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I’ll refrain from explaining the exact conclusions for the sake of those who have read this far and still want to play this game. Suffice to say that despite its wonky translation, it’s a good use of your time, a very effective horror game — and one I suspect is going to stick around in my mind for quite some time.
If you’ve not played Mary Skelter 2 or its predecessor, this is still a solid way to experience both titles (a remastered version of the first game is included for free). It has next to no graphics options, but solid support for both keyboard/mouse and controllers, and the actual dungeon crawling gameplay is enjoyable. But if you want 100% of the game to be available on PC, then you’re out of luck.
For those looking for truly spectacular shoot ’em ups, Armed 7 might initially seem like a bit of a hard sell due to its visual jank in particular — but give it a chance and you’ll find a highly playable, very enjoyable and ridiculously addictive shoot ’em up to enjoy; like most of Astro Port’s other stuff, this one will keep you coming back for quite some time to come.
On the whole, then, Sturmwind EX is an enjoyable shoot ’em up with just a few little hiccups that hold it back from being among the very best the modern genre has to offer. None of its flaws should be enough to put you off playing, however; look on its occasional jank (and its regrettable lack of online leaderboards) as it having “character”, and get on with enjoying the sheer pleasure of blasting away at enemies with the game’s delightful arsenal of weapons.
Dangun Feveron is a great choice if you fancy trying your hand at a blaster you might actually make it all the way through on a single credit. It’s a ton of fun and a worthy addition to the modern shoot ’em up library.
With all this in mind, Dairoku: Agents of Sakuratani ended up being a particularly slow playthrough for me due to its many shortcomings. But it has plenty of aspects to compliment.
Was it worth the wait? Absolutely; a restoration project of this magnitude is worthy of note, if nothing else — but when the final game ends up being a lot of charming fun on top of all that, then yes, it most definitely was worth the wait.
To summarise, then, if you’re open to the experience of playing a walking simulator with a very clear creative, artistic vision and not much in the way of what many of us would traditionally regard as “gameplay”, Drizzlepath: Deja Vu is a short but sweet journey worth taking. For those typically more resistant to such things, though, Drizzlepath: Deja Vu isn’t going to change your mind; take a look at the work of Chilla’s Art for a more gameplay-centric approach to the “walking simulator” as a storytelling vehicle.
It’s a pity that this sort of behaviour is seemingly so inevitable in a game like this; this is the sort of thing that causes the entire gaming community to be saddled with labels that many of us don’t deserve. Unfortunately, Crab Game appears to demonstrate that it’s just default behaviour for a not-insignificant number of people online — and we should perhaps ask ourselves collectively how it came to this.
Regardless of all this, however, Strikers 1945 is an excellent shoot ’em up, and a great way to kick off the Psikyo Shooting Stars collections on Switch — yet another example of how the platform is an amazing gateway to retro experiences from nearly every distinct era of gaming history at this point.
This isn’t to say that The Night Way Home isn’t a worthwhile experience, of course. In “game” terms, it’s one of Chilla’s Art’s more satisfying titles, despite a few little bugs here and there — and, like all their more recent titles, some replay value is added through a collectible sticker element, with each sticker representing one of the duo’s Patreon backers. Just go into this one expecting an interesting horror game rather than an interactive short horror story and you’ll doubtless have a good time for an hour or so.
If you enjoy your shoot ’em ups, Gynoug should absolutely be part of your collection, without question. Here’s hoping it gets suitably honoured with a physical release down the road — it certainly deserves it.
If you’ve been following Chilla’s Art’s work from the beginning and want more, The Radio Station is a good addition to your collection.
Panorama Cotton is a great game and, like the other recent modern releases in the series, it’s a delight to finally see it freely available to western audiences. Like with Cotton 100%, Cotton 2 and Cotton Boomerang, it’s a shame that these rereleases don’t come with English translations for the story sequences like Cotton Reboot! does, but solid shoot ’em up gameplay transcends all national boundaries and is universally appealing. So if you’ve spent years lusting after the Mega Drive original — which was supposedly only produced in extremely limited numbers — now’s a great time to finally see what Sega’s little 16-bit wonderbox was really capable of in the right hands.
Blue Reflection: Second Light is an absolute triumph. And the sad thing is, if the first game is anything to go by, it’s likely to be all but ignored by a good 90% of the game-playing public and media alike.
There’s the basis for a really solid storytelling platform here — it just remains to be seen if that is part of the long-term plan for the game, or if it was always intended to be completely self-contained. Still, in the meantime we have a satisfying, enjoyable, beautifully presented, enormously atmospheric and delightfully unconventional RPG to enjoy — so if you like the idea of virtual tabletop fun, Voice of Cards: The Isle Dragon Roars should absolutely be part of your collection.
Still, this is a relatively small nitpick when the game as a whole is so enjoyable to play. It may not be as visually spectacular as Cotton 2 and Cotton Boomerang, nor as delightfully fast-paced and chaotic as Cotton Reboot!’s Arrange mode, but it certainly is a good example of a well-crafted 16-bit cute ’em up — and a great entry point to the series if you’ve been unsure where to start.
Ultimately, though, the majority of the game’s value and impact comes from the three or so hours it will take you to play through for the first time, and for some people, what’s here is not going to be quite enough to leave you feeling completely satiated. For some, this will be a matter of the depressingly ever-present “monetary value versus amount of content on offer” question; for me, though, it was more about a sense of the game’s more artistic, narrative elements simply not quite feeling like they resolved in a completely satisfactory manner.
As it stands, Pretty Girls Panic Plus is probably the strongest entry in this subseries of Zoo and eastasiasoft’s collaborative affairs — and indeed one of the strongest games in the lineup outright. It’s a game that is challenging enough to keep you busy for a while — and between the companion character metagame and the Arcade mode, it’s likely to keep you coming back for more for gameplay reasons, as well as the opportunity to admire Pretty Girls in their native habitat.
It’s perhaps questionable as to whether or not you really need to own both Cotton 2 and Cotton Boomerang, since they’re both variations on the same theme — but they’re perhaps best thought of as the alternate modes seen in other console shoot ’em ups we’ve seen in the past, only as separate releases. The Cotton equivalent of something like Dodonpachi Resurrection’s “Black Label” or “Arrange” modes, in other words.