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Games like Ikaruga?
CygnusZ
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Ikaruga is a perfect game.
1) It's short. A complete playthrough is only 20 mins long. I mean, the game could be longer, but it is a perfect length for the kind of game it is.
2) The game is completely fair. If you die, it's your own fault. Difficult, but fair.
3) There are different ways of playing it. Somebody just trying to stay alive is going to play the game in a completely different manner than someone going for score. Even after playing for 50 hours, the first stage is still fun to play because I'm attempting to get bigger and bigger chains.
4) It can be practiced. The game is surprisingly generous, as the most difficult parts as far as scoring is concerned tend to be towards the beginning of each level. This is especially clear in Chapter 4, where the second section is basically the stuff of nightmares but everything after that is pretty manageable. Even the boss isn't that bad once you understand how to deal with it.
5) The games design is perfect. There isn't a single thing you could remove or add to the game without hurting it.
Also, the achievements for this game are basically perfect. The easy ones just for beating the bosses are fine, and the ones for getting A-Rank push the player hard, without demanding absolute perfection.
Are there any games, either in the SHMUP genre or out of it, that you would consider to have Ikaruga-like game design perfection?
1) It's short. A complete playthrough is only 20 mins long. I mean, the game could be longer, but it is a perfect length for the kind of game it is.
2) The game is completely fair. If you die, it's your own fault. Difficult, but fair.
3) There are different ways of playing it. Somebody just trying to stay alive is going to play the game in a completely different manner than someone going for score. Even after playing for 50 hours, the first stage is still fun to play because I'm attempting to get bigger and bigger chains.
4) It can be practiced. The game is surprisingly generous, as the most difficult parts as far as scoring is concerned tend to be towards the beginning of each level. This is especially clear in Chapter 4, where the second section is basically the stuff of nightmares but everything after that is pretty manageable. Even the boss isn't that bad once you understand how to deal with it.
5) The games design is perfect. There isn't a single thing you could remove or add to the game without hurting it.
Also, the achievements for this game are basically perfect. The easy ones just for beating the bosses are fine, and the ones for getting A-Rank push the player hard, without demanding absolute perfection.
Are there any games, either in the SHMUP genre or out of it, that you would consider to have Ikaruga-like game design perfection?
CygnusZ on
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It's very love it or hate it, but I thought it worth mentioning. Unfortunately my knowledge of Shmups includes Treasure games and Radirgy. All others I haven't spent much time with. I might keep my eye on this topic to see what other answers come up!
I would go as far to say Jamestown is as good as Ikaruga.
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Mountain of Faith is still my favorite Touhou as far as feeling it's 'balanced' properly, but the newer ones are probably more fun gamewise.
Shoot 1up or whatever it was called on the XBLA was pretty solid as well, with an interesting mechanic.
G Darius was a really well designed and implemented game, though again some bosses seemed to flat out require you have a drone on hand to do a laser counter.
Everyday Shooter I would appreciate a lot more if I didn't feel like I was competing against the background on occasion. Same with Beat Hazard, it is an excellent game but the particle effects will get you killed more often than not.
Games don't have to be in SHMUP genre. I'd say that PacmanCE:DX has more-or-less perfect game design and gameplay as well.
It might seem redundant now that randomly generated levels, inventory management, and item quality/tiers are commonplace, but I consider the original Diablo an excellent and well-balanced design. Unless you're using a trainer, there are no shortcuts. I even viewed the fact that you have to click for every single swing as a positive note for the game. To me, it helped keep personal investment high, and kept my attention on what was going on. Otherwise it might have just led me turn my brain on autopilot and not take in the atmosphere. It's not a short game, but the self-contained levels managed to give a sense of accomplishment even if a player had only been playing for 30 minutes or an hour.
A few fighting games might also fall into this category, but the one I consider the most tactically satisfying is actually Smash Bros. Melee or Brawl. Just turn off the items, and it becomes a mindgame between two players, where knowledge of the environment, your character, and the direction your enemy chooses to attack from are paramount to who comes out the winner.
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I'd personally list Portal and Rez as two games that I've thoroughly enjoyed the design. They were short and sweet, "just right". I don't consider any of the games listed in the thread, though, as "perfect" games. Maybe I'm jaded or hyper-critical, but having grown up with gaming all of my life, there are always flaws. Always.
I think the comparison can be made, however, to such games and some classic board games out there like Go, Reversi, and (more primitively) Connect Four. The premise is simple, the game itself doesn't take long to play, but it's a lifetime to master and no two games are alike.
But since we're on a shoot'em up kick, here are some good ones:
ring^-27 is an incredibly low-res but very modern game. There are 4 difficulties, 2 of which are unlocked as you beat the game, and the game actually gets more fun as you increase the difficulty because your bullet-destroying powers work better the more bullets there are. There are 4 selectable subweapons, and the many different weapons of the game are gotten by latching on to enemies in some way depending on your subweapon... e.g. the Anchor is a shot that fires straight ahead and sticks onto whatever it hits, while the Bomb makes a small blast centered on the player, and chains out from bullets it touches. Destroying the enemy you are latched onto immediately clears all bullets on the screen, so figuring out how to survive with the Anchor can be rather different from the Bomb.
low difficult with the Anchor
higher difficulty with the Bomb
buy: http://www.dlsite.com/eng/work/=/product_id/RE082335.html
exception is a game that is all about grey blocks, but manages to have both very fun level designs (which are more than just waves of enemies/bullet curtains!), and exciting boss fights.
buy: http://www.dlsite.com/eng/work/=/product_id/RE038891.html
Diadra Empty is unlike most other shoot'em ups from Japan from the past few years in that it is not about slowly navigating through curtains of bullets. It's about using a boost button that gives you a burst of speed and momentary invulnerability (you can just hold it for sustained speed boost, but the invulnerability can only be triggered periodically), and purchaseable weapon upgrades between levels. Like the latter day Gradius games, you also pick a loadout at the start of the game. Low-res videos of this game literally look like nothing so much as swirls of color, and it looks extremely chaotic, but it gives lots of room for you to go about things in your own style because of the freedom of the boost button and the weapon selection.
Cloudphobia is an interesting game. It's rather more rigidly structured, and the game has a fun gimmick: there's a life bar for the player, and a lifebar for the player's mothership. Enemies that the player fails to destroy deal damage to the mothership, and if either lifebar runs dry, it's game over. On top of that, each stage has a timer, which is actually insufficient to reach the boss. By hitting a boost button, the stages scrolls faster (and this is useful for dealing with some enemies!), but of course there's the risk of enemies getting by you. It's certainly a game that you can learn to play perfectly.
buy: http://www.dwahan.net/Marsbound/cloudphobia/
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It might be a bit hard to practice on some parts of it, though. Depending on which port you get, you have more or less options available to you. Just don't turn on infinite credits, beat the last boss and move on.
All three games have a wide, varied cast, everyone playing with a totally different style. It's danmaku, but the patterns are fair once you understand them. (Mostly Shiki 2. Shiki 1 & 3 can have some serious nonsense.)
I can see the "vaunt punishment" argument, but I consider it another mechanic that you need to master to be successful. I think you could beat the whole game without using it, but your scores will suffer. Or you can play to keep it up as much as possible. Or store it as a panic button. Some encounters seem to encourage patterned usage of it. The Conquistador comes to mind.
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You'd think that being a puzzle-based game, it wouldn't be as replayable as something like Ikaruga. But clearing the puzzles as quickly as you can becomes a puzzle in itself, and I could play every level over and over until the day I die.