 3:45 pm

We might as well quit voting and let team SDA pick the last two games.

I wanted to play TD2, so I was really disappointed with Rayforce being chosen. Still, I played my balls off all week long, but remained stuck on stage 3 the entire time. Kinda frustrating to make next to no progress in a week.

mikwuyma · Post by **mikwuyma** » Mon Sep 29, 2008 4:05 pm

The funny thing is, if I knew Thunder Dragon II had a chance, I would have voted for it.

Also, if more people voted we would have played Strikers (gogo low participation!).

FIL · Post by **FIL** » Mon Sep 29, 2008 4:38 pm

I was really starting to like it but I didn't really feel like playing any games this last week or so.

Kinda kicking myself now though because I think if i'd played as little as 2 or 3 credits a night I would have had a much better score.

Post by **Icarus** » Mon Sep 29, 2008 4:45 pm

Rayforce. <3

szycag · Post by **szycag** » Mon Sep 29, 2008 4:56 pm

I won't lie and say I was too cool to play a survival game for score like the rest of my team. I'm just really really bad at it.

VorpalEdge · Post by **VorpalEdge** » Mon Sep 29, 2008 5:31 pm

MR_Soren wrote:We might as well quit voting and let team SDA pick the last two games.

Or more than 40 people out of the 150-something signups could vote.

Wait, I'm on team SDA.

Hey guys, stop voting please! I like the current situation. :)

spineshark · Post by **spineshark** » Mon Sep 29, 2008 5:34 pm

MR_Soren wrote:We might as well quit voting and let team SDA pick the last two games.

You're probably right. We were team voting, then almost half of us forgot anyway. Like me!

This is a fine game but I'm really bad at everything and the lack of bombs to cheese through the parts I sucked at really held me back =p WAY WAY better than Dangun, maybe more fun than 19XX.

Also: not gonna lie, the Moais are stupid.

dmzach · Post by **dmzach** » Mon Sep 29, 2008 5:35 pm

I liked the music and stage 3 looked cool, but that was as far as i played.

The only thing i didn't like was the ships speed and the boring bosses.

VorpalEdge · Post by **VorpalEdge** » Mon Sep 29, 2008 6:17 pm

spineshark wrote:You're probably right. We were team voting, then almost half of us forgot anyway. Like me!

I'm still disappointed by bsidwell not launching into a mega-sarcasm attack on you non-voters. It's not every day that you get to see a master at the peak of his game. :(

Enhasa · Post by **Enhasa** » Mon Sep 29, 2008 9:12 pm

MX7 wrote:
Enhasa wrote:Hey guys, I too can pick a random game and find two arbitrary reasons why it sucks. Gradius sucks because it has options and moais.
Try harder.

Ikaruga sucks because you change colors and it has crates.

Ed Oscuro · Post by **Ed Oscuro** » Tue Sep 30, 2008 1:07 am

Enhasa wrote:and it has crates.

All you need to know about any game. That, right there, is a post born of wisdom; heed it well.

p.s. I agree with MX7 completely on the pros/cons column for this game.

It are fun and excitement but shit when I restart over and over because FUUUCK I FUCKED UP THE CHAIN FUUUUUUUUCK

I probably can make it to stage four or five easy, but the chaining captures all my attention instead.

I recall I made it to the Stage 3 boss before and had shit for score by that point.

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STGT08 Week 3: Thoughts

STGT08 Week 3: Thoughts

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