Shmups

[KSubzero1000]

It's okay, I just got a bit frustrated.

they're much of a muchness, do you think, the playstation pads?

No, not at all. DS1, 2 & 3 are almost identical in most respects, but the DS4 is a clear departure from the norm and (in my opinion) a significant improvement. I've never liked the traditional DualShock design with the loose sticks, thin grips and (especially on the DS3) the unergonimical shoulder buttons. DS4 on the other hand is golden.

[KSubzero1000]

Maybe there will be a convertor, can't see there being much of a call for such a thing but it might exist, I'll have a look later.

That's okay, really.

I think the F500 Elite is my best bet here. Or I could just play the 360 games casually and focus on the plethora of excellent shmups I have on other platforms for scoring purposes, that could work as well...

[hazeredmist]

Clippa, sometimes I read your unremitting kindness and willingness to help people to be happy and wonder if you’ve been sent from the heavens.

Adaptors are pretty cheap for non-compatible arcade sticks in consoles. Mayflash might be second rate by reputation but their adaptor I use is fantastic. My mate also loves his F300 Elite which has Sanwa parts. I’ve used it too, it’s a good stick. I’m sure if you’re going for Sanwa or Seimetsu both will be fantastic and you can swap them out easy enough if not.

I think I’ll fire up the Venom our guardian angel sent me tonight, I fancy some Psyvariar.

EDIT: it might be time to try Black Bird... roll on bed time for the family

[KSubzero1000]

Adaptors are pretty cheap for non-compatible arcade sticks in consoles.

The problem is that "pretty cheap" adds up after a while. In theory, I could buy a 360 arcade stick and a few adaptors to go with it. But those adaptors cost between 20€ and 40€ and by the time I buy two or three of those I would already have spent the same amount of money as the base price of the F500 Elite. Not exactly a very future-proof solution either.

I think a truly universal arcade stick would be best in my case.

[hazeredmist]

One stick, one adaptor, I’ve got everything covered from PS4, PS3, Xbox, Switch, PC. Even the Mini consoles and I’ve used it with my raspberry pi. It’s not compatible with my Vita, but I can live with that

[KSubzero1000]

A wild HAZEREDMIST appears!

KSUB, go!

HAZEREDMIST uses MAYFLASH SHILL!

KSUB uses SKEPTICISM!

KSUB's attack missed!

HAZEREDMIST uses VALID COUNTER-POINT!
It's very effective!

A new option appears!

KSUB is paralyzed!
It can't move!


-----------------> FIGHT PKMN
------------------ ITEM RUN

[hazeredmist]

Hahaha! Brilliant

[hazeredmist]

EDIT: it might be time to try Black Bird... roll on bed time for the family

Try it I did.

Just as I hoped it's quite different from other shmups I've got, most comparable to Fantasy Zone so far. Played using the arcade stick and cleared a couple of stages, it was fun! There didn't seem to be difficulty setting adjustments that I could see, is it one difficulty for all?

I love the art style, the sound design is downright exhausting as a first impression with loads of mad wails and cries, but very quirky. I'm excited to go back to it, hopefully get a little time tonight when the fam are asleep.

[Stanshall]

Woke up. One run of Futari. Got to the boss with 230m. Got massive cancel so I had 30k multiplier. Fucked it on the very last, easiest pattern and died with a pixel of the boss life bar. Would have been 400m. Just charged up my power drill and bore a hole straight through the 360 CPU and through the floor, through the Tudor and Roman road layers, through the Earth's crust, straight down through Satan's skull and cracked it open and ate all the warm Satan brains with my bare hands and then shat in the hollow skull and went to work.

[hazeredmist]

I love it when you talk dirty.

[hazeredmist]

If I want to get esp.ra.de on switch what’s the cheapest way for me to do this? @stanshall I guess! Think I might blow my Christmas wad on it before the kids consume it

[Stanshall]

Japanese account. G2A for JPN eShop credit. 4950 yen. Can get 5000 for about 34 quid. Redeem code on the Japanese eShop. Done.

[hazeredmist]

Cheers. Doesn't look like you can get this on G2A right now. Said it was £17 but OOS

[Stanshall]

Are you trying to buy the game or credit?

You can buy physical probably from PlayAsia but will be well more expensive.

That said, if G2A isn't playing ball, PlayAsia also do JPN eShop credit, just a little bit more expensive.

[KSubzero1000]

Is this just how you best operate? Do you just do things in chunks and then put it all together at the end?

Just to chime in here, and keep in mind I'm nowhere near the same level as Stan is currently on, but that's how I preferred to do things as well when I was playing a particular game seriously and wanted to achieve a specific result. I played each individual Nex Machina stage one by one for weeks until I had their layouts memorized and only chained them all together at the end when I was confident enough in my capabilities. Same for BWRP. Thank God for Stage Select option or I would never get anything done.

[hazeredmist]

Are you trying to buy the game or credit?

You can buy physical probably from PlayAsia but will be well more expensive.

That said, if G2A isn't playing ball, PlayAsia also do JPN eShop credit, just a little bit more expensive.

Credit

Losing my boner, seems complicated and prices vary wildly. May just have to hope for a western release to come.

[Stanshall]

Thanks, clip. I appreciate the comments.

Re: Scoring.

Spoiler: show

I'd say that I'm far far more interested in scoring than in getting a 1CC because you have to get right down to the nitty-gritty of the systems and the tiny intricacies of the stage design and the infinitesimal nuances of timing and inputs. I just feel like I get to understand and feel the game more through scoring. It was satisfying at the time to get that Original 1CC but it was predominantly based on luck and a very superficial engagement with the game. It feels like nothing now compared to the scoring stuff, even though I'm pure ichimen bancho. I also have restart syndrome and like throwing myself at the same thing again and again and seeing meaningful improvements.

The other really fascinating thing for me is that past a certain level, it goes well beyond routes and memorisation because you can't be robotic about it, there's way too much RNG and other shit to contend with. This may be especially so with Futari but even with something as strict as DOJ, once you have a feel for the links, you can recover from errors and adapt on the fly and it's incredibly exciting to do that. I have a pretty distinct route in mind but for much of the time in God Mode, you're constantly tweaking that with little movements and seeing concurrent threats and opportunities to point blank for an extra half a second or dive through a little spray to get some gems while they're still red. You also virtually can't play safe or you'll die, there's just differing degrees of YOLO strats.

That's the real joy of it for me, squeezing the most out of the route with improvisation but not really dropping below fifth gear. My favourite section of the whole stage now is the mad fire breath attack that the stage boss does because it's completely impossible to do it from muscle memory. Every time it's a little different and you have to react so quickly and precisely. Once you tuck in between those channels of bullets, you have a brief moment's respite but it lasts about a second before you have to move again. The perfect combination of memorisation and adaptation. I also really love leaving those big cancels to the very last moment, ideally when I have to rub up against a few bullets and then BOOFFF.

I remember ages ago you talking about the appeal of improvisation and that's exactly it at God Mode level. Every single time, it's slightly different and it requires constant focus. Every time you nail a little section and check your multiplier, there's the potential for a little rush because you're above par, and then par gradually moves up and so you drill down even further. When I first started playing for score, I felt like 2000 multiplier was a good total when you cancel that first big creature between the stone pillars and that 10k was a massive cancel before you point blank the three enemies which come down from above the bullet cloud. Now, I feel that flicker of excitement if it's 4k and 22k. That might seem like it's exponentially less exciting but it's a different satisfaction of knowing that I'm almost at the maximum capacity of the game for those little sections.

As for why this doesn't really translate so well to other shmups for me, and why I haven't really got any 1CCs, honestly, I don't really care enough to clear games. It's kind of like getting all your Cubs badges, one for tying a knot and one for being a good citizen and one for building a fire. I just want one badge that says FLAME KING. I want to know every nuance of the shape and texture of every twig and the gap between them and the best wind conditions to stimulate the flames without putting them out.

I know that sounds very grandiose but I am a wanker.

I also find that different ships and stuff play very differently. Patterns are very different. Hitboxes can be way different so where I look for Futari doesn't help so much with, say, Ketsui or ESP Ra.De. My dodges are based in on what's coming down the screen rather than looking at my ship. I'm kind of dodging in advance in a way. I think that's why I did pretty well with BWRP off the bat. The ship I chose felt very similar to Reco from Futari and the patterns felt very familiar. That's not the case with ESP or Ketsui.

As for where it's going. I dunno. I feel like I just get Futari and particularly this mode. I've had a few runs of Maniac and stuff and Ultra but I don't enjoy them to the same degree. I kind of said that now I've got the first extend in stage one, I'll start playing a bit more casually to clear it but my instinct and interest is to keep going until I make stage one my walk-in glory hole. There's comparatively little in gaming as satisfying as getting a good run on this game and it feels more rewarding the better I do, so it seems strange for me to abandon that in order to get my 10m swimming badge. Rather, I shall become an expert in treading water. That said, I do feel nearly ready to move onto stage two and it's much easier for survival because of all the cancels, so shouldn't be quite as much restarting. More scoring strats though, so much to it. Fortunately, unlike DOJ, this has a brilliant training mode so I can properly stick with the one stage rather than having to run from the start every time.

[Stanshall]

Losing my boner, seems complicated and prices vary wildly. May just have to hope for a western release to come.

Honestly, it's dead easy and once you've set up your JPN account, there's loads of stuff that comes there well earlier (Psyvariar and Rolling Gunner, for example). It seems like more of a faff than it is. Once you got the account, you can buy and redeem credit with a couple of clicks and then you can play the game on any profile. I'd say ESP is the best shmup on the Switch. That said, it is getting on for forty quid and it does mean having two profiles on your Switch.

[Stanshall]

Also, I, uh, came home and twatted my PB on Futari first run.



Pretty safe and clean but made the most of the big moments. Finally got the maximum cancel on the boss, as well, first time I've ever done that in a proper score attack run. That's what made the big difference. What a glorious way to finish with those 30000s glimmering in the sunlight and in the next heartbeat, the extend pings as all the gems are being hoovered up.

I'm absolutely thrilled to finally pull this off.

[Stanshall]

Ridiculous, you can't do it better than that. It seems like every cancel, except maybe the last one, though I'm guessing you weren't taking any unecessary risks at that stage, was pixel perfect, maximum gem grabbage. Glorious.

Hehe thanks. I've done better by cashing in a bit more in the crazy phase before the midboss and I could have pushed further up the screen to get the 30k multiplier to destroy those floating islands just before the stage boss but we're talking about a few mill. I got to the boss with 222m which is solid and consistent. My best is 235m but that was literally squeezing cancels to the last pixel and flukey point blanking to build multi. I can't repeat that consistently, too much RNG, so 220m is always a target I'm happy with. As for the very last cancel, I was a bit lucky because he was just about to stop firing, in fact. I think the maximum points there is about 200m so I'll very happily take the 170m.

I also posted the vid on the discord and got a nice response from this chap:



I'm chuffed with that because seeing his Ultra run on STG Weekly is what first made me want to get this game and get a 360. I know my approach is a bit odd and I don't even know if it's the best way, and sometimes it is not fun, but I'm much more chilled about slow progress now, as long as there is some progress. I enjoy it much more than I did even when I first started playing. I'd say it's my favourite game ever in terms of pure gameplay. I am definitely ready for stage two now, though.

As for 1.5 Original, I had a few runs of that myself to break things up the other day. Very different rhythm to it because of the bullet speed and I also died at stage 4. I feel like that's probably the best stage, it's so cheerful but totally deadly. The caterpillars are really cool, and the lanterns but the flying moths are a nightmare. Keep us posted. I'd love to get a clear of 1.5, actually, so I'll have a few goes, as well, and we can have a running commentary!

I hope that Monolith eventually makes its way to the Switch, I am very curious.