The Shrine

Radiant would be an awesome addition to the XBLA

http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3172122

Good, I've been wanting to play that. It's the polar opposite of Ikagura, which I hate.

You're the first person I've heard of who hates Ikaruga but likes Radiant. I think Radiant is better, but only slightly.

Is Radiant Silvergun beatable for mere mortals unlike a normal game in the bullet hell genre?

Don wrote:Is Radiant Silvergun beatable for mere mortals unlike a normal game in the bullet hell genre?

Only incredibly talented mortals such as myself for I have conquered this seemingly undefeatable creation of God's children

And Sine, WHY don't you like Ikaruga? Did you just didn't like the light/dark thing (which I think is brilliant BTW)? Or is it because it made you its bitch? :-) Just so you know, Radiant is almost as hard as Ikaruga. Not quite but it's not much easier, either. Also, Ikaruga is the spiritual successor to Radiant, it's not THAT much different aside from the 6 levelling guns vs light-dark thing.....well, that and the sword. But they play quite similar

Zeus wrote:

Don wrote:Is Radiant Silvergun beatable for mere mortals unlike a normal game in the bullet hell genre?

Only incredibly talented mortals such as myself for I have conquered this seemingly undefeatable creation of God's children

And Sine, WHY don't you like Ikaruga? Did you just didn't like the light/dark thing (which I think is brilliant BTW)? Or is it because it made you its bitch? :-) Just so you know, Radiant is almost as hard as Ikaruga. Not quite but it's not much easier, either. Also, Ikaruga is the spiritual successor to Radiant, it's not THAT much different aside from the 6 levelling guns vs light-dark thing.....well, that and the sword. But they play quite similar

On a true hardcore shooter board, you'd be one of those EZ-modo guys!

Not that I was ever good at these games, either.

I haven't played Radiant Silvergun, but you keep telling me that it's highly customizable, unlike Ikaruga. I played Ikaruga, and the light/dark thing was the only feature in the game. The rest of it was just these insanely hard levels, and no upgrades at all. I play ship shooters for the goddamn upgrades!

Man, I miss Gradius...

Radiant had 6 guns which gained levels the more you used them. Each gun is mapped to each of the Saturn buttons so you could decide which one to use where. And the more you use them, the stronger they get. But you can't customize anything. And there was a sword to collect bullets instead of the opposite-colour thing in Ikaruga.

But it's still quite difficult and is designed like and plays a lot like Ikaruga. I would be very surprised if you liked Radiant if you don't like Ikaruga

Shooters have been hard since the beginning of time. Gradius and even Defender are unforgiving games. It's hard to find an "easy" shooter

It's more like quarter cruncher shooters have been hard since the beginning of time since the point is to kill you so you have to put more quarters in.

There are quite a few shooters that are perfectly normally difficult. Though it seems like shooter makers are more obsessed with coming up with a game nobody can possibly beat as opposed to actually selling these games.

Gradius is fun when your ship is stacked, but one death in a later level and you are screwed. Its almost impossible to recover. I do own it for the NES, though, and love it.

Don wrote:There are quite a few shooters that are perfectly normally difficult. Though it seems like shooter makers are more obsessed with coming up with a game nobody can possibly beat as opposed to actually selling these games.

Which ones are normal difficulty? Life Force? G.Darius? Einhander?

The majority of shooters are hard, quite hard. Particularly the good ones. The fans want it so they keep making them. And a lot of us who are shooter fans have beaten our fair share of them.

UN Squadron wasn't hard.
Raiden wasn't that hard.

Even Gradius wasn't that hard until the last stage, though it suffered from being a game that almost entirely relies on suppression. The only way you'd not die is if you have enough firepower to kill stuff before they shoot, so once you die and lose your powerups it's pretty much game over from there.

Heck, the fact you still have suppression type shooters (Gradius V certainly is one) shows how backwards the whole genre is. Even the most hardcore bullet hell games don't make you game over the moment you lose one life.

Shooters are a dying genre and the arrogance of shooter makers is what's responsible. I didn't even bother pirate the latest Touhou game because everyone agrees you'll probably never beat it even on easy as an EZ-modo guy (like 95% of the average players in this world). I think Gradius V was the only Gradius game where if you died you don't go back to the beginning of the stage. Boss attack modes are strangely missing for a game where the boss battles are generally the only reason you'd play the game. It's almost as if the makers are afraid if it didn't take you 30 minutes to get to the last stage and then promptly die, you might actually be able to memorize the last boss's pattern in a reasonable time and actually beat the game.

UN Squadron don't count. Raiden is at least a series and we'll give you an "exception to the rule" on that one.

Shooters are definitely stuck in old school and will probably never come out of it. That's why they're a dying genre, much like the platformer (may have had a boost from 2D to 3D but there's hardly any platformers now). So they only thing they have left to do is appeal to the hardcore, kinda like the MM games.

Look at any old school game, they were all based on kicking your ass. Have you played Donkey Kong, Pacman, Space Invaders, or Defender recently? Those games ain't easy; in fact, they'll kick your ass, hard. And it's not always due strictly to lack of technology. That's just how games were designed them. Since shooters have only evolved mildly since their inception, their audience is one that likes difficulty.

Those games are hard probably because they were once designed for the arcade where the point is to eat up as many quarters as possible. The shooters you mentioned aren't necessarily even the best selling ones, they just happen to be the hardest ones. Gradius is not a hard game. It is only hard due to its stupidly 1 death = game over mechanics. In some of the fast scrolling stages you don't even start with enough speed ups and just get trapped in a death loop. It's clearly not meant to be that hard except nobody actually thought about what happens if you actually die.

A survey from the Touhou series over about 8000 people (which I think is a lot for a shooter), a well known hardcore bullet hell series, you got the 2 easiest games rated the highest, and the 2 hardest games rated the lowest. I think even an EZ-modo guy in bullet hell speak is a lot more hardcore than the average shooter fan elsewhere, and even these guys prefer a game that is at least somewhat beatable. Ask what people liked about Imperishable Night, the easiest game in the series, and it's always related to being able to utterly demolish the enemy with either a greater demon or the Malice Cannon that instant kills everything. Yeah you can play the game like a normal bullet hell and pick a human player, and it is probably just as hard as any other bullet hell game, or you can actually play someone that wouldn't die 3 seconds after a stage started.

Two things:

1) They may have started out difficult due to their arcade roots, but the arcades have been mostly dead for the last 10-12 years. Most shooters are console-exclusive now. They're still hard 'cause that's what people who want them want.

2) Let's be clear: the Japanese are pansies when it comes to gaming difficulty. They ALWAYS complain about difficulty. There was a HUGE crawling-into-fetal-position-and-licking-palms epidemic when Viewtiful Joe came out. Most simply can't handle game difficulty (neither can a lot of gamers here; Halo 3 on Legendary and Gears 2 on Hardcore in co-op were actually kinda easy). Why do you think so many Japanese games are cakewalks nowadays? And the sample of the Touhou game fans only isn't indicative of the entire genre (did these games ever get a stateside release?). Why else would every other shooter that has come out in the last 5-7 years be damn hard? The fact that they still make them that hard means that's what they think their audience wants.

Well crazy hard shooters are made in Japan so if Japanese are pansies, that'd actually make a good argument shooters should be easy.

The US/Chinese boards follow the same trend as indicated in the survey. You obviously will only find a message board where everyone in theory beat it on Lunatic, but for every guy that can beat it on Lunatic there are 10 guys that can barely beat it on Easy, but they won't be posting much about that feat. You also have to be aware that since nobody outside of Japan could possibly have bought this game since it's not sold outside of Japan, people tend to have slightly more lenient standards on a game that didn't actually have to pay for.

Don wrote:Well crazy hard shooters are made in Japan so if Japanese are pansies, that'd actually make a good argument shooters should be easy.

Always exceptions to the rule, man :-)

Actually after reading what the shooter game makers are saying, I think they're just a bunch of disgruntled, angry guys who takes out their frustration of a dying genre on the players. I'm pretty sure the development cost for a shooter is very easy since they even got plug & play software where you just have to insert music, art, and shooting patterns and you got a shooter, and if you actually can draw it'd look pretty professional too. So it's easy for a few guys to keep it alive as a hobby since the development cost isn't much, but obviously they're not making any good money on this either. I remember reading about how Ninja Gaiden creator delights in the misery of people who can't beat his game. Well shooters seem to be in the same vein which is probably why they're also not exactly going anywhere either.

Itagaki is a masochist, we all know that.

There's a big difference between making a game and getting it published. The fact that they're still getting released means there's an audience that still wants them

A lot of the shooters are just released in some kind of cult/underground game. It's well known Touhou series is just totally pirated since the guy who made it can't even be bothered to keep a stack of CDs pressed somewhere to sell even if you wanted to buy it. It'd seem like shooters would make a good candidate for a digital download format like Steam but I have no idea what the costs are for getting into one of these deals.

I actually checked the free software people use to make shooter games and it's surprisingly powerful and yet any body with a CS degree can definitely figure out how to make a game with that. And if you actually got somebody who has any artistic talents the result would actually look quite professional.

Of course most programmers can't draw so most of the games you see look like a 5 year old drew them, but that's not a fault of the engine itself. It seems like the only difficult part of programming is coming up with the different shot patterns, but the game library has so many generic type shots by now that you can almost just mix and match to create something because chances are someone's made the components of any particular shot pattern you can think of and you just have to combine them in a clever way. I suppose if you want to create a unique shot type it might get tricky, but most shooters can get away with some kind of combination of spread, laser, and homing weapons.