Recent reviews by Throngler the Fondler

Big damage = big dopamine, would recommend

Redneg is the shmup I've been the most invested in for the past week. With 32 bosses in the regular boss rush and 35 in the alternate mode Another Dreamers, there's a lot of bosses to face, all with very different patterns.

What I appreciate the most about this game is that boss fights are somewhat quick but still challenging. And there's not only a detailed practice mode, but also the extra "challenges" of both modes where you can fight each individual boss without extends or bombs at any difficulty you like, which will get you the corresponding star when defeating them to signify that you did so. There's also Endless which starts you at the lowest rank and then ramps up the difficulty the more bosses you plow through.

There's also plenty of references to some famous CAVE boss patterns in the alternate mode (they added Genbu too).

Whoever made this game knows what makes a good shmup, they know how to make a good entry difficulty while making harder difficulties that challenge experienced players, and it's quite fun too.

Initially I enjoyed it but now I have mixed feelings

Andro Dunos 2 is a great game, it's quite fun if you take it for what it is, but it still has major flaws of 90s shmups. Like R-Type, another horizontal shmup, Andro Dunos 2 requires memorization, though not nearly as much. Some bosses do not have great tells, but that's fine. My issue with Andro Dunos is when I momentarily stopped playing it and went back to vertical shmups. I went from no-hitting stages 1-3 of Blue Revolver on normal to not even getting past stage 2. I went from no-hitting some stages in Mushi Futari Ultra to struggling once again. With how Andro Dunos is structured, with its somewhat heavy memorization and required weapon swaps at some points in stages, I lost months of practice with vertical shmups in the span of 90 minutes. It actively made me worse. For now I will be putting off this game, but I still recommend it.

I'm all for playing difficult shmups but having this much artificial difficulty isn't it.

POV: The Better Image Striker

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Pretty easy after a few tries but still kinda gas

I decided to play this because I happened to find it when it was on a 67% discount and it had a bunch of negative reviews. I like shmups, so why not try it out?

This is the perfect example of how not to make a shmup:

-You start with a pea-shooter but the only way to upgrade it is to get power-ups in the level (which are few and far between) or upgrade the shot power after every level, which still does barely anything
-Specials only have a limited amount of uses and refresh extremely slowly (three to be exact)
-Larger enemies are almost unkillable in the time they are on screen, with some even having shields that negate all damage done to them. You'll have to waste all of your special uses just to kill one or two of these guys
-There is no option for slowdown in the controls despite all of the ships either being really fast or really slow
-Every bullet has Raiden levels of speed, if not faster
-The only way to remotely stand a chance against bosses is by saving your specials until you get to them, and that'll only get you about 75% of the way on the first boss on easy, if you don't they take ages to kill. Hell they barely do anything to bosses on Hard
-Some bullets will go across the bottom of the screen at lightning speed and there's barely anything you can do about it
-This game was built for use with a d-pad and a d-pad only. Switching to an analogue stick makes controlling any ship a chore on top of having no slowdown
-Bosses are largely trivial and are only there to be bullet sponges, the only challenging aspect of them is their status effects
-Regardless of the difficulty setting or whether the speed is set to turbo or not, bullets still have the exact same speed and density, the only difference is that bosses are EVEN tankier and spam status effects more often (no wonder "Easy" was so hard)
-And on the topic of status effects, there's three that I've seen so far: slow, inverted controls, and teleporting. So, the boss might slow you down and then sweep a laser across the screen that's faster than you, invert your controls, or teleport right in front of you and kill you if you're unlucky enough (yeah, I've had that exact thing happen to me)

It is not just unfair, it is horribly optimized and an absolute mess despite having somewhat appealing graphics. Only buy this if it's on discount, if you're a masochist, or a game dev that wants to make their first shmup. And to those working hard to bring us absolute peak shmups, do the exact opposite of what this game does.

Though let's not leave empty-handed, shall we? Here's some freeware shmups you can play:

Not on Steam:

-XOP Ultra
-XOP Ultra Black Label
-Blue Wish Resurrection Plus
-Kaikan (free version)
-Cho Ren Sha 68K
-Gwange Dash


On Steam:

-Bullet Hell Monday
-Bullet Hell Monday Finale
-Kaikan ($4 version)

If you've got Retroarch:

-DonPachi
-DoDonPachi
-DoDonPachi DaiOuJou
-DoDonPachi SaiDaiOuJou
-Mushihimesama
-Mushihimesama Futari
-Gradius V
-G. Darius
-Ketsui
-Ketsui Arrange

It's pretty fun but not that hard. It's definitely a bullet hell, don't get me wrong, but with the vast majority of bullets being slow, it isn't too difficult. There's lots of enemy, boss, and item variety, especially when you factor in the DLC, with each enemy being unique. The only major gripe I have is that primary weapons don't drop very often. I only get one or two per run if I'm lucky.

Pick it up when it's on discount, it's still a pretty decent game.

I didn't even watch the trailer before copping the demo because I just finished Gun Devil. Somebody let this man COOK.

This is probably one of the best games I've played this year. I wish it could have been longer