Bullet Heck
very loosely ordered. just want to write out my thoughts about these & figure out what I like about the genre
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maximal sensory overload for the full hour. It's doing everything that every other standard shmup does, at the same time, all the time. Really hard, because you constantly have to keep track of both macro & micro positioning, but the bomb/burst system and the unlimited continues mitigates that. There were a handful of moments in this latest playthrough that felt like I'd entered the matrix, where I could perceive and react to everything that was happening and perfectly weave through a crazy stream of bullets. Definitely gonna replay this just to try and recapture that feeling for longer stretches.
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Super tight and focused. The lock on mechanic is very clever, forcing you to engage enemies head on rather than staying back and dodging. The military aesthetic was well done but I'm only moderately into that style. Still excellent for the low price and short playtime tho.
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a proper shmup but with a progession system that eases you through the difficulty levels and gives you frequent rewards, which makes it a great on-ramp for the more hardcore parts of the genre. The aesthetic is well done but the steampunk style doesn't do a ton for me.
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just vibe out. pacifist mode is incredible. Like rez, I like this better than games that might be above it on this list, but it's a bit non-traditional as a shmup and the things I love about it isn't necessarily the core shmup gameplay
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Maybe my favorite game but Idk how to place it here since I'm mainly interested in Shmup mechanics but I mostly like this for the aesthetic. Not that aesthetic isn't a huge part of shmups, but this is also more of a rail shooter but I guess those count also. Anyway, the obvious thing to talk about with this one is how well they sync everything to music and the euphoric trance Y2K mood still fucking hits.
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interesting way to get into the Touhou style of shmup, tho I have some misgivings about playing this fan game instead of a proper touhou game
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Similar to Rez & arguably more of a "real" shmup, but the challenge of dealing with purple bullets is regularly frustrating in a game I mostly play to zone out. I really wish I could try the Kinnect/PSMove version cuz that's clearly the intended platform.
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Original mode feels like it's for people who play puppet characters, I couldn't get into it cuz there's too much going on between keeping track of where the gunner is shooting and trying to dodge & also the colors & art style made it kinda hard to judge where I was, which made switching from macro to micro hard.
Overpower mode was a lot better, having dual analog control feels much more natural. But, things felt too easy in that mode because of the bullet-killing projectile you get and how easy it is to aim. Basically made it so I only rarely had to think about dodging, & only in situations with weird patterns or enemies coming from the back, which made for a low but very spikey difficulty curve.
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