[Deets]

[Deets]

And I kind of feel like a jerk now

Cave shuttering their consumer games division, going full online/social

Looks like Saidaioujou is gonna be their last shooting game

[Schwere Viper]

[Drem]

glitch buys Saidaioujou, then suddenly Cave shutters its shmups. Coincidence? Also coincidently I started playing a whole bunch of shmups again now that I have my own TV and in the past fews days I bought Deathsmiles 2X and ordered Muchi Muchi Pork/Pink Sweets and Mushihime Futari. So maybe it's my fault.

Can't wait for the future of social shmups.

[firenze]

[notext]

Don't Cave threaten to stop making shooters every time they've released a new game and want to promote it? Like a band doing a "last ever tour" that happens every few years?

(Well, they got me anyway)

[firenze]

[Drem]

Mamoru-kun is getting released July 16 for $20 (US trailer). That's quite a steal! I'm really looking forward to it.

[firenze]

[guest253]

[Schwere Viper]

So, uh, a crowd-funded translation of three Siter Skain shooters - ALLTYNEX Second, Reflex and KAMUI - just came out three days ago.

Wow.
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[guest253]

neat!

not following the doujin scene closely at all but i remember that KAMUI's a thing to behold.

DDPSDOJ talk: ending sequence of X360 mode ignores screen rotation. they really didn't test this game in tate did they.
X360 mode's energy gauge refills on hyper kills so you can make up for your fuck-ups (i.e. autobombs) quite readily.
got to stage 5 on one credit today. X360 mode's stage 5 tune is perfectly insane. really digging this mode.

[Deets]

Kamui is a great game, yeah. If you like Rayforce, it's definitely in go go go buy buy buy territory

[Schwere Viper]

[guest253]

[Schwere Viper]

[Schwere Viper]

Video games :D


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[Loki Laufeyson]

awwwwww
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[dementia]

Totally cute.

But maaaan, Salamander Deluxe Pack is just plain better on PS1.

Saturn isn't capable of outputting the same 256x224 resolution as the arcade version of Salamder does (but Playstation is).
So your options are an inelegant non-native scaled version that stretches the 256x224 image to 320x240 and looks ultra jaggy or a 1:1 pixel mapped version that leaves pillar boxes. While the latter doesn't sound too bad, and honestly looks much better, nothing in the 1:1 pixel mapped version will appear drawn correctly (circles will be oblong, etc.) when viewing on a standard 4:3 monitor as intended.

Mega Man X3's Saturn port suffered a similar fate pillar box-wise, resulting in all the sprites looking skinny.

ok bye.

[Schwere Viper]

[Rud31]

OUR FROTHING DEMAND has a weird way with history.
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[Loki Laufeyson]

is it coming to 360 too?
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[LandRoverAttack]

PSN only it seems
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[Loki Laufeyson]

boooo
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[LandRoverAttack]

The PS3 version is different and has more features so it makes a bit of sense.
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[Deets]

[Rud31]

Might as well be. This is the same guys that thought Elminage was a good thing to put on PSN so who knows!

So everyone I got like a J version of this I'd like to unload.
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[firenze]

[kiken]

Ended up rounding out the achievements in Shooting Love 10th Anniversary (2 of which are for single crediting each of the featured games). I posted my top scoring runs from DeltaZeal and XIIZeal on my Youtube channel (the two most recent vids).

I wasn't really feeling SDOJ that much.. so instead of returning to that, I'm playing Strikers 1945 Part II again (Saturn port).
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[radish]

[ionustron]

So Cave is indeed now a lifeless husk now, right?

I'm the only one who finds this hilarious I know.

[guest253]

how so?

ikeda said they'll still make STGs, but that ddpsdoj was the last x360 title.
http://news.nicovideo.jp/watch/nw605715
asada said that "next is smartphone," and shortly after, asada announced that he's leaving cave.

or are you talking about blathering lolis?

[ionustron]

Thought I read something about a bunch of staff having left at some point back.

[guest253]

there was a rumour of cave getting rid of its consumer game division.

which turned out to be true, but only in the sense that the whole company moved and restructured and got rid of its division into divisions.

and asada resigns. depends on how you feel about his influence in the company, but that could be taken as a positive.

[firenze]

[WarpZone]

Kokuga impressions (I haven't played the stages near the top of the triangle yet) -

It controls great. Moving while rotating the turret and cleanly picking off enemies feels smooth and crisp. I was worried about using the touch screen for power-ups, but it feels much more natural than in games like Nanostray and Kid Icarus Uprising, and it's preferable to using face buttons to slowly toggle through your choices. Access is fast and direct.

The game isn't that interesting when just playing for survival, because you can creep through the stages slowly picking off enemies from a safe distance -- too many of them are stationary. Alternately, you can rush the Gatekeepers, instantly destroying the enemies they're associated with. Either way, you'll have plenty of power-ups to blow through the boss.

It gets more involving and difficult when playing for score, because weapon cards have multipliers that give you incentive to move into danger to efficiently speed kill enemies before the weapon sputters out. The feeling is that you've always got this reliable cannon to do slow business from the distance, but you're also carrying a set of fireworks that you have to decide where and when to set off, most only appearing once in the deck. So using each card is a real event, one you feel bad about spoiling with poor timing.

There are some cool nuances to this system. For example, you can 'combo' support and weapon cards, like using Stealth to move close enough to drop a x3 Spread Bomb safely. Or take the smart bomb, which is the strongest weapon but gives you x0 points and heavy damage to your own craft -- you could just ignore it, but then it's wasting one of your four slots. The randomization makes strategies feel unusually contextual, and the deck is well-balanced.

Bosses are a highlight as you squeeze any utility you can from the remainder of the deck, and they explore shifting weakpoints and the mechanics of rotation with a large amount of variation and flair that puts most shooters to shame.

Still, even though scoring well makes you use the cards very carefully, there's just not enough cards to use on everything, and you'll inevitably be in static situations where you're trivially picking stuff off, and many stages have multiple routes that require backtracking across empty areas if you want to find every last enemy.

This is when I realized the stages really are heavily designed for multiplayer -- the paths branch so you can split up with your friends and meet again, and you'd have enough weapon cards to work together for further scoring opportunities, as I believe every player gets the same deck of 20.

The nice thing about multi is you only need one copy of the game, but for the moment I'm probably not going to play much in depth after clearing all the stages. I'm not sure I can give a high recommendation if you're going to be playing this solo -- it's initially quite fun just to work out the logistics of the cards and play the bosses, but if you start paying closer attention to score and how the game is meant to be played, it's clear you're getting an incomplete experience with some awkward pacing problems without friends. For most shooters, 2P is a tacked on afterthought originating from arcade cabs, and just not something these games feel designed for. Kokuga feels more like a multi game from the bottom up.

The stage select structure is bizarre. Everything except the corner stages is open from the beginning, which is fine -- the game is all about bite-sized score attack multiplayer, sure. But then why have this veneer of progression where non-adjacent stages are locked, when you can just exit to the main menu to reopen them? It's not like there's cumulative scoring or resource management across stages. I'm curious if there is any purpose to it that I've overlooked, or if there was one that was cut mid-development.

Music is pretty good -- I'm so used to Namiki's approach to Cave shooters that it's nice to see his range trying something that feels more like a throwback to early 90's Mega Drive, almost.

Strong visual design is normally not a strength for G.Rev, such as Strania's confusing range of neon attacks or Under Defeat's camera slant that makes some patterns hard to read, but Kokuga finds a nice visual vocabulary to work with. The circular cue letting you know exactly when an enemy is going to fire is a nice touch that lets you play at closer range without worrying about cheap hits, something I think a number of other shooters could benefit from. Art direction creates an unusual contrast between realistic textured backgrounds and untextured VR, but it could have been done more imaginatively -- I think they wanted to keep the data transfer fast for multiplayer.
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[kiken]

[firenze]

[Rud31]

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[probably fine]

I've seen these books listed on Amazon before for various games. Are they for real?
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Drawing & writing, mostly.

[Rud31]

for 45 dollars is it even worth knowing the answer?
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