So another Cave game has been announced for the idevices! This time it looks to be Mushihimesama: Bug Panic. Now I'm not sure if this is Mushihimesama Futari or some new game but I'm hoping it's Futari. This is a game I have long wanted to play and on the iphone it would be amazing like Espgaluda 2 and DoDonPachi: Resurrection before it. It was announced a few moments ago on Cave's US twitter with a link to a reveal video which you can find below.
So a little research came up with this. Apparently this is the game they just announced. I don't know what to think about this one but time will tell.
This is the game I thought we'd be getting...
Showing posts with label Cave. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Cave. Show all posts
Thursday, September 9, 2010
Friday, August 27, 2010
DoDonPachi: Resurrection
So the other day hailed the release of DoDonPachi: Resurection on the various idevices out there. As soon as I was able to download the game from the Apple App Store I did and immediately started playing it. I'm going to tell you right off the bat it's a good game but read on for more details.
Cave is a video game company known for it's scrolling shooters and DonPachi/DoDonPachi is probably their biggest series the one everyone who is into shooters knows of. Their games have been out in arcades and home consoles in Japan for years. I think DonPachi was in the U.S. arcades and maybe on the U.S. Saturn but I'm not positive on that one.
Lately they've been testing the waters outside of Japan with region free versions of some of their 360 games and by putting games out on the iphone. I reviewed the last iphone game, Espgaluda 2 on this very blog a few weeks ago. You can read that review here.
http://withrpgelements.blogspot.com/2010/07/iphone-game-review-espgaluda-2.html
So now we have DoDonPachi: Resurrection for the idevices. This game first off unlike Espgaluda 2 works on the ipad so you can get big screen bullet hell on you ipad.
DDP:R is the fifth game in the series and picks up after the events of part 4 with the DonPachi squad going back to base until the latest threat rises. One thing I've noticed with Cave shooters is that the stories are really fleshed out. Most of these type of games are just fly to boss and kill it then move on finish game for a high score. But these games always to me at least have very interesting stories and this one isn't any different.
Instead of typing it all out I'm taking this from Wikipedia...
After the turmoil caused by the machines' assault on Lunapolis (as depicted in the previous installment), peace seems to have been restored, with the legendary DonPachi Corps retreating to its HQ in a space-time fold. Six years later, anomalies are detected in the space-time fabric, yet tests reveal nothing out of order, with the portals regularly functioning for both teleportation and time travel; also, the leader of the DonPachi squadron Colonel Longhena Gottvin dismisses the matter due to the lack of actual danger.
Neverthless, a technician delves deeper into the anomaly, discovering that something has infiltrated the HQ computer systems and is using the portals to send large quantities of materials and data to the past, spreading out like a virus and quickly evolving. In an ironic twist, the virus is discovered to be the program originally installed in the Element Dolls six years ago, now reaching beyond the DonPachi Corps programming and seeking to annihilate the human race in retaliation for their "enslavement" (after the war, they were sealed on the Moon) by waging war in the past rather than in the present: unsettled, the Colonel authorizes the last transport ship to time jump in order to fight back the invasion before future changes. However, he states: "Start over from the past... I never thought of that", echoing the ideas of mankind's imperfection which has always been a recurring theme in the series.
And once again, the three pilots jump back in time to 2008 and enter the fray, the transport ship being targeted as soon as it exits the portal: the Element Daughters, gigantic evolutions of the Dolls, are awaiting...
The bee is still humming.
The game starts out with you choosing a mode and a difficulty. You can play the arcade game verison 1.5 or the new iphone mode. Arcade made is well the arcade game. You choose a ship one out of three and you're off. The three ships differ in shot spread, with ship A shooting pretty much straight and B and C spreading out their shoots more then A. After choosing a ship you can pick the type of powers you want. You can play with the standard ship shoots and you can drop bombs, You can power your gun up faster but can't use any bombs or a mix of both. After that the game sends you into battle and it's up to you to save the world.
The game controls like Espgaluda 2 did on the iphone which is perfect. You use your finger to drag the ship around the screen, the shooting is done automatically. The various buttons run along the side of the screen and can be edited into preset spaces if just on the right or left side of the screen isn't something you want. The buttons control your shot being on or off, the switching to laser, entering Hypermode and dropping bombs. As with Espgaluda 2 they never get in the way and work when you hit them. I'm going to say so far they don't get in the way even less than they did in Espgaluda 2 where I sometimes found myself sitting the shield button on accident a few times.
You have two forms of attack, the standard shot and the laser blast. The laser blast shoots directly forward in a thick beam of power but it also blocks enemy laser blasts allowing you to cut through the enemies and finish them off. I found it extremely useful during bosses and would just end up switching to it at the start of a boss fight, using it the whole battle. You can also drop bombs, these are some killer weapons that just devastate the normal enemies and do a massive amount of damage on the bosses. One thing about the bombs I like is if you have any in stock and take a hit you don't lose a life but you drop a bomb really making you feel like you have way more lives then you really have. You also have a meter that fills as you kill enemies and when it's full you can unleash your Hyper mode attack which takes whichever weapon you're using and amps the power up significantly. This weapon in shot mode will destroy enemy shots and the laser mode destroys lasers. It's pretty cool to use it and it feels like you're giving the enemies a taste of bullet hell for them to deal with.
Now you also have iphone mode which is similar to the above with a few changes, it's called Slaughter and Menace. You have a meter and it fills to the left and right. As you kill enemies it fills to the left or the S side. When you fill the S side up all the way your standard shots get maxed out but as you shoot you loose multiplier. You'll see in iphone mode your ship has a small field around it. If enemy shots pass into this field and don't hit you it's called scraping and that fill the right side of the meter or the M side and when that bar is full your multiplier goes up. When the M side fills your Hyper meter gets a boost and fills faster. When you activate your hyper cannon you are stationary and can't move but you can rotate the cannon left and right to target enemies. It's an interesting mode and I plan on spending some more time with it.
The graphics and sound are top notch. The game looks amazing on the iphone but I notice some major slowdown mainly when I use bombs so it's not a big deal. I am playing it on the 3GS so if I had an iphone 4 maybe it would run smoother but again the slowdown isn't really that bad but it's there. The music is awesome. I cranked it up the first time I played and I love it all. The title screen song is my favorite though.
DoDonPachi: Resurrection is an amazing game. It's even more amazing playing it on a mobile device but that's the age we live in. If you love scrolling shooters you need to pick this up. For the first few days it's on sale for 5 bucks and it's a steal at that price. I've only finished the arcade mode with one ship at the time of this writing but I'm no where near done with it. I still need to dot he second loop and get into the iphone mode a bit more. While I think it's a great game between the two that are out for the iphone I'd have to give the edge to Espgaluda 2 I don't know why but I like it a little more.
DoDonPachi: Resurrection - 9 out of 10
Cave is a video game company known for it's scrolling shooters and DonPachi/DoDonPachi is probably their biggest series the one everyone who is into shooters knows of. Their games have been out in arcades and home consoles in Japan for years. I think DonPachi was in the U.S. arcades and maybe on the U.S. Saturn but I'm not positive on that one.
Lately they've been testing the waters outside of Japan with region free versions of some of their 360 games and by putting games out on the iphone. I reviewed the last iphone game, Espgaluda 2 on this very blog a few weeks ago. You can read that review here.
http://withrpgelements.blogspot.com/2010/07/iphone-game-review-espgaluda-2.html
So now we have DoDonPachi: Resurrection for the idevices. This game first off unlike Espgaluda 2 works on the ipad so you can get big screen bullet hell on you ipad.
DDP:R is the fifth game in the series and picks up after the events of part 4 with the DonPachi squad going back to base until the latest threat rises. One thing I've noticed with Cave shooters is that the stories are really fleshed out. Most of these type of games are just fly to boss and kill it then move on finish game for a high score. But these games always to me at least have very interesting stories and this one isn't any different.
Instead of typing it all out I'm taking this from Wikipedia...
After the turmoil caused by the machines' assault on Lunapolis (as depicted in the previous installment), peace seems to have been restored, with the legendary DonPachi Corps retreating to its HQ in a space-time fold. Six years later, anomalies are detected in the space-time fabric, yet tests reveal nothing out of order, with the portals regularly functioning for both teleportation and time travel; also, the leader of the DonPachi squadron Colonel Longhena Gottvin dismisses the matter due to the lack of actual danger.
Neverthless, a technician delves deeper into the anomaly, discovering that something has infiltrated the HQ computer systems and is using the portals to send large quantities of materials and data to the past, spreading out like a virus and quickly evolving. In an ironic twist, the virus is discovered to be the program originally installed in the Element Dolls six years ago, now reaching beyond the DonPachi Corps programming and seeking to annihilate the human race in retaliation for their "enslavement" (after the war, they were sealed on the Moon) by waging war in the past rather than in the present: unsettled, the Colonel authorizes the last transport ship to time jump in order to fight back the invasion before future changes. However, he states: "Start over from the past... I never thought of that", echoing the ideas of mankind's imperfection which has always been a recurring theme in the series.
And once again, the three pilots jump back in time to 2008 and enter the fray, the transport ship being targeted as soon as it exits the portal: the Element Daughters, gigantic evolutions of the Dolls, are awaiting...
The bee is still humming.
The game starts out with you choosing a mode and a difficulty. You can play the arcade game verison 1.5 or the new iphone mode. Arcade made is well the arcade game. You choose a ship one out of three and you're off. The three ships differ in shot spread, with ship A shooting pretty much straight and B and C spreading out their shoots more then A. After choosing a ship you can pick the type of powers you want. You can play with the standard ship shoots and you can drop bombs, You can power your gun up faster but can't use any bombs or a mix of both. After that the game sends you into battle and it's up to you to save the world.
The game controls like Espgaluda 2 did on the iphone which is perfect. You use your finger to drag the ship around the screen, the shooting is done automatically. The various buttons run along the side of the screen and can be edited into preset spaces if just on the right or left side of the screen isn't something you want. The buttons control your shot being on or off, the switching to laser, entering Hypermode and dropping bombs. As with Espgaluda 2 they never get in the way and work when you hit them. I'm going to say so far they don't get in the way even less than they did in Espgaluda 2 where I sometimes found myself sitting the shield button on accident a few times.
You have two forms of attack, the standard shot and the laser blast. The laser blast shoots directly forward in a thick beam of power but it also blocks enemy laser blasts allowing you to cut through the enemies and finish them off. I found it extremely useful during bosses and would just end up switching to it at the start of a boss fight, using it the whole battle. You can also drop bombs, these are some killer weapons that just devastate the normal enemies and do a massive amount of damage on the bosses. One thing about the bombs I like is if you have any in stock and take a hit you don't lose a life but you drop a bomb really making you feel like you have way more lives then you really have. You also have a meter that fills as you kill enemies and when it's full you can unleash your Hyper mode attack which takes whichever weapon you're using and amps the power up significantly. This weapon in shot mode will destroy enemy shots and the laser mode destroys lasers. It's pretty cool to use it and it feels like you're giving the enemies a taste of bullet hell for them to deal with.
Now you also have iphone mode which is similar to the above with a few changes, it's called Slaughter and Menace. You have a meter and it fills to the left and right. As you kill enemies it fills to the left or the S side. When you fill the S side up all the way your standard shots get maxed out but as you shoot you loose multiplier. You'll see in iphone mode your ship has a small field around it. If enemy shots pass into this field and don't hit you it's called scraping and that fill the right side of the meter or the M side and when that bar is full your multiplier goes up. When the M side fills your Hyper meter gets a boost and fills faster. When you activate your hyper cannon you are stationary and can't move but you can rotate the cannon left and right to target enemies. It's an interesting mode and I plan on spending some more time with it.
The graphics and sound are top notch. The game looks amazing on the iphone but I notice some major slowdown mainly when I use bombs so it's not a big deal. I am playing it on the 3GS so if I had an iphone 4 maybe it would run smoother but again the slowdown isn't really that bad but it's there. The music is awesome. I cranked it up the first time I played and I love it all. The title screen song is my favorite though.
DoDonPachi: Resurrection is an amazing game. It's even more amazing playing it on a mobile device but that's the age we live in. If you love scrolling shooters you need to pick this up. For the first few days it's on sale for 5 bucks and it's a steal at that price. I've only finished the arcade mode with one ship at the time of this writing but I'm no where near done with it. I still need to dot he second loop and get into the iphone mode a bit more. While I think it's a great game between the two that are out for the iphone I'd have to give the edge to Espgaluda 2 I don't know why but I like it a little more.
DoDonPachi: Resurrection - 9 out of 10
Saturday, July 17, 2010
DoDonPachi coming to iphone/pad/touch
Yesterday it was announced that the Cave shooter DoDonPochi is coming to the various idevices. You'll need the newer hardware to play it just like with Espgaluda 2. I'm really excited to play this one and will have a full review after it comes out.
Until then check out this video.
Until then check out this video.
Friday, July 9, 2010
iphone game review, Espgaluda 2
Cave is a game company that is pretty much the gods of Bullet Hell shooters. They've put out quite a few scrolling shooters over the years and not a whole lot of them have come to the US. You can get a few of their Japanese which are region free and play them on a US Xbox 360 but the games are still expensive so that's not always a solution for everyone. I'm a fan of the scolling shooter and I've only played a couple of Caves shooters and not really for any length of time but they're fun and can be really hard. I was extremely happy to see that they decided to release a game in the US but then was shocked to read it was coming to the iphone of all things. I wasn't sure if a bullet hell game would work on the iphone.
Espgaluda 2 is a basic vertical scrolling shooter. You're character is at the bottom of the screen and flys up. You shoot at the incoming enemies as you dodge intricate bullet patterns eventually getting to a boss and finishing the stage. You have two different "shots" to use as you play. One is just the standard bullet shots you see in many of these games and the other is a rapier shot which looks like a beam of light similar to the straight laser in the Raiden games with some projectiles flying around it. You collect power ups to get more power out of these and are free to switch between them at will. You can enter an "Awakening" state in which the character's shots change and the bullets around you slow down. Once the awakening counter goes down you keep the new attacks but the bullets turn red and go much faster. You have a choice of playing as three characters all with a different attack power. Ageha is the most powerful and has a straight forward attack. Tateha has a spread shot which in awakening mode turns into a homing spread shot. Asagi is the last character and has a straight shot and a set of options that fly behind and fire or in awakening go right up to the enemy you're targeting and shoot them point blank. The iphone version has an iphone mode. When you're in awakening you can touch the screen to get rid of bullets and gain points. It's fun but I prefer the arcade mode. It also has achievements via open feint.
When it comes to controlling this game on the iphone it is perfect. Using my finger to slide my character across the screen to is just amazing. It adds a precision you can't get with the joystick because it doesn't have the limit on the speed the character goes. It moves as fast as you can move your finger. So while this is a great way to move I think it makes the game easier because you have this ability that isn't in the arcade or 360 versions. Shooting is done automatically as it is in most iphone shooters, you can turn on manual shooting but I never tried it. All your other functions such as shield and changing shots are all on the side of screen and easy to reach. Even moving in crazy ways I've never hit the buttons and done something I didn't want to do.
The game runs well on the hardware. It only supports the newer ipod touches, ipad and iphone 3gs which I can imagine is for the amount of stuff that goes on while playing. Bullets are everywhere and on hard it they can fill the entire screen with just a pixel or two safe zone. On my 3GS it drains my battery extremely fast so I tend not to play when I'm out because my phone could go dead from playing. My phone also gets warm as I play which it does not do with other games but I'm guessing it's due to the processor having to work so hard on this one.
I'm not a big iphone gamer, I've played a few just to try and I grab any free ones I can. Besides this one Space Invaders Infinity Gene have really grabbed my attention. If you're a fan of scrolling shooters then you need to check this game out. Cave has said this is a test and if it does well they plan on bringing more of their games out in the US. Deathsmiles just came out and I've heard they have another arcade game they're bringing to the iphone. Espgaluda 2 in my opinion is the best game on the various idevices and anyone who's a gamer and can play it should.
UPDATE - Something I completely forgot about is whenever you get a phone call while playing the game does not remember where you were and you are forced to start over. I had this happen when I was close to beating the last boss on hard a couple of times. Well today they released an update and I believe this is no longer an issue.
Easily a 10 out of 10
Espgaluda 2 is a basic vertical scrolling shooter. You're character is at the bottom of the screen and flys up. You shoot at the incoming enemies as you dodge intricate bullet patterns eventually getting to a boss and finishing the stage. You have two different "shots" to use as you play. One is just the standard bullet shots you see in many of these games and the other is a rapier shot which looks like a beam of light similar to the straight laser in the Raiden games with some projectiles flying around it. You collect power ups to get more power out of these and are free to switch between them at will. You can enter an "Awakening" state in which the character's shots change and the bullets around you slow down. Once the awakening counter goes down you keep the new attacks but the bullets turn red and go much faster. You have a choice of playing as three characters all with a different attack power. Ageha is the most powerful and has a straight forward attack. Tateha has a spread shot which in awakening mode turns into a homing spread shot. Asagi is the last character and has a straight shot and a set of options that fly behind and fire or in awakening go right up to the enemy you're targeting and shoot them point blank. The iphone version has an iphone mode. When you're in awakening you can touch the screen to get rid of bullets and gain points. It's fun but I prefer the arcade mode. It also has achievements via open feint.
When it comes to controlling this game on the iphone it is perfect. Using my finger to slide my character across the screen to is just amazing. It adds a precision you can't get with the joystick because it doesn't have the limit on the speed the character goes. It moves as fast as you can move your finger. So while this is a great way to move I think it makes the game easier because you have this ability that isn't in the arcade or 360 versions. Shooting is done automatically as it is in most iphone shooters, you can turn on manual shooting but I never tried it. All your other functions such as shield and changing shots are all on the side of screen and easy to reach. Even moving in crazy ways I've never hit the buttons and done something I didn't want to do.
The game runs well on the hardware. It only supports the newer ipod touches, ipad and iphone 3gs which I can imagine is for the amount of stuff that goes on while playing. Bullets are everywhere and on hard it they can fill the entire screen with just a pixel or two safe zone. On my 3GS it drains my battery extremely fast so I tend not to play when I'm out because my phone could go dead from playing. My phone also gets warm as I play which it does not do with other games but I'm guessing it's due to the processor having to work so hard on this one.
I'm not a big iphone gamer, I've played a few just to try and I grab any free ones I can. Besides this one Space Invaders Infinity Gene have really grabbed my attention. If you're a fan of scrolling shooters then you need to check this game out. Cave has said this is a test and if it does well they plan on bringing more of their games out in the US. Deathsmiles just came out and I've heard they have another arcade game they're bringing to the iphone. Espgaluda 2 in my opinion is the best game on the various idevices and anyone who's a gamer and can play it should.
UPDATE - Something I completely forgot about is whenever you get a phone call while playing the game does not remember where you were and you are forced to start over. I had this happen when I was close to beating the last boss on hard a couple of times. Well today they released an update and I believe this is no longer an issue.
Easily a 10 out of 10
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