Thread 718707512

I've only played a couple STGs (DoDonPachi, ZeroRanger, Eschatos, the Frantic and Reactance series-es back when Flash was a thing, a couple in arcades like Raiden 2 and R-Type, Einhänder, Drainus), but I generally tend to enjoy what I've played of the genre even if they're pretty tough games.

Star Waspir is... not enjoyable. One quarter of it of it feels like the game gets too ridiculous right out of the gate with its enemies and the sheer speed at which their bullets move, which makes it difficult to adapt to the game when it's immediately throwing snipers at you. Another quarter is the visual design, because Star Waspir's visuals manage to make me feel like I'm getting eye strain while playing and I'm not sure I can articulate why entirely.

The other half is the power-up system. I've kind of come to expect gimmicky chaining systems for score multipliers as just part of the genre (my personal favorite multiplier gimmick is graze mechanics like in Frantic), but when you're doing chaining gimmicks for power-ups, then things have been taken too far. The power-ups aren't even "permanent until you get tagged" either, they're either time-limited or breakable, which just makes the whole system feel bad to engage with since what you get for the effort doesn't feel as impactful as it really should if they're meant to only last a few seconds. Even 1943, which had time-limited power-ups, has them deliver a significant impact and gives you some actual time to use them.

It's a shame, since I like the other STG I've played so far in the pack (Caramel Caramel).

shmups isn't the problem, the problem is that the devs seem to me to have felt obliged to put games in the genre because they were quite common in the 1980s, but without really knowing how to do it.

Xevious from 1982 is more advanced n terms of game design than all the UFO50 shmups.

I also think that shmups are too “pure” a genre, and the UFO50 games don't try to hide the fact that they're indie games (and not “retro” games), and because indies apparently can't make games without adding gimmicks, UFO50 shmups have become too gimmicky and silly.

And finally, Star Waspir is probably the worst game of this kind I've ever played, at least considering everything from 1982 onwards.

Why can’t western devs make shmups? What is the disconnect?

>>718709067
>western
aren't 2 of the devs japanese?

Star Waspir took me nearly 18 hours to cherry. At least it's pretty much impossible to only gold and not cherry it lol
Hardest level the third one by far. I think it's the third one. It's the one where everything goes dark. When you're done mastering that, the rest from after comes way easier.

>>718709595
Ah I just assumed it was all western. Still it seems the two Japanese devs could not save them, at least as far as shmup design.

>>718710034
I don't think any of the team had made a shmup before.

Star Waspir took me ages to beat but at least I beat it.
I couldn't for the life of me force myself to beat the one with the camera. It's so fucking boring and laborious, even if it is probably technically easier.
UFO 50 is kino overall, though. Rail Heist and Mortol are insanely good. FUCK Mortol 2.

>>718710219
>FUCK Mortol 2.
filtered.

The game seems insanely overrated and overhyped to me. The reviews are pure hyperbole. They would have you believe that this is the equivalent of a long-lost 8bit console library of all-time greats with games that would stand on their own as individual releases.

Let's be real though. Most 8-bit games are bad and not worth playing today. The ones that are still playable are the best of the best: Mario 3, river city ransom, Super Dodge Ball, Excitabike, Blaster Master, Etc. These games are nowhere near that quality. Most of them are mid at the absolute best.

For example, there is a shmup called Star Waspir. I have over 50 shmups in my steam library, and there is not a single one of them that I wouldn't prefer playing instead of Star Waspir. Nor does it compare favorably to NES games. This isn't Gradius or Life Force. Even Star Soldier is a lot better. If I bought Star Waspir for 40 cents (its pro-rated cost), I would refund it.

I went through about a quarter of the games within the refund window and Avianos was the only one of those that was any good (and it was way lacking in content). I doubt there are much more than 5 good games total in the whole set, and you can easily grab 5 (or more) games on steam for less than 20 bucks total that will be much better than those and not have to wade through 45 games of crap to find the good ones. This probably would have been better as a 16-bit collection where the bar to make a good game isn't as high.

UFO 50 didn't fulfil my expectations, despite being an impressive collection. 50 games is insane and the amount of work the guys had to put in here is mind-blowing.

But honestly, this game only made me frustrated seeing the way critics and consumers really interact with games. A perfect analogy for how I feel is a scene from an episode of South Park, where one of the oldfarts sees the kids playing Guitar Hero and he gets excited thinking he could share his guitar hobby with them, but as soon as he shows them the real guitar, the kids just say "so what?" and go back to the game, because their interest wasn't in the guitar, but in Guitar Hero.

I see UFO50 as a collection of 50 indie mini-games with a limited colour palette, and that's it. I can't delude myself that I'm playing retro games from a parallel dimension, these games literally feel like indie games from the 2010s-2020s in every respect, from gameplay to amateurish art style. Just copying some famous sprites from the 1980s-1990s didn't do much to create a simulacrum.

But what really frustrates me is to see how much people praise the project excessively, even though a huge number of the games are worthless if removed from the collection (imagine buying Star Waspir as a full game on Steam, lol), and at the same time retro games of much better quality are ignored, or sometimes massacred by the reviews on Steam, coming from people who I imagine, as soon as they leave UFO 50 which is a famous project made by celebrity devs, suddenly become super demanding and start posting negative reviews on games that make UFO50's indie mini-games look like amateur projects.

>>718711183
>>718712164
nice copypasta

Nah, the game did extremely well for something indie and niche, I don't think the problem of the first games being deliberately inferior was really important.

But in my opinion, UFO50 has a much more serious problem, which is the total failure in its attempt to create a parallel 1980's universe. As I mentioned in my Steam review, it's not a collection of games that could have been released in the 1980s, with their limitations and philosophies, but rather typical indie games from the 2010s.

I notice that no one else seems to care about this, but I think this is what diminishes the artistic aspect of the game. The "parallel universe" aspect of the game, which I thought was super important, has practically no value here. There are several other games that use the alternative representation of a historical reality as a factor of entertainment, such as 'Hypnospace Outlaw', for example, which recreates the Internet of the 1990s in an extremely faithful and extremely entertaining way. I bought UFO 50 thinking it would be something similar, but I didn't find that, neither in the philosophy, nor in the storyline, nor in the aesthetics. These are indie developers celebrating indie games from the 2010s and confusing their scene with what the guys were doing back then, which, incidentally, shows a bit of arrogance if you think about it...

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>>718712164
>these games literally feel like indie games from the 2010s-2020s in every respect
That's the fucking point though.
But why does it bother you and why do you keep crying about it in every fucking thread?