Saturday, April 24, 2010

Why Shoot1up is one of the most interesting shooters in a long time


There's an ongoing thread on SHMUPS forum asking why shooters are such a niche genre. The reason can be found on the exact same forum, in the form of their Top 25 Shmups of All Time List, which are voted on yearly. Every time, more awesome classic shooters are ditched in favor of the newest Cave games. That's not entirely unreasonable, because one of the only companies putting out really decent titles on a consistent basis, but it does point to the genre becoming extremely homogenized. Milestone consistently puts out stuff (you can find three of their games in the Milestone Shooting Collection for the Wii for about $15), each usually with some kind of vaguely interesting mechanic which totally doesn't work in practice. And there's the Castle of Shikigami games, which are a bit better, but not anything super impressive either. When was the last great non-bullet hell shooter? Otomedius was only alright, Gradius V is five years old at this point, and Ikaruga even older, and even that is arguably a bullet hell game.


Which is why I'm so incredibly impressed by Shoot1up, available on the Xbox Live Indie marketplace for the shocking low price of 80 points (AKA: $1.) It's a self-described "manic shooter for normal gamers", although it isn't quite a bullet hell game. It is, however, a surprisingly well developed game with some very compelling core mechanics. Around the 'net it's most well known for the gigantic woman robot shooting missiles out of its nipples, a testament to the "why the hell not, we don't have suits to impress" mentality of independent game development.

In Shoot1up, you don't control a single ship, but rather a whole squadron of them, with each counting as a life. (The in-game terminology is "phalanx".) You can expand and contract your phalanx with the L and R triggers. Spreading out your ships will not only earn higher points, but will also trigger a laser in the center if the formation is wide enough. Of course, in doing so, you're also more exposed to danger, turning it into clever risk/reward mechanic. If you lay off the trigger for a moment, a small circular shield will also form around your ships. If you lure an enemy close enough and press the trigger, it'll cause the shield to dissipate but kill the enemy in the process, awarding 10x the standard point value. Obviously, waiting for it to charge and then getting close is even more dangerous, but is really the only way to score big.

This is all very simple and easily understandable within a few minutes of play. Compare this to ESPGaluda II's various arcade scoring systems, which are so incredibly complicated that I've seen a number of people try to explain them, and then just give up.


Like many modern shooters, the goal is to reach the end of the game on a single credit. (Unlike others, you aren't allowed to credit feed, at all - once your ships are all gone, it's Game Over.) This is often a daunting proposition, because it takes a remarkable amount of practice and memorization. Over the course of twenty minutes or so, you can only screw up three times, and then you're done. Shoot1up, on the other hand, doesn't focus on isolated moments where you can die, but instead emphasis is placed on the overall picture. In general, dying isn't something you need to precisely avoid. In fact, when you're controlling twenty ships on the screen at the same time, it's almost impossible to get through completely unscathed. You can make a series of mistakes and wipe out a huge chunk of your squadron, but with some smart flying, you can eventually rebuild them. In other words, it takes more than a few misjudged bullets or mistimed maneuvers to put an end to your game, and more how you deal with the general flow of gaining or losing power. While it can get hairy in the later levels, it's not a terribly difficult game on the Normal setting, and with a few games you can probably get skilled enough to reach the end without much of a problem, and can then concentrate on score.


EPSGaluda II is what happens when you continuously target the hardcore fan with arcane scoring systems. Cave has been creating a more diverse spread lately, in hopes of reaching wider audiences, but the fact is a lot of people are still going to be intimidated by them, no matter how many times you try to tell them that they aren't that hard. (Which is a lie, of course.) We need more games like Shoot1up, that can distill the better parts of modern shmup design without backing itself into a corner than only a few can master. It still has some minor issues - the camera is zoomed in too closely, making it feel claustrophobic at times, and its status as an Indie game means there's no online scoreboards, which would've been really nice. Still, for 1/80th of the price of ESPGaluda II or Ketsui, you can get an extremely solid title, the kind which there desperately needs to be more of.

12 comments:

  1. I'd definitely classify the Milestone and Shikigami games as Bullet Hell.

    Maybe not Chaos Field, but I don't think Milestone developed that. Radilgy and Karous? Yeah.


    I wish the PS3 had an equivalent of this, because XBL's indie games sound awesome.

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  2. Damn, that game looks awesome. Yeah, after a few bullet hells, I just got sick of it. Granted, I'm not the biggest shmup fan, but I do love Gradius, MUSHA, and Thunderforce. It's a pity that most of the great shmup developers are gone, and the only real consistent developer we have is Cave (which is a great developer, but a very... consistent developer who doesn't do anything super new from what I know of them).

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  3. Never heard of this. Totally going to go buy it now. Thanks. ;)

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  4. The creator of this game said he was trying to get this game onto PSN and Steam. They is some great games on the Indie games section most are very cheap as well. They is some very bad ones though. But they is sites that just review them. They is very few Japanese developed shooters on the service though.

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  5. If you search the latest great shmpus that are on the same levels as Gradius 5, i have 2 candidate. However both are doujin so its hard to get them :

    Reflex : a game where you have a rechargeable shield that can reflect any energy based bullet(the rest can be shooted down). Great levels and soundtrack and the shield mechanic is really fun to use!

    Hellsinker : Maybe the best shooter ever made, but its not for beginner. It looks like its a bullet hell game, but its not. The graphic are fantastic, there is tons of levels and secrets, you have a truckload of weapons at your disposal and the level and boss design are superb. However you have only one continueand even if extra life are frequent, you can have a maximum of 7 live at once.

    At first the games seems rather brutal...unless you have an instruction manual that explain you which option do what. For example, an option enable you to get shot 3 times in a level before you begin to lose lives, but you can't guess that with the option name.

    Anyway check these games out if you can.

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  6. Not familiar with either of those, thanks for the suggestion!

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  7. That woman's face looks like Max Payne... XD

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  8. I'm not really a huge shmup fan (I don't dislike them, but they're not one of my favorite genres, and I haven't played too many), but I decided to check out Shoot 1up and it's really fun. I wouldn't have found out about it if it weren't for this article, so thanks for the heads up :)

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  9. Its a dollar for one of the more unique shmups I've seen. Not bad at all I say. I downloaded the demo, and after 5 minutes I was sold. Great game for somebody like me who isn't into the genre.

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  10. I've not actually played it so I'm not sure, but... isn't this basically the same gimmick behind rare Sega vector shooter Tac-Scan?

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  11. I wasn't familiar with Tac-Scan before...but yes, reading up on it, it sounds very similar, although transferred from a 3D vector game into a top down shooter.

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  12. My shmups collection it’s huge and i build it in one month of work.Now that my cab software is finally taking shape, I am wondering if you will like it.I play shmups exclusively on Windows 10(64 bits).I’m using of course MAME but a special version who emulates all known arcade shumps.(http://taxi.freedns.ro/shmups/my-shmups-collection/_

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