ImmaculateClump

Yas man! Nicely done, Spatular! That final boss is pretty intense, innit? Real heart in the mouth stuff that last pattern If you can get used to the speed of the third ship, it can feel like cheat mode at times. You can drop your bombs where the enemies are going to appear and kill them before they get a chance to shoot. When charging your bomb, the second beep means that you can fire it rather than dropping it. That comes in very handy during some of the boss patterns where you daren't get close to drop the bombs on them and want to stay down the bottom of the screen. It's a really decent ship once you get used to it and you'll get through the bosses a lot quicker than normal. A lot of people seem to be getting their first expert clears with this ship.

Haha, same. Wilfully abstruse to a fault. I respect the dev for going all out and doing his thing, and I imagine the people that get right into it, nothing else compares, but when you just want to sit down and shoot some aliens, it's a fucking headache. I mean when you need a fucking glossary to get to the pissing options screen! Stella? Just call it rank mate, like every other cunt. Every time I thought I was getting a handle on it, it'd throw me another curve ball. I just moved on in the end. I wasn't having fun. I tell myself that I'll give it another chance one day, but I won't. I played for 5.7 hours, beat the whatever the false tutorial game is at the start, they probably call it "half sequence order with fries" or something. I think the last time I played there was some bloody puzzle thing happened where the screen was full of numbers and I had to shoot different ones and I was just like "get this out of my fucking life"

Yeah, the first boss is a big hurdle on expert. The others are all intuitive after you've got a handle on intense, and doable first time, but those fast bullets on the first boss definitely keep you on your toes. You don't get much room to move at all.

Which one do you mean? The red bullets that come out dead fast down the middle of the screen? On expert, it comes out in a spread and you don't get much room to dodge the other bullets. I keep making the mistake of going up past that line of bullets above me and thinking I'll have enough room there. I need to stop doing that.

M2 are doing their thing on consoles, I think there's another toaplan game due soon from them. Does ShmupJunkie know something we don't? If so, there might be a truxton double pack from them next. It's a shame they're so snowed under because if they had the time and resources to make those funky arranges for the toaplan games like they did with ketsui and dangun etc, I'd be all over the console versions. As it is, pc is my platform of choice and I reckon these bitwave games will be ultra-nippy so I'll probably end up just sticking with those.

The bitwave toaplan games have been pushed back to 2023 https://store.steampowered.com/franchise/toaplan They'll also be available on gog, if you prefer - https://www.gog.com/en/games?developers=bitwave-games I've got a really good feeling about these guys from everything I've been reading. Fingers crossed! Gunvein is so good. I haven't played anything else since I got it If some of you are waiting for the console release, you're gonna love it!

Komodo are having a sale. Here are the shmups - https://store.steampowered.com/search/?sort_by=Released_DESC&term=komodo&tags=4255&supportedlang=english&specials=1&ndl=1 Eschatos - https://store.steampowered.com/sub/79117/ Mushi - https://store.steampowered.com/sub/83631/ Crimzon Clover - https://store.steampowered.com/app/1718160/Crimzon_Clover_World_EXplosion/ DFK - https://store.steampowered.com/app/464450/DoDonPachi_Resurrection/

Sounds good! I'll fire it up when I'm in between games and give it a go.

It looks a bit slow and memo heavy. Is it? I'll have to fire it up in mame sometime. Iaspis beat my score on caravan 1 so I returned the favour. I'm gonna try and stay at the top of all the caravan leaderboards, just keep swatting away the flies until jaimers or someone decides to school me and get double my score or something 1,577,855 - https://streamable.com/2oll1c

I'll have to fire up mr heli in mame when i get the chance. I remember it being nice and chill at first and then the difficulty suddenly shooting up! Been keeping an eye on this guys upcoming game, Orchid Glitter his older game, Senli 307 which started out as a mobile game came to steam today. 4 buttons, accelerate, decelerate, and move left and right, I'm not sure I like the look of that, the new one looks much better.

The hitboxes are very forgiving, the caravan stages are short, lots of i-frames available when bombing, hypering, and picking up the golden fragments, and there's no real penalty for dying as you're back on the screen almost instantly, so yeah, no reason not to chance your arm and go for those fun risky dodges. That run I did of score rush 3, I lost all my lives and still managed to beat my previous score. Just push as hard as you can, speed kill everything, and get to the end as soon as possible so you can rinse the chests for gold. Once you get a feel for the stages, which enemies are coming next, and in what formations, what their patterns are like, you'll be preemptively positioning yourself ready to kill them and dodge their bullets, it'll all get tighter and tighter every time you play. Yeah, the last boss is a bugger. You get confident with his patterns quite quick though, most of them are knowing when to move and when to keep still. That last one is a bastard but so long as you keep shifting and weaving in between the bullets of the static pattern, away from that aimed spear of bullets he shoots, you've got a chance.

I wonder how well it stands up. I remember having great fun with it at the time. Terra Flame out now on steam - https://store.steampowered.com/app/1921840/Terra_Flame/

I'm top of the pops on all three caravan stages now! Step aside Jim, I am the new caravan daddy. I've never felt so alive! Bigger boys are bound to turn up sooner or later, but for now, I am king daddy! They've changed the first one a canny bit since the demo. 1,472,426 - https://streamable.com/ujwqqi

Yeah! Are you from round here too? Oh, you need to play Black Bird. It's fantastic, and looks and sounds amazing. https://store.steampowered.com/app/857500/BLACK_BIRD/ https://www.nintendo.co.uk/Games/Nintendo-Switch-download-software/BLACK-BIRD-1455740.html

Some more footage from that "Armed Eats" game. Reminds me of mr heli aka battle chopper. That was one of the arcade games at concordia, my local swimming baths for a while. I used to love playing that!

Woohoo! Got top of the leaderboard on the third caravan stage as well. 1,252,762 - https://streamable.com/gqjha2 Basking in that while it lasts

There are other darius games on sale too - https://www.nintendo.co.uk/Search/Search-299117.html?q=darius&f=147394-86

Graze Counter GM coming to everything January 19th https://store.steampowered.com/app/1486440/Graze_Counter_GM/

Ha! Yeah! That was a nice surprise seeing that when I got the first clear It was just for joining in the score competition. Yeah, only a certain number of player bullets allowed on the screen at once, so like you say, you see your firing rate increase the higher up the screen you get. It's a way of beckoning the player higher up the screen, encouraging them to play aggressively and teaching them that they'll do more damage quicker the closer they are to enemies. It's a nice way of making it intuitive and having the player figure it out themselves. During the caravan stages, the sooner you kill certain waves of enemies, the sooner the next wave turn up, so there isn't a set point in the stage when the boss will appear, it'll just arrive after you've killed all the enemies. You figure out as you play which enemies you need to chin fast to get the next lot to come quicker, some enemies don't count so much and you don't have to prioritise them, but often they'll be the ones that are filling the screen with bullets so you do need to keep an eye on them as well. I think a good example of this is the tanks towards the end of the first caravan just before the boss, you have to focus more on the enemies at the top of the screen. So it's all about just getting familiar with where the enemies are gonna be and just going proper ham and trying to kill them as soon as possible. Here's my run of the first caravan stage from the demo. I make sure I bomb the bigger bullet sponge enemies to get them out of the way as soon as possible, and you can see I'm using the wide shot sometimes when enemies are spread out over the screen. https://streamable.com/f4876l Yeah, stage 3 boss is tricksy. Not so bad once you get a handle on it, but yeah, it's a good day if I don't lose a life there.

Revenge from beyond the grave! Reminds me of the martyrdom perk in cod 4 Close to getting the 1cc with the third ship now though. https://streamable.com/eg8gry Still using my patented "clench sphincter and flail" technique during that final pattern. Got a type c clear there later on. Not a great score though. I think I need to let the screen fill with baddies before using my bombs, and I wasn't doing that all the time. Moving on to expert now. It's loads of fun, feels way more intense.

Yeah, that's a good round up, you haven't missed any that I know of. The second caravan stage in Gunvein is even more fun than the one we got in the demo! Blue ship is the absolute boy! 1,304,320 - https://streamable.com/4l5nn9 I do dig the third ship, but it feels a bit too much like cheat mode the way you can just obliterate all the enemies before they get a chance to shoot, and the slippery speed feels like it's been toned down since the demo so it's way more manageable now. Beat my score in intense by a little bit today as well. I should be moving onto expert, I think, but intense is proper comfy, I just want to keep playing that.

Switch first early next year, and then ps4/xbox later on Heads up though, we're not sure if Boghog will be handling the ports. Guy who made Dead End City said he got excited imagining a game where "caveman waifus rode dinosaurs" and was disappointed when he saw the screenshots, so he's gonna make the game he imagined instead

When I used to play on pad I liked to use right trigger as autoshot, so you're just keeping that held down all the time, and A for focus/lock on with your thumb, and then b for bomb, if that's any help, though I'm guessing you've already tried that. Managed to beat intense with the blue ship. I really like that ship despite it being less powerful. It feels great. Stupid death at the end, but I beat my score at least.

So far, the first ship feels like the easiest clear for intense. feels like the blue ship lacks a bit of oomph towards the end, though the slower speed does make dodging some patterns a lot easier. Third character requires lots of point blanking so I'd leave that for now. I haven't played mild, but the the blue ship might be really good for that if the bosses have lower health. You can at least stay down the bottom of the screen for some of the patterns where that makes sense, and keep out of trouble. Yeah, it's a legit way to teach yourself a game. Just keep credit feeding until one day you don't need to anymore and get the 1cc. Hopefully in the practice mode you can just play the full game through and keep continuing, or maybe you can earn credits from practising.

Another double KO! That's 3 I've had in different games. I am cursed, I'm convinced of it. I thought, reet I'm gonna use my bomb and then he'll be dead for sure :D https://streamable.com/pua693