Mushihimesama
Mushihimesama is a game that I went back and forth over buying for quite some time. I’d heard stories of CAVE’s arcade shmups (especially DoDonPachi, Espgaluda, and Ketsui) for years, but had never actually had the opportunity to play any of them. Upon seeing Mushihimesama on Steam I was excited, but after watching the trailer I decided to hold off on it. I’m not sure exactly what it was about the trailer, but it failed to sell me the game. I’m sure the rumors I heard that it wasn’t a very good port didn’t help matters either. Eventually I decided to pick it up anyway, and I’m really glad that I did. Perhaps you shouldn’t always judge a game by its trailer.
– Real player with 111.4 hrs in game
Read More: Best Bullet Hell Anime Games.
Mushihimesama is a brilliant CAVE shooter that is a direct port of the 360 version, available for people on PC for the first time. Mushihimesama sets a standard in terms of modern STGs and cave games in general that we can get a taste for and is absolutely worth your time.
Gameplay
Vertical shooter, you control 1 ship called Reco and you have a choice of 3 different shot types they are :
M-Power (best all round shot type)
W-Power (wide shot type for clearing large groups of enemies in stages, low mobility)
– Real player with 30.7 hrs in game
Deathsmiles
La la la… Halloween party! La la la… Let’s Trick-or-treat!
~HALLOWEEN JUNKY ORCHESTRA
If you’re not the bullet hell enthusiast, then you may stop reading this review right now. Just because, like any other bullet hell game out there, this one is not for you. At least, not yet. Bullet hell games are known to be (way) harder than regular SHMUPs and, even though this one is not the hardest one of the kind, you’ll still die a lot without having much fun. Sure, there are difficulty levels here, but… let’s just say that as long as you’re not an experienced SHMUP player, you’re not ready for this. You have been warned. Now, if you are a fan of such entertainment, then, I guess, one word will be enough for you to get the idea about what do we have here. The word is – cave. CAVE Interactive. Creators of the DoDonPachi, Ketsui and Mushihimesama series.
– Real player with 54.9 hrs in game
Read More: Best Bullet Hell Anime Games.
Deathsmiles is one of the few horizontal shooters by CAVE. Due to its unique nonlinear nature, it also happens to be one of their easier offerings, and therefore suitable for players new to the genre. It debuted in Japanese arcades in 2007, and was later released on iOS, Android, and Xbox 360. Thanks to Degica, it has now been released on PC as well. The Steam release includes normal, arcade, and 1.1 versions of both the original and MBL (Mega Black Label).
As the name suggests, the arcade versions have the same graphical appearance as the original arcade release. I could be mistaken, but as far as I know, normal mode is exactly the same as arcade mode except it features upgraded graphics. I purchased the game exclusively for the original versions of normal/arcade mode so I can’t say I have the knowledge to speak at length about 1.1 or MBL. From what I know, in 1.1 you have a greater degree of control over the character’s familiar. MBL is a different version of the game that features an additional playable character. What I do know, however, is that some or all of the modes of MBL are either missing slowdown or don’t have it at all. If you’re buying the game just to play anything other than the original version, I highly suggest exercising caution and doing some research. That said, the remainder of this review will be about the normal original version of the game.
– Real player with 24.8 hrs in game
Waves
It is a bit difficult to find truly great twin stick arcade shooters on PC. There are quite a few of them around, but my search has been to find something as close to the PSN great Super Stardust HD as possible. A truly amazing twin stick shooter that many of us even got for free after the infamous ApocalyPS3 where PSN got hacked a few years back. Our reward was free games for not being able to login for a month! I ended up with Super Stardust HD, Little Big Planet, and inFamous as mine so I did well, but Super Stardust HD was the big surprise of the lot and I have been searching for a similar twin stick shooter ever since.
– Real player with 119.0 hrs in game
Read More: Best Bullet Hell Shooter Games.
Who doesn’t love Arcade-Games?
Waves is a typical example for one of these. You have to eliminate the opposing balls as a ball. Sounds boring but this is not the case at all.
The Fun-part starts simply by the fact that there are several gamemodes. I personally just play three of them because they are the best in my opinion.
| Mode | Description |
| Crunch Time | Achieve as many points as possible within 3 minutes |
– Real player with 56.8 hrs in game
Assault Android Cactus+
TL;DR: Probably the best twinstick shooter ever made. Why are you even looking at this review? Play the free demo and then buy the full game when you inevitably love it.
The good
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It’s a blast, plain and simple. Blowing up robots with the various weapons, powering up your weapon, dodging bullets, lasers and mines, stacking up immense combos and multikills… there is a lot of classic arcade twinstick action to be had here.
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There are 9 playable characters to choose from, each with really unique weapons. No two characters play alike.
– Real player with 891.1 hrs in game
I’ve played this game for 25 hours as of this review, but AAC is already one of my favorite games. It’s extremely addictive, and this game caused the first time I’ve ever had strain in my directional key fingers in my ~25 years of PC gaming. It was a subtle ache that felt so good because it reminded me how much fun I’d been having.
The art style is modern futuristic. The music is pumpin' and really gets you into the game. The sound effects are absolutely perfect. The characters are simultaneously cute and cool in every way, and each has their own unique style. I love them. The simultaneously cute and cool style of this game sets it apart from any other futuristic game I’ve ever played.
– Real player with 760.7 hrs in game
Jamestown
First off, if you are interested in this game, I recommend getting Jamestown+ instead. It has two more stages and more ships.
Jamestown is a shmup with its stages primarily designed around co-op gameplay. However, enemy HP does scale so that enemies don’t become sponges if played solo. More about solo gameplay on higher difficulties later.
Jamestown doesn’t provide you with a bomb mechanic. Instead it has a hyper-like mechanic called vaunt. It will greatly increase dealt damage and create a shield which absorbs bullets upon activation. The duration of the vaunt can be increased by collecting the golden items. If it runs out, you’ll gain a significant amount of score, especially after a long vaunt. Cancelling the vaunt manually will provide you with brief invincibility and only provide you with a fraction of the score you’d get otherwise.
– Real player with 200.5 hrs in game
HO-LEE SCHNITZELS IT’S THIS GAME
BETTER BUCKLE INTO YOUR SPACESHIP BECAUSE WE’VE GOT ALIEN SPANIARDS TO KILL
DO YOU LIKE GAMES WITH TONS OF BULLETS? DO YOU LIKE VERTICALLY SCROLLING GAMES? DO YOU LIKE GAMES WITH ROCK-AWESOME MUSIC? DO YOU LIKE GAMES WITH ALTERNATE RE-TELLINGS OF AMERICAN HISTORY? DO YOU JUST LIKE FREAKIN' SWEET SHOOT-EM-UPS? THEN JAMESTOWN IS THE GAME FOR YOU
IF YOU’VE PLAYED ANY SORT OF SHOOT-EM-UP BEFORE THEN YOU’LL PROBABLY ALREADY KNOW HOW THIS GOES DOWN BUT I SWEAR TO THE ALMIGHTY EMPRAH HIMSELF IF YOU PASS THIS UP BECAUSE OF THAT I WILL PERSONALLY COME TO YOUR HOUSE AND TAKE A MASSIVE DUMP ON YOUR FRONT LAWN
– Real player with 11.4 hrs in game
Danmaku Unlimited 2
“Exhilarating Gameplay along with Fantastic Music & Dominant Graphical quality. This Authentic Japanese Doujin Shooter’s Qualities will appeal to many gamers”
Introduction - My Story
When I saw this game and dashed through its content, I thought it looked quite familiar and when I decided to watch its trailer and after that, I immediately wanted to buy this game. Watching the trailer seemed to spark something lost in my memories I have forgotten. After buying this game and then afterwards playing it, I was never so happy to find other games similar to the ones I had played during my childhood.
– Real player with 19.1 hrs in game
Danmaku Unlimited 2 may not be the best shmup ever, but I do feel comfortable in saying it’s the best “classic”-style bullet hell on Steam. Some other games like Ikaruga and Luftrausers have thrown some unique modern twist on the genre and come out the other end for the better. But as far as traditional, no-frills attached, pure shmups go we haven’t been too lucky and Danmaku definitely comes out sitting atop those that have tried.
It is exactly what it appears to be, a bullet hell in the vein of the genres heyday like DonPachi and Blue Wish Resurrection (in fact, you might think you’re playing the latter at first). What separates it from many of the manic shooters that have appeared on Steam is that it is largely pattern recognition. Some might disagree but for me this is what makes a bullet hell enjoyable, complicated but recognizable patterns that after spending enough time with the game you begin to memorize until you can run through the whole thing easily enough, and jump to the next level of difficulty. Repeating the process. Though the game still requires twitch reflexes at times (and let’s face it sometimes luck as well, unless you’re a bullet hell god) I rarely if ever found myself getting hit and feeling like it was the game being impossible. I always felt like if I did get hit it was completely my fault for parsing the pattern wrong or simply reacting slowly, and that’s what makes a game like this fun.
– Real player with 10.4 hrs in game
Ikaruga
From Treasure, the developer behind classic games like Guardian Heroes, Radiant Silvergun and Gradius V, Ikaruga is the game that really stands out.
Initially launched for arcades, Ikaruga found most of its success on the Nintendo GameCube not only because of its extreme difficulty, but because of its excellence in game design. You can move your ship in 2D, shoot bullets and charge your special shot like any other shoot ‘em up (shmup). But there’s a single game mechanic that changes everything: there’s two types of enemies, black ships that shoot black bullets and white ships that shoots white bullets, and you can change the polarity of your ship to black or white. Simple enough, this latter fact is what made the game be considered a groundbreaking masterpiece among shmups: you absorb enemy bullets to charge your special shot if your ship’s polarity matches the color of the enemy bullet, and you do double damage if your ship’s polarity is opposed. So, as you skillfully change polarities to do damage you also find yourself taking enemy bullets instead of avoiding them. And every single bullet is beautifully coreographed with the stage, with the pacing matching the rhythm of the music, something that seems basically impossible given all the chaos on the screen. It’s absolutely genius.
– Real player with 258.3 hrs in game
Ikaruga is a harsh mistress. She is a love you cannot conquer, she is a complex beauty who demands perfection. Your best will never truly please her, she will make you feel inadequate at every moment, and yet you cannot stop trying to win her heart. When you are with her, any mistake you make will sting a thousand times worse. And she will make you furious, she will make you cry, she will drive you crazy, but you cannot stop loving her, because there is nothing else in the world that can compare to what she is.
– Real player with 74.6 hrs in game
DoDonPachi Resurrection
DoDonPachi Resurrection is a port of DoDonPachi Dai-Fukkatsu, the fifth game in the DonPachi series, and it mixes up the traditional DDP formula by adding a “bullet canceling” feature in the form of its updated Hyper Counter system. it’s really starting to become one of my favorite SHMUPs out there, and i’ve been playing it a LOT – and when i’m not playing it, i’m thinking about it in the back of my head. there’s 8 gameplay modes (including two Novice modes), and initially they all look VERY similar, and they don’t really explain themselves too well – but once you do some searching as to how the scoring works in each mode and the slightly different ways they’re all intended to be played, there is a LOT of mileage to get from this game.
– Real player with 286.7 hrs in game
After playing through Mushihimesama I was very excited to learn that CAVE would be releasing another game on Steam. While I would have preferred Mushihimesama Futari, I wasn’t about to turn down the possibility of playing an entry in their longest running shooting game series. DoDonPachi Resurrection (also known as DoDonPachi DaiFukkatsu) was released in Japanese arcades in May 2008. Since then it has been released on Xbox 360 and mobile devices. Perhaps it shouldn’t be a surprise that this is the game CAVE chose after having already made it so widely available.
– Real player with 234.4 hrs in game
Crimzon Clover WORLD IGNITION
Crimzon Clover is a doujin bullet hell shmup made by one person (well, two if you count the musician) that was so well designed and professional that it was inducted into actual arcades. Now, the even further polished and refined arcade version arrives on Steam, and it’s absolutely essential for anyone with even a fleeting interest in the shoot em up genre.
CC’s bullet hell action has you dodging and shooting manically through a series of 5 stages and a host of boss fights. Aiding you are a lock on laser, that allows you to target enemies around you and awards a score bonus for destroying multiple enemies simultaneously, and “Break Mode”, a super powered state which is recharged the more aggressively you play, and allows you to double your speed, fire power, and points gained when active, and then quadruple them if you can fill up the break meter a second time before it ends.
– Real player with 57.2 hrs in game
My initial review was just basically a fly by -“Oh I played through the game using the infinite continues system. It was good. Let me write four sentences about it to let people know I checked it out.” - After playing this game for an extensive amount of time, I feel like I’ve got to do a re-review on this title.
This is the first Shoot’em up that made me want to beat my old score. This is the first one to make me want to memorize bullet and enemy patterns. This is the first out of the genre to make me want to 1CC it.
– Real player with 32.9 hrs in game
QP Shooting - Dangerous!!
In most of the Shoot’Em Up & Bullet Hell games, they are fun to play, delivers good intense bosses moments and frustrations that sometimes enrages you like never before (that depends though). Such elements are well expected in this genre and that’s what make the games nice, if it is. And for that, QP Shooting - Dangerous!! is one of those games in that genre that delivered quite nicely, in a way. Let’s check it out.
The Gameplay
In this kind of game, there’s nothing much to expect, except shooting enemies at sight. It is very straightforward and pretty simple to play. You shoot, evade the incoming bullets and defeat all the bosses until to the end. Of course, the simplicity depends on how hard the game is, in which in this case, is the opposite. One might think playing the Easy difficulty would be fine, but it’s just as unexpectedly hard. And don’t think about the Super Difficulty (the Ultra Hard mode) as it’s insane. Then again, since this is a Bullet Hell game too, so it’s understandable. Moving on, the interesting features in this game are there are the different formations and modes. This is nice because it has so formations and modes to choose from, thus, making you wonder which is the one that fits you best. So, even for just a stage, you can replay it with many different formations and modes. However, unlike most generic games, it has no continue and once all the lives are depleted, that’s it, game over. You can’t continue and that makes it very super frustrating, especially if you’re going for certain achievements and ended up dead in final boss stage. Bummer! Speaking of achievements, there are a few easy to get while some are insanely hard to achieve. It kind of makes you wonder, what were the developer thinking to make such an achievements that could enrages you to the level you’ve never imagine could. Hard game. Plus, it only has 5 stages so it’s kind of short for a shoot’em up game. In fact, it’s kind of rare too.
– Real player with 28.8 hrs in game
Despite how simple this game looks, it’s a shockingly deep and polished bullet hell smup. While, if your a fan of the genre, you’re probably not going to encounter many completely original mechanics, what you will find is a large range of ways to approach a familiar formula. Unlike many bullet hell games, where defensive play is essential, in this the majority of bullets are produced by low health minions, and since bullets are transformed into points on death, aggressive strategies are shockingly valid. The game also allows you to customize your bullet patterns (although most need to be unlocked) and switch between three of them on the fly (either with a direct bind and/or with cycling if your prefer). While most are fairly simple, some are complex and can be affected by the direction of your movement, your location when you switched to them or the use of slow move (the essential bullet hell feature reduces your speed and displays your hit dot for precise dodging).
– Real player with 19.6 hrs in game