The days of having 3-4 GBAs linked together....man.
I DON'T MISS 'EM ONE FUCKING BIT
Inevitably someone would forget to bring their cable so while we would have more than enough GBAs we wouldn't have enough cables to get up to 4 players.
Not including today, Life to Date for Breath of Death VII: The Beginning:
20,238 copies sold
Just wanted to let you know that I finally have my internet back up and running at home, and first thing I did was download BoD7.
Pretty awesome do far. :^:
Thanks
Yeah if you're a fan of old-school RPGs, or heck RPGs in general, I think you'd like it. It's not too hard and it's not too grindey IMO, but you do have to start using some thoughtful strategy in battles a little over an hour in. (Starts out easy and gets harder).
Amidst all the numbers and gushing praise for Guitar Hero, Activision Blizzard also found time in its recent financial posting to stoke up the hype machine for Bizarre Creations’ upcoming new racing IP Blur.
“From a business perspective, we are targeting Blur to do for racing what Call of Duty did for shooters,” Activision CEO Michael Griffith stated. “That was the goal when we originally acquired Bizarre Creations to make this game.
“Blur brings real innovation to the racing category and is looking very strong. You will all get a chance to see this game first-hand at E3, but suffice it to say, we are excited to be entering this genre with this game.”
Couscous on
0
HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
“From a business perspective, we are targeting Blur to do for racing what Call of Duty did for shooters,” Activision CEO Michael Griffith stated. “That was the goal when we originally acquired Bizarre Creations to make this game.
Note to Activision: you can't make everything a top-seller based on willpower alone.
Also, just because a developer makes one hugely successful game doesn't mean they'll do it again.
THE ANALYSIS: Though "Red Dead" was the top-selling game in May, Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter said it came in below expectations. The game sold 1.5 million units; Pachter was expecting 1.8 million.
300k difference? DOOMED
Couscous on
0
Warlock82Never pet a burning dogRegistered Userregular
THE ANALYSIS: Though "Red Dead" was the top-selling game in May, Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter said it came in below expectations. The game sold 1.5 million units; Pachter was expecting 1.8 million.
300k difference? DOOMED
.3 million short is "below expectations"? Who gives a FUCK? He has some strange hangups, goddamn.
He's hung-up about RDR because he originally said that there was no market for games set in the Wild West. Then he sees that it's going to end up selling well and overshoots his expectations. Then comes back and says that nyah nyah I told you it wouldn't sell well enough.
He's hung-up about RDR because he originally said that there was no market for games set in the Wild West. Then he sees that it's going to end up selling well and overshoots his expectations. Then comes back and says that nyah nyah I told you it wouldn't sell well enough.
The beast is hungry, it seems. Sheesh, what a joke.
THE ANALYSIS: Though "Red Dead" was the top-selling game in May, Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter said it came in below expectations. The game sold 1.5 million units; Pachter was expecting 1.8 million.
300k difference? DOOMED
According the Rockstar, it's now sold 4 million
Which makes sense, GTA-style games usually have legs, and I have a feeling that RDR did especially well thanks to word of mouth.
Pachter said in the interview where he questioned whether Europeans would buy it that he expect it to sell 2-3 million. Considering it is at 1.5 million, that is a foregone conclusion that it will reach 2 million.
I wrote a 2.3 kiloword review on Deathsmiles, and am waiting for the Detailed option to open up on Tuesday at GameFAQs. It will be a 9/10.
Shooter fans of every age
Would you like to play something strange?
Cave brings a treat in 2-d
In the town of Halloween…
Cave is known for 2-d vertical scrolling shooters with complex scoring systems, challenging gameplay, and lots and lots of purple bullets on your screen, to the point of intentional hardware slowdown. A year ago, Cave made Mushihime-sama Futari region free, specifically for testing the Western market. They liked the results. And so for the first time ever, they localized their latest entry in the West. And they’ve started their journey west with a bang.
GAMEPLAY- Okay, it’s a 2-d shump, so?
Deathsmiles is a 2-d side scrolling shooter, like Gradius or R-Type, but with no emphasis on upgrades. Like Ikaruga, you have all the weapons you need from beginning to end. You control one of four gothic Lolita characters, and each character has her own play style with different strengths and weaknesses, and although some characters are simply better than others, they are all fun to use.
Once you choose a character, your options open up widely. You can choose the order of the first six stages as you traverse them. Furthermore, the difficulty is adjustable on the fly. The difficulties are referred to as Levels 1, 2, and 3. Level 1 is abysmally easy and is great for kids and those adjusting to their first Cave game. Level 3 is more typical Cave difficulty. Players of every skill level can enjoy this game. Veterans who choose Level 3 every time activate a fourth difficulty called Death Mode, in which killing enemies reflects bullets back at you. Even I have no choice but to occasionally select Level 2 a few times because some levels and bosses become too much for me.
After the first six stages are complete, the final stage and an extremely difficult EX stage open up. Simply choosing that ex stage will activate the Death Mode difficulty, and it’s not recommended for scoring runs.
When you feel it’s time to improve your game, get your name on one of the game’s many leaderboards, and maybe even finish the game without using a continue, you will find a unique scoring system to send your score soaring exponentially. I will not give all the details, but you will not need a massive strategy guide to pull such feats off: this game’s instruction manual gives you every little detail on how to achieve a massive score and find every 1up. The manual gives you the game’s own secrets!
High scores are achieved through the items collected from the monsters shot. Simply collecting them all is a good start, but as you collect them, an Item Counter in the bottom left corner increases from 0 to 1000. At 1000, your character can activate a power up mode that gives them incredible attack strength. Beginner players will use this to make difficult segments and boss fights easier and faster, but those playing for score can save it for areas with lots of small enemies instead. Shooting enemies in certain ways yield huge numbers of items, and either collecting them immediately, or letting them bounce on the ground once can yield very different results, each one important. If you play your cards right, your score will shoot up exponentially, and you can earn 1ups in a very short amount of time.
VISUALS/AUDIO – Okay, we get it! Gothic Lolita girls abound. What else do you have, creep?
This game is gorgeous.
Cave and Aksys make it very clear that they are very proud of the sweet young ladies of Deathsmiles, but nobody plays a 2-d shooter for the characters. In fact the cute boxart and painful-to-read blurb in the back of the box “Death smiles at us all, Lolis smile back,” will send the self-conscious running away, back to their masculine FPSs or racing games in a heartbeat. But if the names Touhou or Cave mean anything to you, that probably doesn’t bother you. Not only do I not mind the character art, it's ironically more tasteful than the character art from Cave’s Mushihime series (whose main character, Reco, is 15 but looks like a porn star version of Sailor Moon. Go figure.)
But what other visuals await you when you turn on your game? The visuals are completely 2-d, with sprites redrawn for consoles. Not only are the sprites beautiful, but they are well animated. In particular, the massive bosses steal the show, especially the giant cow. Yes, one boss is a giant, filthy, moss coated demon cow named Mary. Homages to The Nightmare Before Christmas and Castlevania are obvious throughout. (And in the sequel, the Nightmare Before Christmas homage is even more obvious.)
The bullets are mostly purple, in classical Cave fashion, but the game throws some interesting curveballs at you later on. For those not familiar, there WILL be hardware slowdown. In Cave games there is always slowdown when there are lots of purple bullets on the screen coming at you. And it’s intentional, because during the more intense battles you will have, you must use it to your advantage and weave through bullets you normal could not. This is a common staple of Cave, and when it happens, you will be so busy dodging the waves of purple death coming at you that you will be grateful when it happens. You have the option of playing in the original Arcade mode display, but it looks dated. And there’s one more important reason to leave the new visuals on:
The new visual mode for playing(called Xbox360 mode) are widescreen. Those who like Ikaruga know that the game was designed on a vertical screen, so when they play it they have massive black bars on the left and right side of the screen to maintain visual integrity. People tried all sorts of things to utilize their whole screen. Playing while laying sideways, turning their televisions, or mounting them on a wall turn sideways. Well this is a horizontal scrolling shump, not vertical. When you play on an HDTV for the first time, the game will appear squished, but all you have to do is stretch the screen to the sides of your television, and you will enjoy one of the most beautiful 2-d games you will ever see. But if you don’t have an HDTV, you will just use letterboxing.
Moving on to music. The music keeps a gothic theme throughout and is quite wonderful, with a lot of variety. The port stage contains the game’s theme song, with a definite Castlevania vibe, mixing some electronic beats and rock. A train stage has intense action music. The Forest of the Lost has a mellow jungle beat, and more great songs to count. Some stages have a techno dance beat in a classic Cave fashion. The final stage really steals the show, as the theme song comes back for one final reprise, and you will feel like you’re storming Dracula’s throne in Symphony of the Night when you get there. And for the final boss, the battle is fought to Toccata & Fugue. The best use of Public Domain music I’ve ever seen in a game.
EXTRAS – What is a Mega Black Label and how does it affect me?
This needs, and deserves, an explanation. When Deathsmiles moved from arcades to the Xbox 360 in Japan, eventually, a 1200 point DLC was released over time, called the Mega Black Label Edition, similar to the Black Label for Mushihime Futari. What it does is tweak the scoring system of the game dramatically, to the point that it feels like a new game. To celebrate Cave’s first game released in the West, players get this DLC for free, right on the disc.
Deathsmiles’s Black Label works similarly. It expands the way multiplier’s work, and makes it easier to get into Power Up mode. It creates new score penalties for using a bomb, misusing Power Up mode, or taking a hit. It adds a second EX level, The Ice Palace, which has the sole purpose of racking up and exponentially higher score than you would by going straight to the final level. This is good, because the original EX stage, The Gorge, is impossibly hard with little return on visiting it. The Mega Black Label also adds a fifth character, Sakura, who is typically a boss.
I should give fair mention to another mode, called 1.1 mode, that exists in both the Arcade mode and the Mega Black Label mode. If you have a regular controller, the right stick comes into play by steering your character’s familiar. This gives you additional control over where you shoot. At the same time, the game throws more bullets at you, and only your familiar can block them, adding new depth and challenges. I do not play this mode a lot, but it’s a nice touch.
It’s too bad the game does not have an art gallery, because of all the great characters and monsters, the game oddly lacks one.
STORY – We don’t need no stinkin’ story! But do go on…
Because your characters are kids and not faceless mooks in a spaceship, it was natural for the characters and setting to be a little more fleshed out right? Well it is, and the story is actually rather tragic.
The four main characters were ordinary girls in the real world. At one point in each of their lives, they were nearly killed. Windia from England was kidnapped. Follet from France was drowning in a river. Casper from Germany can’t remember what happened because it happened at too early and age, meaning Gilverado is more her home than the Real World is. Rosa from California was in a car crash. Instead of dying, they were spirited away in a flash of light, to the magical world of Gilverado. They didn’t die, but for the families they left behind, they might as well be. They could never return, and so are called one of Gilverado’s many “Lost Children.” Having to start their lives over, they were trained in magic, gained wings and were appropriately known as Angels, using their magic to help others.
Not everyone adjusts as well as they did to the world. The game’s villain did not adjust at all. Jitterbug (yes, that’s his name,) was a corrupt, money hungry stock broker in his ordinary life in England, next door to Windia’s family. He, his wife, and daughter Sakura were all in the same car crash, and were warped to Gilverado. One would think they would be okay, because unlike our heroines, their family can stay together. Jitterbug, despite learning magic over time, is desperate to leave the spiritual, magical world of Gilverado and back to the Real World, so he can return to a life of material wealth. He experiments with creating a gateway back home. Instead, he opens the gates of hell. World saving ensues.
When it comes down to it, story in such a game is an afterthought, told mostly through the instruction manual, but it’s always a nice touch.
But one thing that really wrecks the mood is the shoddy job subbing the dialog. Whoever was in charge of localization thought it would be a good idea to “add” accents to each character respective country. The result is…horrid. Only the dialogs of the English characters are bearable. Casper and Follet’s speech is obnoxious to read, with accents in the dialog, Rosa’s text throws in some, like, TOTALLY stereotypical Valley Girl phrases. The subbers went out of their way to do this, to make sure you absolutely know where they came from. From the publisher who brought us BlazBlue, this is a low I did not expect. But again, by the time you’ve gotten better at the game, you’ll be skipping cutscenes and dialog.
REPLAY – There’s infinite credits! What’s the point if I can beat it in forty minutes?!
Some shumps such as Ikaruga and Gradius V extended replay value for beginners by starting you off with just one credit (continue,) and gradually added more as you played. Deathsmiles skips that and gives you unlimited credits right when you start. This means you can see and kill the last boss in your very first play.
But this game is not short, by a long shot. In terms of length, one run from the beginning to the last boss can range from thirty to forty minutes. That makes is about as long as Gradius V or R-Type Final. Even with unlimited credits when you turn on the game for the first time, each run has some meat to it.
I now get on my soapbox. For those who are not shump savvy, you don’t “beat” a shump by killing the last boss, or seeing all the endings. If that is your definition of beating Deathsmiles, you’re not going to have a long run, or a good time. This game is all about score. Yes, points actually mean something in games like these. Deathsmiles uses Xbox LIVE leaderboards for every mode, and provides filters so you can see scores for your favorite character. The top twenty players don’t just upload their score. They also upload a replay that other players can download and watch, so that other players can use it to improve their game, and ultimately replace them someday.
A key way to make the game last for you is to begin by playing the classic Arcade mode with Xbox 360 visuals, and get as best a feel you can for the game, and then moving on to the Mega Black Label and 1.1 playing styles for more variety and challenges. All of this is what gives Deathsmiles incredible replay value.
CONCLUSION – I have the feeling you like this game.
This game is a cross section of all the things I love about some of my favorite 2-d shumps. It has the intensity of a Cave game, the smooth, highly adjustable difficulty curve of a Touhou game, and the production value and length of Gradius V and R-Type Final. Combine all these aspects with Xbox LIVE’s Leaderboard capability, and the results is one of the best experiences I’ve had on the Xbox 360 console, to the point that I recommend it for players of every type and age. Cave and Aksys have started their venture into the Western market with a nearly flawless game.
I thank Sony for helping make how not to advertise 3D guides. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ed0690I4dSI http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEIj-wsUinc
How hard is it to make an advertisement that goes like this:
Guy: You know Avatar? 3DTV allows you to watch that kind of shit at home. It won't just be shit like Dances with Smurfs. We are talking sports and other crap in 3D.
Posts
Zeboyd Games Development Blog
Steam ID : rwb36, Twitter : Werezompire, Facebook : Zeboyd Games
While we're waiting for clarification, let's laugh at how Nintendo did Blur's commerical years earlier and perhaps even better.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IawjeR7SCHg
I WILL NOT BE DOING 3DS FOR NWC THREAD. SOMEONE ELSE WILL HAVE TO TAKE OVER.
Spoiler contains Friend Codes. Won't you be my friend?
More Friend Codes!
Mario Kart Wii: 3136-6982-0286 Tetris Party: 2364 1569 4310
Guitar Hero: Metallica: 1032 7229 7191
TATSUNOKO VS CAPCOM: 1935-2070-9123
Nintendo DS:
Worms: Open Warfare 2: 1418-7870-1606 Space Bust-a-Move: 017398 403043
Scribblenauts: 1290-7509-5558
3DS Friend Code: 2165-6448-8348 www.Twitch.TV/cooljammer00
Battle.Net: JohnDarc#1203 Origin/UPlay: CoolJammer00
The days of having 3-4 GBAs linked together....man.
I DON'T MISS 'EM ONE FUCKING BIT
Inevitably someone would forget to bring their cable so while we would have more than enough GBAs we wouldn't have enough cables to get up to 4 players.
Switch: 6200-8149-0919 / Wii U: maximumzero / 3DS: 0860-3352-3335 / eBay Shop
Not including today, Life to Date for Breath of Death VII: The Beginning:
20,238 copies sold
Steam ID: slashx000______Twitter: @bill_at_zeboyd______ Facebook: Zeboyd Games
Just wanted to let you know that I finally have my internet back up and running at home, and first thing I did was download BoD7.
Pretty awesome do far. :^:
Nintendo Network ID - Brainiac_8
PSN - Brainiac_8
Steam - http://steamcommunity.com/id/BRAINIAC8/
Add me!
According to Joystiq, the same day as Blur. Which makes the Blur sales even more sad.
But after letting Blur's number(s?) sink in for a moment more, I can only hope and pray that Trackmania Wii does better than 31,000 next month.
But again, unless I missed something, I haven't seen anything say it was 31,000 on one console or 31.000 combined on PS3 and 360.
I WILL NOT BE DOING 3DS FOR NWC THREAD. SOMEONE ELSE WILL HAVE TO TAKE OVER.
Spoiler contains Friend Codes. Won't you be my friend?
More Friend Codes!
Mario Kart Wii: 3136-6982-0286 Tetris Party: 2364 1569 4310
Guitar Hero: Metallica: 1032 7229 7191
TATSUNOKO VS CAPCOM: 1935-2070-9123
Nintendo DS:
Worms: Open Warfare 2: 1418-7870-1606 Space Bust-a-Move: 017398 403043
Scribblenauts: 1290-7509-5558
Thanks
Yeah if you're a fan of old-school RPGs, or heck RPGs in general, I think you'd like it. It's not too hard and it's not too grindey IMO, but you do have to start using some thoughtful strategy in battles a little over an hour in. (Starts out easy and gets harder).
Heheh, that would be awesome. :P
Course, we're asking one sixtieth of the price.... but still!
Steam ID: slashx000______Twitter: @bill_at_zeboyd______ Facebook: Zeboyd Games
Duke Nukem Forever
BC
Starcraft: Ghost
Tiberium
Fear Effect Inferno
The demo was really fun
Not fun enough to spend $60 on though
Quit pouring salt in my Inferno-deprivation wound, Couscous
Picture Me Rollin'
Advertising a competitor's product? Nintendo should send a thank you note.
Note to Activision: you can't make everything a top-seller based on willpower alone.
Also, just because a developer makes one hugely successful game doesn't mean they'll do it again.
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/TakeTwo-shares-climb-after-apf-4175913564.html?x=0&.v=2 300k difference? DOOMED
Pretty sure there was a Kevin Butler ad for it.
.3 million short is "below expectations"? Who gives a FUCK? He has some strange hangups, goddamn.
Steam ID: slashx000______Twitter: @bill_at_zeboyd______ Facebook: Zeboyd Games
The beast is hungry, it seems. Sheesh, what a joke.
I don't watch television. This doesn't explain the oustanding demo.
According the Rockstar, it's now sold 4 million
Which makes sense, GTA-style games usually have legs, and I have a feeling that RDR did especially well thanks to word of mouth.
So... yeah.
Steam ID: slashx000______Twitter: @bill_at_zeboyd______ Facebook: Zeboyd Games
You're right, Bizarre Creations deserves to fail because of the performance of Activision's marketing agency
I'm pretty sure you can say "No" to being bought up by the monolithic entities in the industry. If you say yes, you're agreeing to the shit they pull.
It appeared to be the smart move.
Sega didn't do much good for them.
This is pretty fantastic.
So I contributied 0.004941199723292816% of that to you! Yay!
Well, it's a gamble when it comes to decisions like this.
Would you like to play something strange?
Cave brings a treat in 2-d
In the town of Halloween…
Cave is known for 2-d vertical scrolling shooters with complex scoring systems, challenging gameplay, and lots and lots of purple bullets on your screen, to the point of intentional hardware slowdown. A year ago, Cave made Mushihime-sama Futari region free, specifically for testing the Western market. They liked the results. And so for the first time ever, they localized their latest entry in the West. And they’ve started their journey west with a bang.
GAMEPLAY- Okay, it’s a 2-d shump, so?
Deathsmiles is a 2-d side scrolling shooter, like Gradius or R-Type, but with no emphasis on upgrades. Like Ikaruga, you have all the weapons you need from beginning to end. You control one of four gothic Lolita characters, and each character has her own play style with different strengths and weaknesses, and although some characters are simply better than others, they are all fun to use.
Once you choose a character, your options open up widely. You can choose the order of the first six stages as you traverse them. Furthermore, the difficulty is adjustable on the fly. The difficulties are referred to as Levels 1, 2, and 3. Level 1 is abysmally easy and is great for kids and those adjusting to their first Cave game. Level 3 is more typical Cave difficulty. Players of every skill level can enjoy this game. Veterans who choose Level 3 every time activate a fourth difficulty called Death Mode, in which killing enemies reflects bullets back at you. Even I have no choice but to occasionally select Level 2 a few times because some levels and bosses become too much for me.
After the first six stages are complete, the final stage and an extremely difficult EX stage open up. Simply choosing that ex stage will activate the Death Mode difficulty, and it’s not recommended for scoring runs.
When you feel it’s time to improve your game, get your name on one of the game’s many leaderboards, and maybe even finish the game without using a continue, you will find a unique scoring system to send your score soaring exponentially. I will not give all the details, but you will not need a massive strategy guide to pull such feats off: this game’s instruction manual gives you every little detail on how to achieve a massive score and find every 1up. The manual gives you the game’s own secrets!
High scores are achieved through the items collected from the monsters shot. Simply collecting them all is a good start, but as you collect them, an Item Counter in the bottom left corner increases from 0 to 1000. At 1000, your character can activate a power up mode that gives them incredible attack strength. Beginner players will use this to make difficult segments and boss fights easier and faster, but those playing for score can save it for areas with lots of small enemies instead. Shooting enemies in certain ways yield huge numbers of items, and either collecting them immediately, or letting them bounce on the ground once can yield very different results, each one important. If you play your cards right, your score will shoot up exponentially, and you can earn 1ups in a very short amount of time.
VISUALS/AUDIO – Okay, we get it! Gothic Lolita girls abound. What else do you have, creep?
This game is gorgeous.
Cave and Aksys make it very clear that they are very proud of the sweet young ladies of Deathsmiles, but nobody plays a 2-d shooter for the characters. In fact the cute boxart and painful-to-read blurb in the back of the box “Death smiles at us all, Lolis smile back,” will send the self-conscious running away, back to their masculine FPSs or racing games in a heartbeat. But if the names Touhou or Cave mean anything to you, that probably doesn’t bother you. Not only do I not mind the character art, it's ironically more tasteful than the character art from Cave’s Mushihime series (whose main character, Reco, is 15 but looks like a porn star version of Sailor Moon. Go figure.)
But what other visuals await you when you turn on your game? The visuals are completely 2-d, with sprites redrawn for consoles. Not only are the sprites beautiful, but they are well animated. In particular, the massive bosses steal the show, especially the giant cow. Yes, one boss is a giant, filthy, moss coated demon cow named Mary. Homages to The Nightmare Before Christmas and Castlevania are obvious throughout. (And in the sequel, the Nightmare Before Christmas homage is even more obvious.)
The bullets are mostly purple, in classical Cave fashion, but the game throws some interesting curveballs at you later on. For those not familiar, there WILL be hardware slowdown. In Cave games there is always slowdown when there are lots of purple bullets on the screen coming at you. And it’s intentional, because during the more intense battles you will have, you must use it to your advantage and weave through bullets you normal could not. This is a common staple of Cave, and when it happens, you will be so busy dodging the waves of purple death coming at you that you will be grateful when it happens. You have the option of playing in the original Arcade mode display, but it looks dated. And there’s one more important reason to leave the new visuals on:
The new visual mode for playing(called Xbox360 mode) are widescreen. Those who like Ikaruga know that the game was designed on a vertical screen, so when they play it they have massive black bars on the left and right side of the screen to maintain visual integrity. People tried all sorts of things to utilize their whole screen. Playing while laying sideways, turning their televisions, or mounting them on a wall turn sideways. Well this is a horizontal scrolling shump, not vertical. When you play on an HDTV for the first time, the game will appear squished, but all you have to do is stretch the screen to the sides of your television, and you will enjoy one of the most beautiful 2-d games you will ever see. But if you don’t have an HDTV, you will just use letterboxing.
Moving on to music. The music keeps a gothic theme throughout and is quite wonderful, with a lot of variety. The port stage contains the game’s theme song, with a definite Castlevania vibe, mixing some electronic beats and rock. A train stage has intense action music. The Forest of the Lost has a mellow jungle beat, and more great songs to count. Some stages have a techno dance beat in a classic Cave fashion. The final stage really steals the show, as the theme song comes back for one final reprise, and you will feel like you’re storming Dracula’s throne in Symphony of the Night when you get there. And for the final boss, the battle is fought to Toccata & Fugue. The best use of Public Domain music I’ve ever seen in a game.
EXTRAS – What is a Mega Black Label and how does it affect me?
This needs, and deserves, an explanation. When Deathsmiles moved from arcades to the Xbox 360 in Japan, eventually, a 1200 point DLC was released over time, called the Mega Black Label Edition, similar to the Black Label for Mushihime Futari. What it does is tweak the scoring system of the game dramatically, to the point that it feels like a new game. To celebrate Cave’s first game released in the West, players get this DLC for free, right on the disc.
Deathsmiles’s Black Label works similarly. It expands the way multiplier’s work, and makes it easier to get into Power Up mode. It creates new score penalties for using a bomb, misusing Power Up mode, or taking a hit. It adds a second EX level, The Ice Palace, which has the sole purpose of racking up and exponentially higher score than you would by going straight to the final level. This is good, because the original EX stage, The Gorge, is impossibly hard with little return on visiting it. The Mega Black Label also adds a fifth character, Sakura, who is typically a boss.
I should give fair mention to another mode, called 1.1 mode, that exists in both the Arcade mode and the Mega Black Label mode. If you have a regular controller, the right stick comes into play by steering your character’s familiar. This gives you additional control over where you shoot. At the same time, the game throws more bullets at you, and only your familiar can block them, adding new depth and challenges. I do not play this mode a lot, but it’s a nice touch.
It’s too bad the game does not have an art gallery, because of all the great characters and monsters, the game oddly lacks one.
STORY – We don’t need no stinkin’ story! But do go on…
Because your characters are kids and not faceless mooks in a spaceship, it was natural for the characters and setting to be a little more fleshed out right? Well it is, and the story is actually rather tragic.
The four main characters were ordinary girls in the real world. At one point in each of their lives, they were nearly killed. Windia from England was kidnapped. Follet from France was drowning in a river. Casper from Germany can’t remember what happened because it happened at too early and age, meaning Gilverado is more her home than the Real World is. Rosa from California was in a car crash. Instead of dying, they were spirited away in a flash of light, to the magical world of Gilverado. They didn’t die, but for the families they left behind, they might as well be. They could never return, and so are called one of Gilverado’s many “Lost Children.” Having to start their lives over, they were trained in magic, gained wings and were appropriately known as Angels, using their magic to help others.
Not everyone adjusts as well as they did to the world. The game’s villain did not adjust at all. Jitterbug (yes, that’s his name,) was a corrupt, money hungry stock broker in his ordinary life in England, next door to Windia’s family. He, his wife, and daughter Sakura were all in the same car crash, and were warped to Gilverado. One would think they would be okay, because unlike our heroines, their family can stay together. Jitterbug, despite learning magic over time, is desperate to leave the spiritual, magical world of Gilverado and back to the Real World, so he can return to a life of material wealth. He experiments with creating a gateway back home. Instead, he opens the gates of hell. World saving ensues.
When it comes down to it, story in such a game is an afterthought, told mostly through the instruction manual, but it’s always a nice touch.
But one thing that really wrecks the mood is the shoddy job subbing the dialog. Whoever was in charge of localization thought it would be a good idea to “add” accents to each character respective country. The result is…horrid. Only the dialogs of the English characters are bearable. Casper and Follet’s speech is obnoxious to read, with accents in the dialog, Rosa’s text throws in some, like, TOTALLY stereotypical Valley Girl phrases. The subbers went out of their way to do this, to make sure you absolutely know where they came from. From the publisher who brought us BlazBlue, this is a low I did not expect. But again, by the time you’ve gotten better at the game, you’ll be skipping cutscenes and dialog.
REPLAY – There’s infinite credits! What’s the point if I can beat it in forty minutes?!
Some shumps such as Ikaruga and Gradius V extended replay value for beginners by starting you off with just one credit (continue,) and gradually added more as you played. Deathsmiles skips that and gives you unlimited credits right when you start. This means you can see and kill the last boss in your very first play.
But this game is not short, by a long shot. In terms of length, one run from the beginning to the last boss can range from thirty to forty minutes. That makes is about as long as Gradius V or R-Type Final. Even with unlimited credits when you turn on the game for the first time, each run has some meat to it.
I now get on my soapbox. For those who are not shump savvy, you don’t “beat” a shump by killing the last boss, or seeing all the endings. If that is your definition of beating Deathsmiles, you’re not going to have a long run, or a good time. This game is all about score. Yes, points actually mean something in games like these. Deathsmiles uses Xbox LIVE leaderboards for every mode, and provides filters so you can see scores for your favorite character. The top twenty players don’t just upload their score. They also upload a replay that other players can download and watch, so that other players can use it to improve their game, and ultimately replace them someday.
A key way to make the game last for you is to begin by playing the classic Arcade mode with Xbox 360 visuals, and get as best a feel you can for the game, and then moving on to the Mega Black Label and 1.1 playing styles for more variety and challenges. All of this is what gives Deathsmiles incredible replay value.
CONCLUSION – I have the feeling you like this game.
This game is a cross section of all the things I love about some of my favorite 2-d shumps. It has the intensity of a Cave game, the smooth, highly adjustable difficulty curve of a Touhou game, and the production value and length of Gradius V and R-Type Final. Combine all these aspects with Xbox LIVE’s Leaderboard capability, and the results is one of the best experiences I’ve had on the Xbox 360 console, to the point that I recommend it for players of every type and age. Cave and Aksys have started their venture into the Western market with a nearly flawless game.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ed0690I4dSI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEIj-wsUinc
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Guy: You know Avatar? 3DTV allows you to watch that kind of shit at home. It won't just be shit like Dances with Smurfs. We are talking sports and other crap in 3D.