ESCHATOS
For those that may be unaware, Qute’s ESCHATOS is the spiritual successor to Judgement Silversword and Cardinal Sins. Those familiar with the predecessors will find many aspects of this game more than a little recognizable. Sadly, gone are all the judges and sins. The story line of ESCHATOS can be summed up in about two sentences: Aliens have invaded the earth and captured the moon! It is your mission to save the Earth!
It’s about the depth of story one might expect from a shoot ‘em up. One might say it’s even preferable to have a bare bones story. After all, if you’re playing a shmup do you really want to see things like dialogue and cut scenes? Having said all of this, I would have liked to see them build a little bit more on the judges that they introduced in the previous games. It would have been more unique than an alien invasion. While the judges themselves may be things of the past, it isn’t entirely fair to say that they’re gone.
– Real player with 32.8 hrs in game
Read More: Best Action Great Soundtrack Games.
If you care about these type of games in even the slightest, this is a must purchase.
In what seems to be a common trend among people who are first exposed to this game, I was initially ready to dismiss it however many years ago before it initially arrived on Xbox 360, based on the seemingly underwhelming visuals and rudimentary looking gameplay.
Then, I played it, and it demonstrated how wrong I was about it.
I now consider it one of the best shmups to have come out in the modern era, and my favorite of that wave of 360 releases aside from G.Rev’s Strania. Yes, it’s a relevantly simple game on paper, unadorned by any of the complicated scoring trappings of your average CAVE shmup and it’s contemporaries, or the elaborate weapon systems of more “traditional” shmups, but the beauty of this game lies in the execution. I like to think of it as a modern day Zanac (which is one of my favorite games of all time), where underneath the mediocre aesthetics and muted presentation, lies a game full of depth and complexity. A shmup that was crafted with such quality, it became one of the standout examples of excellence in the genre.
– Real player with 20.1 hrs in game
Platypus
The Best Nostalgic Shooter Game of all time
Yeah i Love this game while i was kids XD
its still fun even i already beat the game over and over again XD
My Table Review :
| About | Rate |
| Art/graphic | The art is unique and still good to play even in 2018 |
| Gameplay | It’s a skill shooter game, not really a skill but if you play normal mode its really already good for a chalange. |
– Real player with 9.3 hrs in game
Read More: Best Action Retro Games.
My mum comes home hours after her disappearance. “Did you get me anything?” I ask. “I got you a few computer games…” she remarks as she trails of into the kitchen to put away her shopping. Could it be the new warcraft game? No that expansion comes out next month. She must have preordered it! This is going to be great! I scrounge through the plastic bags only to find a “100 games in a one” disc in that generic plastic sleeve that looks to be designed with word 2008. God knows from what cyberpunk pirating underground she gets these dodgy discs which are probably chinese botnet builders but I neverthless reluctantly try it.
– Real player with 6.6 hrs in game
Sky Force Anniversary
90 / 100
Sky Force Anniversary (SFA) is a prime example of how to do a proper shoot ‘em up! It’s not a super frantic, reflex driven, seizure inducing affair you find in some bullet hell shooters, rather it’s more subtle, focusing on precision & perfection.
This precision & perfection reminded me more of the older school shooters like 1942, where placement, timing & learning the waves were key. In SFA, it is implemented by several gameplay mechanics including medals for completing the level untouched & collecting 100% of the stars, or 100% civilian rescues. These offer a greater challenge than simply completing the level alive, & only when all challenges are complete will you be able to unlock the next difficulty tier (Normal, Hard, Insane). Each of the nine levels progressively unlocks as you earn more medals, with your high score being persistent between play throughs as a total of all your highest individual level scores.
– Real player with 39.5 hrs in game
Read More: Best Action Bullet Hell Games.
I really don’t like this game, and I’m usually quite fond of a bit of arcade inspired shoot-em-up action. It’s not that the production quality is lacking in any way, as the whole thing is quite well put together in terms of design and basic gameplay. But I would much rather play a game like CounterAttack, Blue Revolver or Wolflame (just to name a few of the top of my head If I were to have a quick glance at my Steam library and maybe my wishlist I could probably name at least half a dozen titles which are superior in almost every aspect). All of which offer a much more fun, arcade like experience instead of the tedious ‘grind-fest’ that this title offers.
– Real player with 26.0 hrs in game
Raptor: Call of the Shadows (1994 Classic Edition)
EDIT: On a widescreen monitor, you may need to change DOSbox settings (edit RAPTOR.CONF in Notepad to change “aspect=false” to “aspect=true”) to fix the aspect ratio. You may also need to disable Steam Overlay then, since the pop-up will get stuck in the margin.
This is a classic top-scrolling shooter from 1994, with an upgrade shop system being the main selling point. That is, your score is measured in credits which you can use to buy upgrades for your ship between levels. The graphics are pretty detailed for the time, similar to an Amiga or Atari ST game, especially the scrolling terrain. Sound effects are crunchy and satisfying, and the cheerful MIDI music is simple but effective. Keyboard, joystick, and mouse control schemes are available.
– Real player with 18.9 hrs in game
Raptor: Call of The Shadows Versions is an Awesome MS-DOS Game, I’m a Professional at this game & I grew up with this Old DOS Classic.
Your engine’s turbines roar as you scream out of the sky. Startled troops look up just in time to see your wing cannons blaze. You feel the plane buck slightly as your missiles streak toward their targets. A flash in the distance tells you that they have done their job and so have you. MegaCorp pays well, for those good enough to survive. They call you into the shadows with dreams of wealth, and you answer, the only way you know how.
– Real player with 9.3 hrs in game
Raiden IV: OverKill
OverKill was originally a PS3 port of Raiden IV featuring a new mode. For some reason, it was outsourced instead of being developed by Moss themselves. Eventually it was ported to PC, along with Raiden III.
Now, having the game on PC is good, and I’d upvote it every time, even though I don’t actually like the game. No, Steam reviews have nothing to do with personal like or dislike, they have to do with letting people know whether the game is actually playable or not.
The game is indeed playable. However!
– Real player with 43.9 hrs in game
I have a love-hate-relationship with this game… In my opinion it is fun and addictive, but its mechanics have some terrible design flaws.
Things I love:
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Nice oldschool graphics, art style and music
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Precise controls and addictive arcade feeling
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Good level design (except for some parts in level 5)
Things I hate:
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The Raiden Downward Spiral™:
Everything is fun until you get hit the first time. You instantly lose all your power-ups, but don’t worry, of course this game has got you covered and gives you some of them back! To be exact, it actually scatters them randomly in a MESS of different weapon colors (which makes it hard to do anything useful with them). You only get 3 seconds to collect and get ready, until you become vulnerable again to the hundreds of fresh bullets that your unhindered enemies have happily released in the mean time (unless you immediately use all of your bombs). So usually you die again and again and never regain enough items to survive for long. I’ve observed that unfair game mechanics like this are quite common in arcade games, to force players to put more money in the machines.
– Real player with 33.4 hrs in game
Enemy Mind
_…Human teleportation, molecular decimation, breakdown
and reformation is inherently purging. It makes a man a king!_
~Seth Brundle
It’s hard to make an unique SHMUP. Also, if you like the genre as much as I do, you know that most of the indie SHMUPs you often find in the bundles are utter garbage. Because, you know, IKARUGA doesn’t happen every day, while most of the indie games in the genre are just the attempts to make some quick money. People, who make them usually think that it’s easy to make SHMUPs. Make a ship, let it shoot, add some enemies, the end. Schell Games, creators of the Enemy Mind, are not like that. In fact, Enemy Mind turned out to be one of the most exciting experiences I had with the genre for quite some time.
– Real player with 29.1 hrs in game
I received Enemy on sale for 4 dollars. I remember thinking it looked interesting, a nice game to play when Im bored or just want to turn my brain off and focus on the pretty wetty patterns that the enemy bullets made. Poor little me did not do nearly enough research. The game is broken into 8 levels, I have only beaten 5 but I feel like I have gotten far enough to write this review. This game is filled with terrible, terrible flaws and great high points. Unfortunately I feel the negatives outweigh the positives. But I will try my hardest to stay positive for this review.
– Real player with 7.4 hrs in game
ETHER VAPOR Remaster
I think ETHER VAPOR Remaster is an excellent title overall. Not perfect by anymeans, it takes a good bit of time getting used to the feel of the game. On paper, even with all the dynamic shifts in the action. It still plays like a vertical or horizontal STG at its core, but the movement and dodging seems to require a different type of finesse even if i can’t really quantify that.
It is eyecatching, challenging, and enjoyable in the end. It would of been nice to explain the extends better. As I suspected they are rewarded as shield points meaning the game still has the classic one touch death mechanic of traditional STGs. The continues are what will mix you up in that they are call “credits”. My final critique would be just that the game forces additonal continues and shield points on you. Thankfully you don’t have to change your shield/extend count so that doesn’t impact going for a one credit clear.
– Real player with 69.4 hrs in game
A remaster of a classic doujin SHMUP. I’ve never played the original but their official site makes a comparison between this and the original in terms of graphics. http://edelweiss.skr.jp/works/ethervapor/re/index.html
Keyboard support is near non-existent as changing the controller settings also change the keyboard controls. Playing with either is left up to preference and it’s just a bit faster to learn how to play with a controller.
There’s no tutorial or instructions of any kind in-game so you’ll have to figure out on your own how to make use of your 3 weapons on your own. The game’s simplistic enough to be figured out in a short time, or at least have you know enough to play it.
– Real player with 19.1 hrs in game
Raiden III Digital Edition
Poor Raiden III. This game has had a long history of being bashed for the dumbest reasons, and now it’s getting bashed because the developers weren’t interested in working on a years-old PC port that works perfectly fine on newer PCs.
The slower ship speed was always the absolute biggest complaint… but it ALWAYS comes from people who worship the older Raidens. The game was always called too easy… which is quite mystifying as it’s actually quite hard, and many of the people claiming it’s too easy were playing on an easier than standard difficulty. Many of these people also cannot make a dent in the older Raidens which they are directly comparing to, games filled with absolute bullshit. It’s really bizarre how people will fetishize those older games like that.
– Real player with 21.5 hrs in game
A huge fan of the Raiden series. I especially enjoyed Raiden and Raiden II – the latter being one of my favourite shmups of all time. I also played Raiden DX just a bit (very close to the style of Raiden II). I have also played through the Raiden Fighter Aces trilogy on Xbox 360 – Raiden Fighters, Raiden Fighters 2, and Raiden Fighters Jet, and enjoyed them although they are not originally Raiden titles. I tended to dislike the move to 3D backgrounds, as with Raiden III, IV, and V. I played IV and enjoyed it. Raiden V is a bit too long and drawn out with the story inclusion. Playing it made me want to revisit the older 2D background titles. Long story short, I finally came back to play the only title I had never played, Raiden III.
– Real player with 17.8 hrs in game
Raptor: Call of The Shadows - 2015 Edition
Very poor port of an old DOS game.
Positives:
+Classic top-down shooter with currency system and upgrades.
Negatives:
-Some achievements have trouble working correctly. This requires you to do the achievement over and over again before it finally unlocks.
-Mouse function does not work very well at all. In windowed mode the curser can go outside the window and your ship will stop responding. The mouse also gets hung on imaginary objects at times requiring you to move it around real fast to free it.
– Real player with 12.3 hrs in game
Not great, not terrible
(applies to both original game and the port)
My young self first played this classic in ‘95 in shareware format (only 1st sector) and it left me in awe. How could it not when all my previous top-down scroller-shooter were the ones from ZX Spectrum. Raptor had great graphic, sounds, rocking music and a real plane (as opposed to shapes glued together forming a flying blob that I experienced earlier). I finally completed the full game in 2006 which was the last time I played it before now.
– Real player with 5.3 hrs in game
Sun Blast: Star Fighter
Disclaimer: I was generously given a free copy of Sun Blast with the understanding that I was expected to review the title after spending some time with it.
Sun Blast was presented to me in one sentence as “like Starfox 64”. Prior to even redeeming the key I found this an unfair way to represent a new game because Starfox (in my opinion) is the best of the best for that third person arcade shootem’up genre. Putting expectations at that level means that a fully competent title could easily be harshly critiqued or condemned for not being absolutely perfect.
– Real player with 12.5 hrs in game
Here we have another game that can be summed up in a single word: YIKES!
It’s cute that Sun Blast’s store description not only has the gall to claim that it was inspired by Star Fox, Space Harrier, and Panzer Dragoon, but it also says that it’s “the best 3d space shooter on Steam”.
Sun Blast was inspired by a dumpster fire. Never before have I played a shooter with such poor mechanics, sluggish controls, and awful mission-design. Dodging enemy ships and their bullets should be a relatively simple task, but instead it’s messy and somewhat convoluted. This can be attributed to the odd perspective. It’s not always clear where objects are in relation to the player-ship. So this results in lots of collisions. The bosses tend to have homing weapons, and they’re exceedingly frustrating to deal with. Why? Because the player-ship can’t maneuver around them, and the angle makes it difficult to tell where the homing shots are heading.
– Real player with 3.3 hrs in game