Heh. Yes, I’ve played plenty of twin stick shooters, starting with what’s still the best one, Geometry Wars. But I don’t think of those as vertical or side-scrolling shooters like the ones covered in this thread. I didn’t like Helldivers, but I’ll have to give Jydge a try, I haven’t heard of that one before.
Oh my bad, I forgot what this thread was about. :D
Cygni: All Guns Blazing (apparently an old trailer, but I just saw it for the first time when a thread got bumped elsewhere)
Looks cool, I wishlisted it, thanks.
That was a really cool trailer. The intro and (almost) seamless transition into the action. The lasers looked and sounded great and the explosions hit. The final scene was pretty damn ominous too.
I was very excited until I saw they quoted Sine Mora as one of their references. That has to be one of the most poorly designed shmups I can remember.
Will wait for reviews from hardcoreish players…
That is a nice looking game, and I’ll probably check it out. I’ve always had difficulty with shooters where the enemy projectiles move faster than my own ship can fly though.
It’s only a liability in horizontal shmup: in vertical ones it’s okay.
Don’t question my logic.
Edit: also you guys are insane! Looking forward to a game based on a trailer with zero gameplay footage?!
It has gameplay footage. Not a lot, but it’s in there.
I had a lot issues with Sine More and it was kind of a big disappointment because I loved the look of it at the time. I don’t at present recall what they all were, but think it had to do with hit box and the weird speed controls making it more difficult as opposed to easier.
Found my old post from 2012
I think there’s a few things holding this game back, some of which could be fixed with patches, others which are more ingrained in the design. My core complaint is that I find I can’t seem to get into that zen state that these games usually provide.
I think the Time Capsule needs to recharge on its own, without having to pickup powerups. The powerups seem completely random and don’t seem to even alter their chance of drop by what you are low on. This has resulted in me going through extensive portions of the game with no time power while getting useless points pickups.
A large number of bullets seem to move too fast, and also in a few instances are too damn small. This would be fine if you could count on being able to refill your time gauge, but you can’t
I also feel the the time power should slow you down as well. The bullet patterns in these games are typically about making small adjustments to weave your way through them, in this way just slowing the game down is tremendously useful. The fact that you don’t slow down actually makes this a little harder to do and, at times, I find myself crashing into some bullet even though I’ve slowed down time. Not being slowed yourself is beneficial for those moments where you need to navigate tight spaces, but those should be doable without slowing down time as they need to be by design when you consider the two other powers in arcade mode.
That said, some of these areas seem a bit too hard to make a clean run through, and it seemed to me that in a couple of them not only are you trying to navigate the space but there is also an external pressure being put on you ship in some direction. This may have been my imagination but it sure seemed like it, and if that is the case this combination is unnecessary.
You can brute force your way through story mode, but these issues become a lot more apparent in arcade mode.
Aqua Kitty has a sequel in Astro Aqua Kitty.
I did a few runs of the Zeroranger mode added in the last update, the remixed and shortened White Vanilla version, and banged my head against an extremely obvious but ultra-cool secret. Spoilers: If you shoot the congratulatory text box at the end of the final boss, you “break the simulation” and go on to another new final boss. You don’t get to use any of your remaining continues, and it’s a big difficulty spike. But the reveal is epic. I’m going to try to beat it on my own so I didn’t look up anything beyond that.
But I do remember really liking that game. I need to look into this so-called ‘Aqua Kitty’.
Yes, random power ups meant the difficulty of any certain section was completely up to the RNG, which was bollocks.
Yeah, I recall these being major issues for me too, which is a shame because the weird story really intrigued me. I got hit by some geometry on one of the later levels (some spinning laser death wheel thing you have to navigate through or something?) and I was just like ‘okay, I’m done’.
I still need to give Jamestown+ a spin. As a filthy shmup casual, that’s probably my favourite, probably because I played it through co-op with a friend. I just had such a great time experimenting with the varied characters and their abilities. I recall really enjoying the vaunt system too, and of course, the pixel art is sublime.
Zeroranger is high on my list @SweetJP and I really want to give Rival Megagun a go when I have a friend spare.
I got into Aqua Kitty because it reminded me of my favorite Atari 2600 shmup, Seaquest.
I finally got around to playing Sine Mora Ex and I can’t say I’m impressed. Along with the other comments made in this thread, I would add that the constant pauses for (very poor) dialogue wear very thin very quickly. Also there’s so much going on in the background that I often can’t tell what I should be shooting. I’ll play a bit longer and see if it gets better, but at this point I’m glad I paid less than £2 for it.
The Mushihimesama Switch port is very good, speaking of which. Leaderboards to be enabled yet, but it’s got everything you’d wish for: replays, training mode, normal, arrange and 1.5 mode, screen rotation settings.
It’s even got one of the best if not the best scaling of a Cave shooter. Usually they look blurry or pixelated, but not here, even when scaling to the % for the screen size.
And it plays very well, of course.
Just a reminder that in the JP store you can get a very good ESPRade port too (I have a soft spot for that one).
It didn’t escape Japan? :O