Been a while since I posted in here. Sadly no fancy 1 credit clears or any such achievements from me recently but I have picked up on playing shoot'em ups again on my Nintendo switch.
Espgaluda II has finally found its was onto international waters and as a fan of Cave shmups I didn't hesitate to pay full price for it on Nintendo eshop.
Honestly this game is hard, even by cave standards. In most cave titles, scoring can be summed up as “point blank” and “chain kills” while this has you needing to metagame when and where you’re supposed to use the ascension mode (gender bending) mechanic on top of how to most efficiently farm gems to fuel it. It’s good but once you start going deeper it’s like damn dude I really need to study this.
It's a shame Espgaluda I is a Japan-only Arcade/PS2 exclusive as it is supposed to be the easiest and most beginner friendly Cave game (while II is the complete opposite).
On the upside this Xbox 360 port gives you no lack of content as it contains 4 playable characters and all 7 versions of the game to mess around with so you'll get good time out of it even when playing casually.
Here's a deceptive title. Project Starship looks like absolute gooseberry fool, like offputtingly fugly but it turns out there is actually a decent game in there.
It's a semi-randomised score attack game where the game has you deal with a randomised selection of enemies and power ups. Normally I'd be against randomised shmups but here the idea is that you learn to identify the patterns as they appear so I can get behind it. The play is solid enough (although I find ship control to be a bit slippery) but what really impresses is the use of dynamic audio as the music reacts to your power up states (speeding up when in overdrive mode), does a rewind when you get hit and so on. Worth 89p honestly it's significantly better than a lot of the garbadge that drops to that price range on eshop.
Now that i've played it I'll have to try the sequel which in all honestly looks like a significantly better game.
This one took me by surprise. Void Gore is another semi-random wave based score attack shmup by the creators of Project Starship and if PS was the blue print then Void Gore is the real deal this game is solid.
You start the game with a fairly weak ship but can upgrade it by purchasing upgrades with your hard earned cash between runs. It doesn't take long to purchase every upgrade but that doesn't mean you've maxed out, each run gives you ample opportunities to pimp out your ship and turn it into a demon murder machine.
The game loops endlessly and gets progressively hardfer so there isn't any real reason to play other than score. Even though I've seen everything the game has to offer at this point there is a part of me that feels compelled to try and reach Hell Level 100 (Current PB is 33). The current score leader on the switch version has over a billion points so I'm interested to see if I can come close to matching that (2nd place has a mesely 300m by comparison).
If I had to pick out one of these three to buy now it would be void gore. Espgaluda is £15.49 and is very unlikely to see a discount anytime soon. Void Gore just came off sale but drops to the 50% mark often, for £2.24 it'd be rude not to.
In actual news there is a lot going on for Shmup releases this year both in physical and digital:
30/09/21 - Cotton Guardian Force Saturn Tribute (PS4/Switch) - A 3-in-1 compilation containing ports of Cotton 2, Cotton Boomerange and Guardian Force, 3 titles which were previously console exclusive to Japanese Sega Saturn. With Cotton Reboot having just had a western release it might be worth checking to see if this will be getting one in 2022. If not the Asian physical editions will apparently support English.
12/10/21 - G-Darius HD (PS4/Switch) - A remaster of an arcade game whose PS1 port is best known for being an ISO bootloader disc for PS2 G-Darius has actually been out for a while as part of the Japan only Cosmic Revelation collection alongside Darius burst: Another Chronicle EX+. While selling the game separately in the west is a bit weird it's not an entirely unwelcome change as G-Darius is the game I'm personally far more interested in.
28/10/21 - Toaplan Arcade Garage: Kyukyoku Tiger-Heli (PS4/Switch) - M2 Shot Triggers is back with another collection and this time it is a tribute to Toaplans arcade game Tiger-Heli as it contains ports of almost every vsersion of the game from the arcade all the way to the Famicom, NES, Mega Drive and PC Engine. If you get this it's because you really like Tiger-Heli. Being an M2 Shot Triggers release like ESP Ra.De.Ps1 and Aleste Collection it's unlikely this will ever leave Japan because Shot Triggers are difficult like that.
29/10/21 - Andro Dunos 2 (PS4/Switch/XB)- I know very little about this game but it is being published by Pixel Heart who also published the Shmup Collection. Andro Dunos 2 is the sequel to an old arcade game from 1992 only whoever made it seems to have not moved on from that era as the game looks like something you'd have expected to see on the Neo Geo. I'll be keeping an eye out for reviews.
9/12/21 - Sol Cresta (PS4/Switch) - Hamster Corporation (Arcade Archives) and Platinum Games have teamed up as Hideki Kamiya finally gets to relalise his ambition of creating an arcade shoot'em up in the same style as the games he grew up playing in the 80s. Sol Cresta is being heralded as the success to arcade classics Moon Cresta and Terra Cresta. Surprisingly this is one game which isn't seeing a retail release despite the names behind it.
16/12/21 - Deathsmiles I & II (PS4/Switch) - "Death smiles at us all. Lolis smile back." is the infamous blurb from the American release of the xbox 360 version and I couldn't talk about this game without bringing that up. Deathsmiles is one of the better knopw shmups of the last 20 years specifically because of its aesthetic choice but Deathsmiles 2 is a little more obscure ith its only western release being on the american games on-demand service for the xbox 360. No clue if this will get a western release, it's being published by City Connection so I'd say look for news of a western release in 2022.
23/12/21 - Cotton Rock 'n' Roll (PS4/Switch) - Three Cotton releases in one year? Success is really behind this series. Rock 'n' Roll is a brand new game in the Cotton series and utilises features not noly from Cotton but also Sanvein's "Time" System and Psyvariar's "Buzz" system. With how solid Cotton Reboot was this will no doubt have eyes on it as well as a likely western release in 2022.
We also have a very in-demand release today for the switch eshop after the developers held it back for a long time as a limited-run only physical release.
Feedback from people who have actually played Raizon Ex has been very good. At £17.95 it's a bit steep but developers NGDEV are driving a hard line on this game: it either sells, or they go back to making their games limited run only. They never forgot how badly Gunlord X sold on eshop and have said they make more money from supply and demand (though in all honesty NGDEV didn't do mcuh to actively promote Gunlord X to begin with).