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| Mischief Maker's Aborted Intro to Shmups by Mischief Maker 11/05/2009, 12:24pm PST | ||||
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Mischief Maker wrote: Episode 1: Let me tell you about one of my favorite kinds of videogames: Shmups! Also known as Shoot-em-ups, scrolling shooters, and STGs. They take place in an enlightened future where schools get all the money they want and the military has to hold a bake sale to buy a bomber. The downside of this is when evil aliens from the planet ballstomp show up, the world has only one fighter to take them on. The upside is that fighter is really really advanced, and its pilot is really really smart. Or are you? Shmups have been seeing a resurgence here in the states lately, especially with the re-release of Ikaruga. That game has been showered with praise by the gaming press. Lots of praise. Even too much praise. Because while the professional game reviewers always lavish Ikaruga with unconditional love, when other shmups that are arguably just as good if not better get released in the states, the review always slips into this old song and dance: Nasally voice over shikigami no shirto 2 gameplay: “Yeah, this is a pretty easy game, you just fly- (dies, continue screen) hold on (continues), you just fly up to the boss and drop bombs. Just keep dropping bombs and you win. Then the whole thing’s over in a half hour. That’s it? Where’s the replay value? Where’s the unlockable outfits? Simple games like this may have been good enough ten years ago, but modern hardcore gamers expect something more.” With reception like this, is it any wonder so many fantastic ports of top shmups never cross the pacific? Fortunately there are lots of independent developers out there making quality shmups for the PC either dirt-cheap or for free. I’m not only going to tell you about several great shmups you can play for next to nothing, I’m also going to let you in on the crusty insular world of what makes shmups so compelling for us weirdo shmup enthusiasts.. To be fair to the professional reviewers, arcade games, and shmups especially, have a lot more in common with pinball machines than the grind-a-thons of most home games. Throw in an environment where you have an unlimited amount of imaginary quarters and no one to compete for highscores with, and they get boring fast. The trick to getting the most out of shmups on a home system is to follow these two rules: Rule #1: Play on one credit. Period. No continues. If you lose all your lives and want to keep playing, start over. Why would you do this? Let me demonstrate by way of analogy: Nasally voice over Serious Sam gameplay: “Yeah this is a pretty easy game. You just open the console, type in the god cheat, then walk to the ending. The enemies are so stupid they’ll shoot each other to death trying to get to you. And these screaming guys are so weak they just run up to you and die. It’s a pretty boring game.” Unlimited lives = no challenge = no fun! But wait, you might say, the game is encouraging me to continue. Yeah, well that’s just the game trying to screw you out of your money. While arcade games may look nicer and more kid-friendly than their more notorious cousin, the one armed bandit (pictures of an arcade game saying to children, “Hey kids” followed by a picture of a slot machine saying to a woman with a walker, “C’mere, old lady!”) make no mistake, they’re in the same family business (arcade game and slot machine holding the children and the old lady upside down and shaking quarters out of their pockets) Think of arcade games like a friend who you know is an asshole. You can still have a lot of fun with an asshole friend, but it’s almost always a good idea to walk away once he starts hitting you up for money. Rule #2: “Play for score. Even if you’re trying a shmup for the first time and can’t even reach the first boss, play for score. Why do this? Three reasons: 1. You’ll survive better The obvious reason is, higher score means more extra lives, but there’s a much deeper reason. Generally speaking, a good scoring system is one that rewards the player for living life dangerously. From taking out enemies point blank, to allowing huge bullet swarms you can cancel into points, to even bringing your hitbox dangerously close to enemy bullets! If you’re pulling off maneuvers like that early in the game, it’s valuable practice for the later stages in the game, where surviving situations like that is necessary just to survive. If you spend the early levels hiding in a corner and panic bombing your way through the tough spots, you’ll be completely unprepared for the difficulty of the later levels and knocked on your ass. And finally, when you stop looking at your enemies as unstoppable menaces looking to kill you and everyone you love, but instead as an attack of heavily armed Piñatas filled with delicious candy, you’re a lot less likely to panic under preassure (Will Smith in Independence Day saying “Oh no you did NOT shoot that green shit at me!”) 2. It keeps things fun Shmups are hard. You will not finish an arcade-difficulty shmup your first time. That’s the nature of the beast. But if you take the attitude that every time you don’t see the end credits, it’s a failure, then the game is going to make you frustrated and miserable (Don music from Sesame Street banging his head against the piano saying, “I’ll never finish this song!”) On the other hand, if you take the attitude that going balls to the wall and dying on level 4 with a high score is a bigger achievement than hiding in the corner and panic bombing your way to the end credits, then every game is a success as your score climbs higher and higher. (Smiling Baron Samedi with caption “I got my highest score yet!”) That’s probably the biggest advantage of playing shmups on the home system, being able to track your personal scores instead of looking balefully at the impossibly high score some superplayer cranked out at your arcade. On the flip side, when you’ve become good enough that surving the first couple levels is no sweat, and you’re bottlenecking at the fourth or fifth difficulty level, the first couple levels can become tedious if you’re just playing to survive. If you’re playing for score, the fun’s just begun. Now you can show off and milk these early levels for every point they’re worth. And since you’re pulling off dangerous maneuvers to get these points, the challenge stays there for experienced players. In fact there are many players who can handle shmups at lunatic difficulty who enjoy playing at normal or even easy mode with the aim of maximizing their scores. 3. The scoring system is the backbone of a great shmup If you’re wondering whether a particular shmup is worth your time, a good rule of thumb is that great shmups are designed around their scoring system, while lousy shmups are built around showcasing a gimmick, usually graphics, or some special powerup technique, with score as an afterthought. Let me demonstrate by comparing two shmups. As a gaming experience, Jets ‘n Guns is a great game. It has fantastic visuals with its retro-futuristic art design and particles flying everywhere, you can customize your fighter with a dizzying array of gratuitous weapons, and it has a goofy hilarious plot skewering everything from action video game clichés to Ben Affleck. And finally, it has one of the best soundtracks in the history of videogames. But while it’s an entertaining action game, it’s not a very good shmup. Your ship has all kinds of RPG stats like cooling and inertia and armor, but their effect on gameplay is a ship that handles like a pig, that can’t dodge most projectiles and collisions, and that periodically has to stop shooting and bring the action to a halt while you patiently wait for your guns to cool down. Enemy placement is haphazard and many levels quickly outlast their welcome. Finally, the simple afterthought scoring system is that enemies are each worth a set amount, and your score is also the money you have to buy new weapons. This means that wide angle weapons that maximize enemy kills are king, while screwing up an early level will ruin the rest of the game for you because you won’t be able to upgrade your weapons to keep up with the increasing hitpoints of enemies. Contrast this with Parsec 47, a freeware shmup released by independent auteur Kenta Cho. It’s about as stark a contrast from Jets ‘n Guns as you can get, with minimal vector graphics, no plot, and a forgettable techno soundtrack. And if I may put on my hipster glasses for a moment, Pfft! Kenta Cho was doing vector arcade games YEARS before Geometry Wars made it trendy. But what Parsec 47 may lack in art assets, it more than makes up for in gameplay. It’s scoring system is based on the arcade disco shmup “Dangun Feveron.” Here’s how it works. Points for enemy kills range from a paltry 10 for popcorn enemies up to 10,000 for bosses. Whenever an enemy dies, they drop a large amount of score chips that float to the bottom of the screen, then float back out the top. At the very top left of the screen there’s a number that gives how many points the next score chip will be worth, up to a maximum of 1,000 points. If you die or if you let a single score chip reach the top of the screen, the value drops back to 10. With enemies worth a paltry handful of points, it doesn’t take a genius to figure that the real money is in catching every single score chip and not letting a single one escape. There’s a term for shmups with a scoring system like this, called “collect’em-ups” And this scoring system informs every aspect of the game. Your ship moves faster than most shmups, to accommodate dashing all over the screen after score chips. Enemy shot patterns are sparser than usual, to give room to maneuver and chase the chips, but also move faster than normal to keep the challenge up. Most enemies are one-shot popcorn style, to keep the number of chips on the screen high and the action intense. Even the circular secondary weapon is at its most effective when partially powered up. All this adds up to fast, frentic, and exhillerating gameplay. The only gimmick this game has up its sleeve is that the levels are randomly generated, so you never play the same game twice. So remember those two rules: keep it at one credit and play for score, and you may find that these simple oldschool half hour games have way more replay value than most 60 hour sandbox grindathons. Until next episode, this is the Mischief Maker reminding you to keep an eye on your hitbox. |
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