While everyone else is busy playing the big game releases, I've found myself playing smaller and more odd games due to limited amount of money. At least I have SOMETHING to write about.

GAMES!!!!

PC games are primarily western or European made, which is what makes finding small, Japanese indie or doujin games on PC rather interesting to me. Last year I came across the Gundemonium Collection, a series of three 2D shoot ‘em ups that were originally on PSN a year prior. Now I have bought two doujin games from developer Edelweiss, after doing research on Fairy Bloom and discovering this isn’t the only game from that dev on Steam. More on the second one later.

Fairy Bloom Freesia is a 2D action game that is primarily about fighting enemies in 2D arenas. There are some RPG elements where you are earning mana to spend on new abilities and special attacks. Art style is pretty simple, but the game runs at 60 frames per second, making the fights feel pretty smooth. There’s also a story, but that’s something that you don’t need to pay any attention to. That is the game in a nutshell.

The way the action flows reminds me of Vanillaware games, which isn’t the best comparison since you associate those games with excellent 2D sprite work. This game is all 3D polygons, but the action feels very smooth, and as you unlock more moves and abilities, some battles will have you flying all over the screen, knocking enemies into each other trying to rack up high combos. It’s pretty fun, if you’re down with the structure of the game. I personally would’ve liked the game to have traditional levels with exploration or something, but the 2D arenas aren’t that bad either. Personal preference.

One issue I do have has to do with the special moves. The way they work is that you assign them to inputs that resemble special moves in Smash Bros. You got a special move for pressing the button without moving, and then moves for pressing the button and up, sideways, or down. The problem is that some of these moves have certain requirements in battle to activate. Some moves require you to be on land, others while in the air. And they can be assigned to any of these four inputs, which isn’t especially ideal when you’re trying to figure out your style of fighting and what moves you want. Would’ve been better to have a set for special moves specifically while on land, and another set while in the air. Or just have all of those assigned to a preset input.

Also, the game is 8 bucks, which in retrospect was a little bit more than I would’ve liked to pay. 5 dollars would’ve been perfectly fine. Still a decent game, and I was curious to check out the whole thing after playing the demo, so that’s the price I pay.

The other game from Edelweiss that I bought, and one that has actually been out since late September this year. I immediately knew I wanted to check out this one, because I am a huge fan of SHMUPs. One of my favorite genres in gaming. The idea of a shooter that switches between vertical scrolling, horizontal scrolling, and rail shooter perspectives seems like a cool and novel idea. From what I’ve managed to play, that idea works, and the game is pretty great, too.

The two perspectives you will mostly play in during the game are either vertical scrolling or horizontal scrolling. They change between these perspectives between levels, so while you play level 1 like a vertical scrolling shooter, the next level will have you playing horizontally. Occasionally the game will quickly change to a behind the back rail shooter perspective like Star Fox, and sometimes it will change into a Rez style shooter where you paint the cursor over targets and fire. The mid level perspective changes are used sparingly, but it does a good job of freshening up the action, especially during boss fights.

To facilitate the transition between perspectives, and what makes it different from typical doujin SHMUPs, is that Ether Vapor Remaster has 3D graphics instead of sprites. I like the idea of having shooters using this style, especially when my favorite game in the genre is Ikaruga, which uses 3D graphics and allows for some great background effects and gives it a sort of cinematic feel, which is what Ether Vapor tries to go after with its multiple perspectives.

There are quite a few things besides the 3D graphics and cinematic presentation that I also like about this game, in relation to my love for Treasure’s SHMUPs. The game has a system that unlocks credits and extends the amount of lives (or shields as the game calls them) as you continue to log in time playing, as well as set the points requirement for earning an extra shield mid game, something that Ikaruga featured. Boss fights are fairly elaborate, but not absolutely crazy in the Treasure tradition, but they don’t always stick to the same plane that your ship is on, and is again helped by the game’s switching between perspectives. More of a Radiant Silvergun thing than Ikaruga, you have multiple weapons to use from the start, although it’s 3 instead of the 7 that RS had. Each weapon has a different use, and the ways you can use them opens up some interesting strategies. Just playing some more yesterday I discovered a function of one of the weapons that ended up helping me in the fourth level, where I was constantly losing shields.

There are still problems that I have with the game. The game is pretty difficult, which isn’t a complaint as any good shooter should be challenging, but the problem comes in when it’s hard to see where a projectile is that doesn’t stand out enough from the background and everything else that’s appearing on screen. Thin red lasers often come to mind as an example, and it’s frustrating when you can’t immediately see them coming and they move too fast for you to react. There are pink bullets and bright blue homing lasers which are easy to spot, but those thin lasers are just terrible. The other problem is very minor in comparison, but the game is not widescreen. Resolution only goes up to 1600x1200, so you’ll either play it in windowed mode or play it on a standard def monitor if you happen to have one like I do, if you don’t want the image to get stressed.

I’ve only made it up to level 5 out of 7, and the game has continued to kick my ass hard, and even for the problems I have, I really like it a lot. Given the majority of doujin SHMUPs, this one exceptionally stands out with the perspective changes and the presentation. And because Ikaruga is my favorite SHMUP, I often put these kind of games through the lens of how it compares to that. Ether Vapor Remaster is pretty high up there in my opinion. Unlike Fairy Bloom Freesia, I absolutely felt like 8 dollars was well spent on this game. For now, this game may as well hold me over until Treasure decides to do Project RS-3 and make another great shoot ‘em up.

And the Rest

Borderlands 2: Captain Scarlett and her Pirate's Booty

Finally decided to play this last weekend after going back to Normal mode as Zer0 and wrapping up side quests I was now overpowered for. The DLC was pretty fun, I found the humor to be overall better than in the base game, probably because they had a motif to go with or didn’t have to make stuff to cover 30 hours of game time. Looking forward to see how Gearbox does with the rest of the Season Pass DLC.

Hotline Miami

Due to time and just wanting to spread things out, I’m just gonna write something quick about Hotline Miami before it gets its own spot on the blog. Liking it a lot, currently going back through levels getting A+ ranks and finding the secrets for the puzzle. And as you already know, that soundtrack is absolutely fantastic.

Other Things

Two weeks ago was pretty big for me. As I had mentioned in my last blog post, I was gonna be taking part in the Extra Life charity by playing video games for 24 hours and raise money for children's hospitals. Guess what, I accomplished both. Well, I didn't reach the goal I had set for money raised, but I did make it through the 24 hours.

The marathon started with me playing 2 hours of Borderlands 2, as planned. Made more progress with my Mechromancer. After that, an entire campaign of Another Century's Episode R, which took me about 4 hours. For the next 3 hours I played the last bit of content I had left in RE4, Separate Ways. Didn't impress me as much as the main campaign, not something I'd miss. Then it took me about an hour to get through Juniper's Knot, and after that it was me playing Arx Fatalis until 11 PM. That game was pretty fun, that is definitely an Ultima Underworld inspired game.

After Arx Fatalis, I went back into Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines until 2 AM, and then switched out for Aliens versus Predator 2. Just did a quick run through the Alien campaign, took me about 2 hours. Decided I would do Hard Reset next, but apparently some content or something was missing and Steam had to redownload parts of the game. So I opened by 3DS and decided to play some of the free GBA games I got on there. The game finished redownloading, and played a bit until 5 AM. Also, during that 6 hour period I had the TV on just to make sure I wouldn't fall asleep so long as there was at least one distraction going on.

Last 3 hours were tough, as I was starting to get tired and it became evident that I was based on how I was performing on some of these games. I played bits of Virtua Fighter 4 Evo, Devil May Cry 3, some more RE4, Crazy Taxi, and Tony Hawk's Pro Skater. Eventually in the last hour and 15 minutes I decided to play more Borderlands 2, and instead of making more progress with the Mechromancer I decided to keep pushing Zer0 through True Vault Hunter Mode. At 8 AM, I immediately went to bed. Thankfully there was a couch in the room that had a hideaway bed so I didn't need to go to my room.

Even with those final few hours being the most difficult part, I had a lot of fun doing that marathon. I was amazed that I didn't feel tired at all past 2 AM and only when I got to about 5 did it start to kick in. It was successful in the end, and I raised $237. This is something I hope to do again in the future, and perhaps with the ability to stream footage and not have to manage updating a twitter account every so often.

In Conclusion

Another blog post finished. Thanks for reading and all that. Can't think of much else to say.

Peace.