Espgaluda II: Black Label (Arcade, 360)



I've got to do a little reading up on the new scoring system, because I can't figure it out. Apparently there's a second additional slo-mo mode available, where there are suicide bullets, but higher multipliers, but I haven't been able to trigger it. Regardless, it can be played exactly like the first one. And to that effect, it's very samey, moreso than usual with Cave sequels. Needs a real good concentrated effort for me to figure it out, I guess, but right now I'm thinking it's very conservative.

Okay, so I finally got to sit down with this today and I figured out what's going on. Brilliance. That's what's going on.



Espgaluda was a really fucking complicated game. Espgaluda II is even more of a mind screw. I'll try to break it down because I want to make a point.

You have four buttons, rapid shot (also the same as just rapidly tapping the main shot button), focus shot, slow motion, and guard laser. The guard laser is essentially your bomb and is handled by its own meter on the bottom of the screen. You can activate it at any time you have enough meter, and if you hold it down it forms a bubble around you, absorbing shots, doing damage, and draining meter. Let go and blam, laser. Whenever you're in slo-mo and you get hit, the game auto bombs, but uses more meter than if you would have hit it manually.

The game has two counters on screen at all times. One is your green gems, the other is your gold ignots. As in the original, by killing enemies you get green gems, which function as power for your slo-motion special. Killing enemies fast and while near the top of the screen nets you extra gems.

If you tap the slow-mo button once, you trigger the slow motion special and your gems start depleting. This was the mode in the original Espgaluda. In this mode everything moves at half speed except you. Here, when you kill enemies, you destroy all their bullets on screen. Each bullet increases a running score multiplier that maxes out at 100. You also get gold ignots for every enemy you kill in this mode.

Run out of gems and you enter "over mode" where all enemy bullets turn red and move at twice the default speed. You still recieve gold for killing enemies, and by staying in this mode, you can fill up a meter with three levels that increases the amount of green gems you recieve from enemies in normal mode.

The new mode in the sequel, comes from when you hold down the slow-mo button. This mode uses both green gems and gold ignots. Here, point multipliers go up to 500, essentially 5x that of normal slow mo. The rub is that when you kill enemies they spawn a ton of suicide bullets in a tight spiral aimed directly at you. Destroy the next enemy and the previous foes bullets are destroyed, counted twds your multiplier, and new ones spawn. The thing is, if you run out of gems in this mode, you're kind of fucked because the screen is covered in shit you really can't dodge. So you have to save enough gems, exit this mode, and enter the normal slow mo mode to cancel all the suicide bullets before they kill you.

The whole game is a fantastic example of risk and reward. I'm probably missing a lot of the detail, but that's just the point. For a game where "all you do is shoot," it's complicated as shit. You've got to think when the best places are to raise green gems, when you need to sacrifice the big multipliers to raise gold, and when to cash it in in moments of utter insanity.

The Normal and 360 modes are hard as hell. Like Dodonpachi Daioujou hard, which is kind of impossible. Novice mode is on the other end of the spectrum, where I one lifed it on my first try through the game. Like all recent Cave games, there are tons of modes though, there's still a Black Label and an Omake mode that I haven't even seen yet. Despite my initial thinking that the game played it safe, it actually added a whole other layer of complexity. This game is now 5 years old. I can't wait until the ports catch up to the current arcade releases.

Shoot 1up (360): I already had a mostly useless balance of Microsoft points that was enough to cover the game, so I dl'd it to give it a shot. Not bad. Visually it's kind of seems like a bunch of white guys sat around and said, "hey, lets make a trippy Japanese game." So you end up with stretches of background with beached killer whales, or, and my favorite, the boss fight against a pair of gigantic robot breasts. It's trippy, sure, but it feels a little forced.



I will say that the game is, by design, inherently sloppy. The key element, amassing a squadron of fighters that you control simultaneously, means that it's impossible to protect them all from getting hit. You can fan them out to create ginormous lasers and draw them in close to avoid as many shots as you can, but it's impossible to play the game completely cleanly. Also, why is there no controller config option? Every game should have one . . . especially one that would lend itself to playing with a 3rd party controller. Pet peeve, but the default setup is fine.

Anyway, I played thorugh it once on normal difficult, and it was fun. It's a cool little game where you don't have to really sweat too much to play through. Worth the 1 dollar download, if only for curiosities sake.

Trailer for the 360 version of Ketsui: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UhSLrU6jtjk&fmt=18

You don't understand, if this game doesn't up and change my life, I'll be crushed. The hype meter is near Radiant Silvergun/Rondo of Blood levels with this thing. I've been hearing for years how it's the best shooter no one's played, and it's only just now getting ported. Release date is 4/22, however it's region locked.

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Things have been picking up lately with work and I haven't had that much free time, but when I do play a shooter it's been the first Espgaluda. It's definitely not rendered obsolete by the sequel. In comparison, it's grittier visually, has a better soundtrack, and is much easier in Arcade mode. Its score system is also better integrated than in 2, where it kind of competes with itself. The first one is still in print and you can get it for the same price as the sequel. Honestly it's hard to really reccomend one over the other, but the sequel has a ton more modes, including a couple very easy ones where you can just enjoy the art and the mechanics without getting splatted too hard. I haven't even really tried Arrange or Black Label yet, because they alter the fundamental mechanics and shits complicated enough without that right now.

^ So that's Espgaluda, huh? I just found the introduction post thanks to the colorful cover art, but what really caught my attention was that guard laser feature you mentioned. It just sounds like one of those interesting, creative and versatile weapons that I wish I could see in more shmups. Even that slow motion feature, for instance. You know me, my hand-eye coordination isn't worth shit when it comes to bullet-hell shooters, so I see that as a godsend. And I like how all these features are part of your core arsenal instead of having to earn them as temporary power ups or something. A shame I'll never get to play the game, though. There's always YouTube, I guess.

The guard laser is actually a relatively minor part of the gameplay in the grand scheme of things. The Galuda games are really difficult to explain and much easier to just show someone while you're playing it and are able to actively demonstrate.

Einhander (PSX)- I've had this game for a few months now and I just can't get into it. It's bland and boring, and the "arm" system makes me feel like I'm juggling like a goddamn circus clown. There are other shooters that let you hold multiple weapons at once (Thunderforce, Gate of Thunder, Radiant Silvergun) and none of them feel as cumbersome as Einhander. Most of the difficulty of the game comes from the fact that whenever you kill something and get a weapon drop, you have to cycle through your arsenal so you add to your stock instead of replacing the wrong thing. And then you get hit by a tiny pea shot that blends in with the background that you couldn't really see because you were busy juggling and the camera is changing angles because polygons are cool and my absolute favorite thing in 2d games. I loved the demo growing up, and after the first stage is about where I lose interest now. It's on eBay if anyone's interested.



Ibara (Arc, PS2)- So Raizing (Tatsunoko vs. Capcom) used to make really good shooting games in the late 90's. The company stopped that and the person who was their lead designer went on to work for Cave, and this was his first game with that company. Out of all the Cave games on the PS2 this was my most hyped and also the most immediately disapointing. It's simply just a bad port. The game uses a pastel color pallete for its backgrounds, the bullets are all soft pastels, the game uses elaborate explosion and shrapnel effects, and to make matters worse, there's this realy bad interlacing or filter that goes on to make the screen appear almost smudged in vasoline. Combine all that together and you get a shooter where you simply can't see what's about to hit you most of the time. The game, like old Raizing games, is unforgiving and uses a large hitbox and a brutal rank system (variable difficulty) so when you put it all together it's really hard to get into. After some time though, I do like the game, but it's just so damn hard to see. Apparently there's a fix where you can open up the game in a hex editor, turn off the filtering, and then reburn it, but I haven't gotten a chance to see how much it helps.



Edit: So I applied the patch to both Ibara and Mushihemesama. It doesn't actually turn off the filtering, what it does is just deinterlace it so it runs at it's native 240 instead of 480i. The best practical description I could give would be that it heightens the effect of the scan lines and makes it so you can literally "count" every pixel. For Ibara, though the game is still something of a filtered mess, it really, really sharpens it up. I have trouble picking stuff up in my periphery, but you definitely can see a lot more of what's going on. Mushi wasn't as bad as Ibara, so the changes are more subtle, but the display is sharper as well. It's just the damn filtering, but there's nothing you can do about that.

I don't know what this means, but I'm excited.

Lightening Force (Genesis): Being as how I had the system out I just couldn't resist. This is a really, really good shooter. I've only owned it for a month or two, and my playing it has been sporadic at best, but there's a lot to like about this game. My main gripes with it are that boss fights drag on a little too much, especially since there's very little indication that you're hitting the bosses weakpoint until the thing spontaneously cumbusts. And secondly, I find that because the screen scrolls up and down as well as forced scrolling to the right a little disorienting and leaves you open for some cheap shots every now and again. Other than that, it's a solid game. Looks fantastic, almost Neo Geo quality. Probably one of the prettiest games on the Genesis.

Have been scouring the pathetic retro selection in KC looking to repurchase a copy of that bastard lately. It and Sunset Riders have eluded me for years. It's one of my favorite horizontal shooters and needs to hit VC bad. Love the horribly grainy low res metal soundtrack, too.

And the distorted voice samples. "Craw!" "Hun-ter!"

There's something really lo-fi about the Genesis soundchip that just can't be emulated right on other hardware.

Sengoku Blade (Arc, SS, PS2): Here's a unique Psikyo shooter. Well, not really. But it feels that way because the screen scrolls sideways!

Fantastic art style and the fact that it's a Psikyo made horizontal shooter make it worth playing. Mostly just makes me pumped for DeathSmiles, though.

Anubis, the steampunk wheelchair-stricken god of death.

Old gods never die, but some of them have mobility problems.

Thanks, btw. I'll never be able to see that as a tank tread again.

My television has been turned all normal-like for far too long. My copy of Ketsui is in the mail. It should arrive any time between next week and June. You've got to love $3 international shipping.

You know, depending on how much I like Ketsui, I could make a damn strong argument for this generation being the best for shmups. The most irrelevant, sure, but the best nevertheless. And the thing is, it's not even done yet.

IMO, Cave > any other shmup developer by a wide margain (especially compared to the few still kicking), and the 360 is swamped with some of their best titles. Throw in other assorted games like R-Type Dimensions, Raiden Fighters, and Ikaruga, add in the best home arcade periphals that we've ever seen, and you've really got something. On top of that, the quality of the ports are improving, with detailed screen and filtering options becoming the norm, and online leaderboards and the ability to download replays from other players are exactly the sort of thing to keep you motivated in improving your scores.

Not my arm. Bet you thought it was, though.

Yeah, you surprised me for a second there.

There's a port of Espgaluda II on the . . . iphone. I don't own one, and I can't really vouch for it, but it looks better than I thought it would. I think it's 9 bucks.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnOcXHudX_w

Ketsui (Arc, 360) didn't live up to expectations. It exceeded them.



I don't even know what to say. Shame it's region locked, but maybe the people publishing DeathSmiles will pick it up. This is a damn good game.

You can't talk about shmups without getting into the mechanics. Just try to talk about Ikaruga without mentioning polarity. It doesn't make sense. Unlike Espgaluda, where I felt the need to write up a thesis to explain the game mechanics, Ketsui is simple. By killing enemies with your normal shot, they release a chip with a value of 1 through 5 which acts like a multiplier. The closer you are to the enemies when you shoot them, the higher the multiplier. Once you activate the multiplier by shooting them, if you use your laser/lock on shot by holding down the fire button, every enemy you kill will give you a large chip of the value of your multiplier. But it's time based, so essentially what you end up doing is point blanking all the small popcorn enemies and using your lockon on bigger stuff to rack up points. It lends the game a really aggressive style of play, and because the game is so incredibly manic, anything more complicated would be impossible to manage.

Other than liking the mechanics, I really like the asthetics. Most of Cave's stuff since Daioujou has been this sissy fantasy underage teenager crap. Ketsui is very much a military themed shmup. Like they used to make them. The other thing is that while most bullet hells have nice, intricate bullet patterns, Ketsui is the first game where the attacks are almost distracting because they're legitimately beautiful. Most bosses aren't content to just fire at you. They attack from all sides of the screen, bullets change direction and move mid-flight. It's very similar to how I felt about Ikaruga where you were becoming part of a pattern.

The port is really good. Good number of display options, a remixed soundtrack, an enjoyable arrange mode, time unlocked EX options, practice mode, online rankings, replay, zero loading etc. It's surprising considering the publisher, 5pb's poor track record. And the fact that this port has been in limbo for atleast three years. But they did this one up right. The only flaw I can think of is the game doesn't have a mode optimized for HD displays, but I can't see playing a game like this on a 16:9 monitor anyway.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VGCet30zSQM
^Skip to 2 minute mark. Shows intro, menus, and first 3 stages.

God bless your eyes, Paul. My eyes were starting to strain by the end of that video. I don't know how you do it. As if the endless barrages of bullets and lasers exchanged between you and your enemies weren't enough, these oversized icons and score multipliers seem like they're doing their damnedest to obscure your vision. Maybe I'm just easily overwhelmed by this genre, but that had to have been one of the craziest shooters I've ever seen. The fact that there's no real noticeable halt between stages (sans the stage clear/results screen you get) makes it all the more intense and impressive. And when you're given a chance to appreciate the graphics without so much shit happening at once, the game looks quite nice. A military-themed shooter is so much better than the doe-eyed schoolgirl anime crap you see in a lot of these games now.

I really like the fact that the stages are on one continuous map, I can't think of another shooter (outside of the neverending starfield variety) where you dont' jump to the next level to load the resources for the stage.

And I try not to make any false pretenses about it, I really like these games, but I really suck at them. That part in the third stage is about where I've been able to get up to on a good day, more often I fold at the end of level 2.

Ketsui is one of the harder Cave games I've played, I'd say it's right up there with Dodonpachi Daioujou. In most of there games with 5 stages I can get up to the fourth, and in most of the ones with 6 maybe level 5. In the hard ones I have trouble cracking the 3rd. And DDP and Ketsui loop after you've beaten them. A year after DDP DoJ was released, Cave was putting together a superplay dvd for the PS2 port and could only find something like 5 people who had beaten the true last boss. In all of Japan. You're not really supposed to win these games.

But the thing with bullet hells is that the sprites are all oversized in relation to your hitbox. There's really only a few pixel area in the center of your sprite and in the center of each bullet that can harm you. Also, a lot of it is just proper space managment. If you watch good players play they tend to "draw fire" in a predictable way so it's easily avoided and take out the major threats before they spam the whole screen. In a lot of ways, though they look more overwhelming, a lot of curtain fire shooters are easier than older verts that through less at you, but gave you less margain of error.

Yeah, I recall you telling me how small your ship's hitbox actually is during our game of Ikaruga, back when I had you over my house that first time. It's like I know that your ship's size in relation to all those bullets flying around is all smoke and mirrors, yet I can't help but try to dodge every projectile that comes my way because it's always my first instinct. Even if that bullet looks like it's dangerously close to grazing my right wing or cockpit when it's really nothing worth worrying about at all.

I guess it's somewhat similar to how I can't fully grasp the concept of aiming with the right stick proficiently in an FPS, or how my brother can't seem to execute a quarter-circle move in Street Fighter no matter how many times I try teaching him. Some of us just have this inability to play certain genres correctly, I suppose.

The thing is, how many shooters have you ever really played? I would hardly even count Ikaruga. You don't really dodge anything there, it's kind of a different beast all together.

It's an acquired thing, and most of the stuff you pick up from one game is transferable to the next. You've got to give it enough time where the period of simply being overwhelmed has passed. Like just about any good 2d action game, rote memorization will take you along way. And you'll learn where to focus your eyes on the screen when it gets hectic, (i.e. right in front of your ship instead of directly on it) and how most patterns have a fairly simple way through them. If you can play Strider 2 or Metal Slug 3 well enough, which you obviously can, there's no reason why you couldn't learn to play a shmup. Always remember, regardless of how much stuff is on screen, 99% of it is probably going to miss you.

I think it's worth setting up Mame (your wired 360 controllers should work) and giving some of the games here a shot. I'd say the best place to jump in to get a feel for more modern shooters would be Dodonpachi. The first Espgaluda is probably the best gateway into the genre that I can think of, with a very forgiving difficulty in general and various safegaurds like the barrier and slow mo, but unfortunately unless you're emulating the PS2 version, you can't emulate it at all. Psikyo shooters are good to start out with. Gunbird is fairly accessible, I think. And from Raizing maybe Battle Bakraid. Just about everything pre 2000 is compatible and you don't have much to lose by trying it out. I like console ports and all, but free is free.

If it's not your thing, that's cool, but I think it's something that you could really end up getting into. First time you played Street Fighter I bet you couldn't throw a fireball either. But now you're doing hooligan combinations all over the screen. Mostly into my flashkicks. But hey.

Yeah, maybe I should stop being so stubborn about not wanting to play console games on my computer and just do it already. Mame is probably the only way I'll actively play more shmups, seeing as how my last legitimate purchase was Ikaruga (and we all know where that went), which was like 5-6 years ago. I've heard nothing but great things about Gunbird and Bangai-O, so I'm thinking I should give those a shot first. Mame isn't too difficult to get working right off the bat, is it? I remember having a hard enough time trying to get Gunstar Heroes working by itself and online. What a day that was.

I've never been one to outright dismiss shmups. I've always respected them as well as those who play them well enough to know what they're doing. They're probably the purest form of video game besides your side-scrolling platformer. I mean their entire appeal stems from that desire of wanting to blow shit up, and what more motivation could you possibly want during the span of a 15-minute game? They just intimidate me is all, but if Mr. One Credit himself thinks I might have what it takes to survive this genre, then I'd be more than willing to play outside of my usual comfort zone. I'm not so sure I'll eventually become good enough to dodge a rainstorm of bullets 90% of the time, but I'll cross that bridge once I get there.

Oh, and mark my words, friend. When I finally do get my Live subscription renewed, Cammy's fine white ass will be the last thing you ever see! Just you wait!

Bangai-O wasn't an arcade game, so no Mame for that. From what I understand, and from what I've played of the sequel, it's not really a shmup anyway.

Mame can be a bitch to get going, but if you're interested I can help you try to figure it out. Kawaks is a much more user friendly emulator, and it uses the same online client that we used for Gunstar. Unfortunately it only works with CPS1/2 and Neo Geo games. Online Marvel vs. Capcom and MotW, though. I'm just sayin.

Gunbird is good. I've got it on Saturn. Really it plays just like the Strikers games, except it has a steampunk fantasy setting, and kind of amusing "Pokemon Ranger" type villains. You've probably heard of it because its sequel, like Bangai-O, came out here on the DC. Psikyo games have big hitboxs and the bullets are faster. So sometimes you feel like you get a cheap death, where occasionally with Cave you more often feel like you just cheated death because you should have done blowed up but didn't. I loves me some Psikyo, regardless.