Will review if I can manage to get past the now connecting and now loading screens
The following might genuinely make you cry
I was cruising the Japanese iOS App Store yesterday when I noticed Cave had two new games. A Sanrio sponsored Hello Kity game (looks like a match 3 game) and a new shmup with toy planes. The Hello Kitty game I didn't download, but Cave's past girl games have actually been pretty awesome (princess debut) Their Natsume dancing/dating sim was one of the better natsume RPGs. Regardless this is the toy shooter:
Lots of Japanese developers have been investing in the iOS App Store, but Cave is one of the few that did it right. Their ports of their arcade games are usually pretty awesome and work well as iOS games,however their parent company pulled the plug on shmups so this is what we get now:
I believe that is a connection error, because this game requires an always online internet connection to play. If you enjoyed playing Death Smiles on the go, this new game is troubling. The game is tied into some type of Japanese social network too it seems. What I don't get about this is even Korean social networking games like the For kakao shmups are pretty decent and even allow play with out an account and offline. Now to further break your heart this the actual gameplay:
The gameplay restricts movement to the horizontal axis, no upward or downward movement and then simplifies the mighty bullet hell to a few simple shots. Killing chains of enemies results in either a star or a diamond. Diamonds power up a special shot used to kill the boss and stars work towards unleashing the characters on the bottom. Basically, in these 15 second stages you shoot for chains while dodging some simplistic fire before the star characters take out the boss for you. And It gets worse:
The game is buggy as hell. Menus have noticeable lag time, connect errors occurs, levels often don't load. I had to wait 12 hours for the second stage to load. The game is essentially impossible to play and you will see this:
More than you will see this:
So basically this what Cave appears to have become: a lagged filled free to play shooter with simplistic mechanics, no real challenge, and a limited per day playing time. The game also has micro transactions I believe (probably for more play time), but I did not need any for the first few stages.
A couple of things to note: other developers have done a good job transitioning to the iOS free to play model. Puzzle and Dragons and Wonderflick are wonderful games perfectly playable with out paying a dime. Cave's new one almost doesn't even let you play it. The storyline of Cave's previous efforts has been lost and somehow, the stability of their iOS games too. A couple of theories behind this abomination:
1. Cave's senior staff intentionally made a shitty game to piss off the management and hopefully show their previous business model works
2. More encouragingly Cave's senior staff like Hiroyuki Tanaka, Tsuneki Ikeda, and others might have simply left the company. This game bears almost no resemblance to any Cave shmup ever made. If it is the product of Cave's elders then I have my sympathy for then, but as a brand Cave is effectively dead if this is their output today.
Anyways, back to long loading screens for 15 seconds of play! If the game gets better I will let you know.
