Shmups

[greenman]

@greenman , I don't know nothing about no cutesy lion coming out of a waterfall, sorry, but it's a nice image.

Might it have been twinbee yahho? The third in the trilogy?
That has a waterfall near the end of the first stage and a boss that could have morphed into a lion behind the mist of time.

https://youtu.be/A6-YLS1W3uI?t=216

Sadly not although again I remember roughly the same kind of look to it, maybe not quite as overtly cutesy. Again the main feature was you had a variety of bombs that followed your ship in a chain. I'm guessing released a year or two either side of 1990.

Bugging me because the name is on the tip of my tongue, I seem to remember it got home ports.

[ImmaculateClump]

M2 stream is on.

Aleste Branch trailer timestamp - https://youtu.be/g6ZqU0_pVCc?t=4714

[ImmaculateClump]

I beat my score on Blue Wish Desire normal mode :D



I've realised that you build up your hyper a lot quicker with your regular shot, and during hyper, it's best to try and leave enemies alive awhile so that you can cancel more bullets when you kill them.

So you pretty much want to be using your regular shot all the time and just use focus for emergencies.

Even during bosses, you want to use your regular shot to build your hyper up really quickly and try to spend as much time in hyper as possible.

[Crenners]

I loved what little I played of BWRP and hope it eventually makes its way over to a nobhead box. That new version looks great. Merry Christmas to all (one or two) shmup fans out there!

[ImmaculateClump]

Yeah, it's just more of the same, but it's godly!
Merry christmas to you too!

Number go bigger!



There, will let this thread rest in peace now, I think. I know when I'm beat. Not gonna win any new converts, I don't think.

Heathens!

[Crenners]

Scumbags!

Here's the head-to-head on Dodonpachi Daioujou White Label between WR holder fufufu and SPS, previous WR holder (and very recent Ketsui WR holder). This took place during Daigo's Kemonomichi event, featuring a load of classic fighting game match-ups but after the popularity of last year's Battle Garegga run by T3 Kamui, he's put the spotlight on shmups again.

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1247364278?tt_medium=mobile_web_share&tt_content=vod

Starts at 2:05.

fufufu said he puts his clear rate at 30%, SPS at 25%. For me, this is better than Gus's Futari run at SGDQ.

Separately, I'm going to aim for the Ketsui 1CC this next year. I haven't got a clue about stage 5 but I'm thinking the rest is within my reach. Stage 4 is brick but the boss is doable, kind of gimmicky and I've done it plenty in training mode. We'll see, anyway. Fuck all else I'm playing or interested at the moment so it's a target I'll enjoy. I'm loving blazing through 1 to 3 and picking up the St 3 midboss 1Up almost every time.

[Crenners]

Separately, here's Moglar's recent Ketsui WR, with 599.7m.

https://youtu.be/wT8bzE940F4

Took the record from SPS, absolute God-tier unfathomable shit.

[ImmaculateClump]

Separately, I'm going to aim for the Ketsui 1CC this next year.

Oh, wow. Good luck with that, fella.
and there was me thinking you were winding down!
I thought "well, he seems happy, so there might be something in it" so I bought "Last Epoch" for myself for christmas.
It's really nice and relaxing. I love those diablo style ARPGs because they don't take much concentration. Your brain is still recharging while you play, and the combat is just about engaging enough to keep things interesting.

I haven't played a shmup since christmas eve. A whole week! That's unheard of.

That M2 ketsui arrange is godly. It made me see the game in a whole new light. The arcade mode went from seeming like a relentless wall of pain to something that could actually be chipped away at with a lot of practise.
I'm not sure I could stick it out without the safety net though. Those later stages are a nightmare!

I kept a list this year and got 73 clears, but I think a ketsui 1-all would be the equivalent, at least in play time since I've been playing chill doujin games for the most part.

The harder ones were Solid State Survivor, the true last boss was a nightmare.
Natsuki Chronicles gets harder towards the end. Bike Banditz wasn't easy. Espgaluda had a big difficulty jump at the final bosses. I was so happy to finally get that notch on my bedpost, not that I played it a great deal, but it always seemed so doable so I'd fire it up now and again over the years and always come away feeling dejected.

I find it way more fun to play games that are easier to clear and more improv friendly, and then going for a big score.
The high difficulty cave games, it's gonna be a lot of unrewarding homework and you might not ever reach your goal.
Good luck though if you've got your mind set on it!

I tried the stream. I just can't get excited watching other people play games. I did try.

[Crenners]

@ImmaculateClump Only a brief reply because starting to cook but 73 clears is a hell of a total, no matter what. I've got to the last boss on Esp at Arcade Club but nowhere near, massive wall and is there another TLB after that? Great work.

[Crenners]

@ImmaculateClump Just realised you may have meant my stream rather than the DOJ stream? Point blanking the same save state again and again. Apologies if that's what you watched. I was trying to figure out some safer boss routes, seeing what I can manipulate and what's fixed. Ketsui defo seems to have more RNG than Futari or DOJ but it might be that I don't know it well enough yet. It does feel like you can just get fucked by certain boss patterns, though.

I think that's a big part of what I enjoy about it, to be honest. You can feasibly fluke stages 1-3 with great dodging and a bit of luck, but even if you know them inside out, you still have to be right on it because you can't muscle memory through. Obviously, that's my main 'strength', the unrewarding homework as you say (although I know you know I enjoy those incremental improvements). That will only go so far with this, I reckon.

Anyway, we'll see. I managed to NMNB DOJ to stage 5 once and I was on a high but I dropped off and lost interest through a lack of time, energy and improvements. I need to see the wall coming down even one brick at a time or I get bored. Stage 4 midboss is my current wall and I can only really fluke the first half of the stage. I could bomb my way to stage 5 but it's pointless because ultimately, I would need all those resources for later.

Anyway, sorry for the self-indulgent progress post, as ever.

Enjoy Last Epoch! I've not heard of that one but not been playing much else recently. Can't remember when I last turned on the Switch. Oh, DFK, yeah, another lazy bastard moment.

[ImmaculateClump]

No, I meant that big grudge match thing with fufu and wotsit.
I didn't know you were streaming, though it does sound riveting :D
I like watching replays from folk I know, or if it's a game I know inside out, but I just can't seem to get excited for those big event superplayer live runs.

The dog botherers futari run felt like an exception because it was all the shmupnerds invading the speedrunner nerds thing and felt like a big deal, getting the genre some wider coverage and showing something more exciting than mario jumping backwards up a staircase, and futari is a lot of fun to watch and that cringey dweeb getting overexcited and drowning out aquas was a big part of it.

They're definitely impressive, but not something I find entertaining, personally.
Some games are a lot more fun to watch than others, I find. I might just not find DOJ fun to watch.

Good luck! Don't burn yourself out on ketsui.
Maybe play some proper chill shmups to break it up.

[Crenners]

@ImmaculateClump Haha, thank God you didn't see that then :D

I totally agree that DOJ is much less watchable than Futari Ultra for the pure entertainment and cringe. All the bees and chaining shit and - oh wow - hyper management is only really interesting if you already know and care about that shite.

I might try to clear DFK for a bit of relief but let's be honest, I probably never will! Have a great new year mate.

[ImmaculateClump]

Yes, happy new year to you too! Hope everything goes your way in 2022.

DFK strong style is way easier than it looks. You'll be very surprised how quickly the clear comes once it all clicks.
Don't be stingy with your hypers, use your autoshot to cancel the bullets whilst in hyper and switch to laser when a laser is coming for you.
Once you've got the bosses down and you feel your way through stage 5, you'll be laughing.

Next time I fire a shmup up, I'll make sure it's ketsui. I wanna see how far I can get now since playing the arrange mode :D

[ImmaculateClump]

It's NGdev but boghog is helping them with the game design which is why it looks 100 times better than anything they've previously produced :D

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2025840/Gunvein/

Procedurally generated arrange mode. That could be good!
Looking forward to this one. September is my birthday month!

Really looking forward to Like Dreamer as well which should be out soon. It says summer so might be a month or so yet.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1867740/Like_Dreamer/

Playing lots of deathsmiles 2 x mode at the minute. Really enjoying it. I'm at the stage now where I'm having to start thinking outside the boss and making up strats to milk more out the bosses to push my score forward. Really chill and lots of fun.

[ImmaculateClump]

What's everyone playing? You looking forward to anything?

[ImmaculateClump]

Nope, me neither.

[ImmaculateClump]

10 days for like dreamer!

https://twitter.com/Outside_danmaku/status/1546442643693273088

1420 yen, so about 9 quid.

[madhair60]

sorry but the absolute state of that art.

[ImmaculateClump]

Haha, I know, I know, lad had to start a separate twitter account for their games because he was posting too many drawings of lasses with massive charlies on his main account and people were unfollowing.

Trust me, ignore the boobies, their games are fab!
It's all lollipops and rainbows and blue skys. Proper old school bright colour cute em ups.
The bullet patterns are always inventive and fun and they have 4 different difficulty levels that scale really well.

Just like with their last game, CosmoDreamer, you play each stage individually before you unlock the arcade mode and play them all in one sitting. I wasn't a fan of that at first, but it works really well, and lets you get more comfortable with the later stages.

Try the demo from last year. There's a dodonpachi stage! - https://www.freem.ne.jp/win/game/26631

Their games encourage you to play aggressively and push all the time, and they flow so nicely like liquid silk. Trust me, it's good gear.

[Cold Meat Platter]

Got a 240HZ G-sync monitor a few months back and now I realise how shit my old 2008 LCD was. Been MAMEing it up and shooters are so much fucking easier it's shocking. That's without run-ahead on retroarch. Not to mention that non-60Hz games like Raiden II are now scrolling smoothly without having to overclock.

[ImmaculateClump]

Yeah, I was gutted when we "progressed" to flat screen lcd monitors. I never got used to it. 60hz is nowhere near enough for gaming, especially the kb/mouse first person shooters that I was big into when my crt died and I had to get something new.

As soon as a cheap and nasty 120hz lcd monitor came out that I could afford, I snapped it up.
The LG W2363D, cost me 110 quid. I still have it, still going strong, though I just use it for my ps4 at 60hz nowadays. Very low input lag even at 60hz.

Very noticeable benefits with a high refresh monitor even when the game is locked to 60fps.
You don't notice tearing at high refresh rates either so even vsync stalwarts can turn it off and experience the joy of responsive controls.

Not to mention that non-60Hz games like Raiden II are now scrolling smoothly without having to overclock.

Yeah! That's the other great thing, the M2 port of dangun feveron on ps4, because the pcb runs at 57.5hz, M2's solution to make it play nice on 60hz consoles was to just double a few frames now and then which is why you get some weird hitching at times. It's quite distracting. If you don't notice it and want to see it, look at the bullets during the second stage bosses last two patterns where it's throwing the green and pink balls at you dead fast.

On pc, you just run the damn game at 57.5fps, vsync off at your monitors highest refresh rate. Problem solved. Silky.

Of course, the m2 port of dangun is still worth buying, the fever arrange is fantastic, but playing the main mode, going back to shmupmame or whatever and playing on pc with much lower input lag, I always play a lot better.

Hopefully Taito will make m2 do pc ports of those ray'z games that are coming because the previous m2 pc ports have been godly.

[Cold Meat Platter]

With v-sync and g-sync on it's the exact arcade frame rate :)
Going to get the X-arcade twin stick out and try and beat my Robotron score.

[ImmaculateClump]

With vsync off, it'd also be the exact arcade framerate. All you're doing with gsync is matching the refresh rate to the framerate, which isn't really necessary with a monitor running at a high refresh rate.

Oh, actually, I've never used retroarch, maybe that aims for 60hz by default and rounds up the framerate of wonky games, that'd make sense.

You just going mad at the buffet at the minute, or is there something that's grabbed you?

[Cold Meat Platter]

With vsync off I can still see tearing sometimes. It's the screen's latency that's making the real difference. Using ARCADE64 which is based on MAMEUIFX I think.
Was just going through the Toaplan section on MAME last night. Even love the older flying shark sneaky fast bullet from behind stuff.

[ImmaculateClump]

If you've got gsync on, with vsync off, your monitor will be matching it's refresh rate to the games framerate, so if the game is running at 60fps, your monitor will be running at 60hz. That might be why you're still noticing the tearing.

I don't trust any of those adaptive sync technology's. I think my current monitor supports it, but I just leave it off. Games either vsync to 280hz, which I've never had an issue with in terms of input lag, or play at their locked framerate while my monitor runs at 280hz.
If a game defaults to 60hz or whatever, I'll sort that before I start playing.

I think using gsync with a first person shooter that had a wild framerate, with the framerate unlocked, for example, the refresh rate would be changing a lot and the input lag would be a lot less consistent which would throw your mouse aiming off more than vsyncing at 60hz or even vsync off but capping the game at 60fps.
That's all very negligible, I understand with gsync when it's set up properly, but, and I haven't looked into it for a long time, I'm assuming it's still not quite on par with highest framerate/highest refresh rate, or locked framerate, highest refresh in terms of input lag, though once you get to those low numbers, it's very much diminishing returns.

but yeah, the lower overall input lag on your new high refresh rate monitor will be doing a lot of the heavy lifting there.

Have you heard of that "special k" program? You can go absolutely crazy with this stuff if you want to, or just use it to monitor what's happening - https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Special_K

If you play with an arcade stick, the brooke universal fighting board has crazy low input lag - https://www.brookaccessory.com/detail/06960737/

It was really interesting to see the different branches of eighting and cave after toaplan. I love how these games can be so similar and so different at the same time.

[ImmaculateClump]

If you've got gsync on, with vsync off, your monitor will be matching it's refresh rate to the games framerate, so if the game is running at 60fps, your monitor will be running at 60hz. That might be why you're still noticing the tearing.

What? That makes no sense. It'd still be synced.
I was wrecked last night, sorry.

[ImmaculateClump]

My face during the final boss :D



https://streamable.com/e1ge9s

The queens followers are all tweeting and smack talking you during the royal stage and I saw this the other day. One of them goes

"The queen is the best! I can't even look at that piece of shit!"



Game of the year. If you've got a pc, you need this.
No matter what your skill level, it's got you covered.

The singer community stage is genuinely one of the most fun stages I've ever played in a shmup.

Have at it! - https://store.steampowered.com/app/1867740/Like_Dreamer/

Cosmo Dreamer also 25% off for the next few days - https://store.steampowered.com/app/1424630/CosmoDreamer/

[ImmaculateClump]

Got a nightmare (hardest difficulty) clear today. I still need to do trial+ where you get to play all of the stages.

There's this really fun mode you unlock (I think by beating boss rush.)
By the way, even the boss rush mode in this game is fun! They truncate the bosses so it isn't just a joyless slog.

Anyway, this mode you unlock is called "speedrun" and it's godly, if you've played the excellent arrange mode in zeroranger, it's more or less that, how the level scrolls fast if you beat the enemies quickly, so you have to play as aggressively as possible, getting right up in the grill of all the twats thus setting off your buzz hyper as much as possible, strategically bombing through some of the boss phases to finish them off quicker.
31:24.53 is my best time so far in expert.

It's so much fun to play, it's just none stop action, no let up whatsoever.

This game is amazing. You NEED to buy it.

Honestly, no matter what your skill level, even if you're completely new to bullet hell, easy mode has got you covered, the game is designed to be quite easy for survival, you make it harder for yourself by pushing for score.

A great way to dip your toe in if you don't normally play this type of thing.

Game of the year so far by a long chalk. Gunvein is gonna have to absolutely slap to compete with this.

[ImmaculateClump]

WOOHOO! First go, baby! :D





I didn't manage to get the extra stage though. Need to do that, and then there's nightmare speedrun which I'm looking forward to trying.

Got a better time in expert the other day - https://i.imgur.com/zVIWolX.jpeg

and there's my best score for expert all trial - https://i.imgur.com/2wT92MS.jpeg

You all need to play this game! Trust me, it's the best shmup I've played for a long time.
There's an easy difficulty and you can choose a shield in your loadout that acts as an autobomb. You'll not have any problems with it being too hard.

The little rabbits are the cutest. Almost don't wanna kill them.

[Kelvin]

Is this thread only for vertical shooters and bullet hells? In any case, I'd quite like some recommendations for the best horizontal shooters on Switch. Just with the following caveats:

• No bullet hells.
• Suitable for (semi) newbs. I've always liked shooters, but I'm not an expert. I stick games like Ikaruga on infinite lives, I'm in it for the spectacle and simple joys of killing hundreds of enemies, not the punishing difficulty.
• Visually impressive, or at least interesting. The more spectacle the better, cool bosses, fortresses, etc.

Thought I'd ask here, even though a lot of you guys would probably spit on a mainstream piece of shit like me.

I'm on holiday next week, and would quite like one or two of these to blast through.