wasteblock E17

A few days ago, a friend and myself hijacked his roomate's flatscreen television for some awesome tate mode HD shmuppery. Finalburn in effect, we preceded to play both Guwange and DoDonpatchi in 32" glory. From this experience, I gathered that the amount of skill to play games such as this as accurately as one could play alone is a completely different kind of skill altogether. In cave games especially, it gets to the point where there are so many processes going on onscreen that its very difficult to even process those that apply to your own character or ship. When another is applied to the mix, a whole new set of processes is added, even if you can reduce it just to that some of the enemies your ship will not have to handle. That being said, identifying which ships are important for you to take care of and which will most likely be destroyed, which powerups you can get without completely screwing over player 2, but most of all, which bullets it is that you must prepare for and dodge, this proves taking precedence in Cave games in general. Not to mention that every time your partner's ship approaches yours, you have to pay attention to what it is that they are firing at, dodging, and possibly catching for you. Mechanics like bullet slowdown in Guwange make it even more ridiculous to process this all at once. PLus depending on who you play with, you may or may not get a "GET BACK ON YOUR F*CKING SIDE." Sadly, I don't really have many people to play shmups with, so experiences like this that actually make me think are particularly isolated. It's interesting regardless.

Labels: commentary