What Did We Play Yesterday?

Fortnite's new Final Fight LTM, 12x8, is a royal clusterfuck. I was trying to figure out why this mode sucks comparatively. 20x5 was a flawed mode, no doubt, but the fact that each team had its own battle bus means any player, however inexperienced, could look at the map and pick out a smart drop zone with decent loot. I actually had a few matches where high-level, skilled players were very obviously playing along with noskins and helping them out and there was just a nice general sense of camaraderie for me as a friendless noskin living in a godless world.

12x8 has one battle bus, which means there's no obvious safe zone for any given team. As a result, half the team will drop in Twisty Towers and/or Dusty Divot and die immediately, the others will be scattered across the map and get picked off by some pack of skins sweeping the map culling potatoes. Additionally, the storm is fast and the circles are pretty far. I have tried following my teammate's markers (if they even place them), including into dangerous places where I knew I would get picked off immediately, and I've tried putting down my own drop marker, but they rarely drop with me. I place best in this mode when I treat it like a Solo game where 19 other people probably won't try to kill me but they will steal my loot if given half a chance.

Basically we went from 20x5 being a casual way for players to kind of experiment and do a little coop with randos to 12x8 where everyone drops into Twisty and it's a goddamn war zone, and if you don't have local teammates you might as well run solo and bushcamp the final circle GODSPEED my noskin brethren do what u gotta do.

I think I get why Final Fight progressed this way for testing, though. 20x5 just wasn't dangerous enough. They dropped the extra buses and tweaked the storm to add pressure and herd players off of the edges of the map where teams were previously congregating and stocking up materials and supplies for like 10 minutes.

FF is no longer my favored mode and can die in a fire now but that's fine because as soon as the playground is up I'm building an altar to my patron saint, Dark Lord Belzebub, and I'm going to practice with plunger explosives until I can rain hilarious carnage on whoever crosses my path. #lifegoal

Apparently, if you want me to play your multiplayer battle royale game all you need to do is make it free on the Nintendo Switch. I tried FBR just so I'd know what the hell people were talking about, then I kept playing it, and somehow this persisted and led to me ordering ordering an ethernet adapter for the Switch so I can play it in my dank cave deep below the earth.

FBR is a battle royale with multiple modes. The general idea is 100 players parachute down on an island and try to stay alive while being herded into increasingly smaller circles as a massive deadly storm closes in. The storm will kill you, but not instantly, so you can use it to your advantage in some instances. Fort building has become a significant aspect of Fortnite and it's interesting to see the many ways players have adapted wall-building strategies. Solo is the traditional last-player-standing, but there are also duos, squads, and rotating larger-team modes.

I have no idea why I'm into it or how long this will last. The first few times I played I was really preoccupied with landing on an island next to the big island. Once I figured out I couldn't, I spent a lot of time gliding around, exploring the map, and so on. Fortnite has lots of little diversions. There's a soccer field where you can play with your squad until someone caps you, for instance. When the storm closes in I'm always one of the stragglers sniffing roses or peeking under rocks while everyone else is blasting the shit out of each other in the divot or something.

I noticed last night I've played over 50 matches. The bad news is that after 50 matches I have not appreciably improved my aim, the good news is I haven't gotten worse. So there's that. Also, Dunkey's bit is twice as funny to me now. ("Fuckin John Wicks."**)

I'm not really sure what it is about Fortnite that works for me. On solo mode I generally play a pacifist game--how long can I survive until the better players find and kill me?--and on 50/50 (aka clusterfuck mode) I try to pull my weight, or at least not die like a punk, but sometimes it backfires. (Sending up a little prayer for the skinned teammate I accidentally blew up* with a rocket launcher about one second after they revived me. Peace and love, friend. I'm sure your learned your lesson and will never revive a noskin again.) Last night they dropped the 50/50 game and introduced a 5 team game. In this mode, 5 teams of 20 are dropped onto the island, and the goal is to have the most teammates standing by the end of a countdown timer. What's interesting about this mode is the circles stay large for a while, then DRAMATICALLY shrink, so if you're not lucky enough to be near the small circle you really have to hoof it. The likelihood of being able to build a fort and hunker down is extremely low, so much of the round is impromptu run-n-gun. Whereas with 50/50 it was easier to camp in the final area and build up elaborate forts ahead of time.

I like the 5-team game a lot, it gives me a chance to play with other people and practice without having to worry overmuch about not pulling my weight and letting a squad down. In 5-team my chief responsibility is not getting kilt and reviving team mates before the storm can get em.

Fortnite has lots of points and medals and things. I know nothing of this. I just know I can cut down trees and shoot man with my shooter man, but the other shooter mans usually shoot my shooter man first. So it goes.

* Friendly-fire has been turned off, but it sure did look like I roasted the lot of us.

** I have yet to see a John Wick in the wild.

Gunbird is a fantasy/steampunk-themed vertical arcade shooter by Psikyo that has been ported to Nintendo Switch by Zerodiv. This was my first Psikyo game and I found it a little underwhelming after primarily playing modern bullet hells, but I've come to appreciate its straightforwardness and comparative simplicity. I picked this game up understanding a lot of the Psikyo ports would feel fairly interchangeable and it seemed like the best of their non-military shooters. (That designation has since gone to Dragon Blaze, a more complex game I'll discuss in another post).

The Zerodiv ports are all well-done and provide keymapping, TATE mode, and other comforts. As with the other Psikyo ports, Gunbird has 7 difficulty levels (the easiest being "monkey," thanks Psikyo), includes rapid-fire, and features a basic two-button shot/charge-shot/bomb attack palette. The basic game structure includes 4 levels in random order followed by 3 ordered stages. As with other Psyikyo shooters, the campy storyline involves characters seeking four somethings (in this case, pieces of a mirror) to confront a big bad. There are 5 playable characters who can be leveled up 4 times each. The comically-incompetent enemy pirates are called the Trump, and though I could most certainly go the rest of my life without ever hearing the word "Trump," I'll accept it in this instance.

Gunbird is a game best played for the love of the old-time arcade shoot bullet game. There is no scoring complexity to speak of, it's just an old-style shooter with a dodgy translation. On the one hand, I'm glad Zerodiv is bringing these old arcade shooters to the Switch and the Switch portable is a great fit for this type of game. On the other hand, it's likely only genre enthusiasts will appreciate the minute differences between games like Gunbird and the Aero Fighters series.

When I originally wrote this post Gunbird 2 had been announced for May. It has now been pushed back to June with no definitive release date. Apparently Gunbird 2's second loop is held in high esteem in the STG community and the game is among Psikyo's most difficult, so while my feelings toward Gunbird are fairly lukewarm I am looking forward to Gunbird 2's release. It will probably be the last Psikyo team offering I add to my library unless someone ports Cho Aniki. (Is there a god? Stay tuned!)

edit: Gunbird 2 drops 6/21, hooray

Deathsmiles is a goth-cute-em-up-that-went-to-hell-and-innocently-flirted-with-Satan bi-directional horizontal arcade bullet hell by Cave. The Steam port includes Mega Black Label, a remixed mode with an additional character, as well as arcade and 1.1 arrange modes. You control 4 to 5 young girls who blast their way through a Halloween-landscape of ghouls and ghosties to stop a madman from opening a gate to hell or something something, there's a tyranno-devil at the end.

This was the first modern horizontal shooter I really got into and a bit of an oddity for Cave. A full run of the main 6 stages is about 30 minutes and it's a fun game with creative boss designs. Mary the Cow provides an example of the game's eccentricity. You can select level order via an overworld map, and depending on the mode you can choose between difficulty levels 1 to 3 or 999 (MBL's God mode, essentially). Infinite continues make this game accessible to newcomers and arcade/normal with slowdown probably makes it one of Cave's easier shooters, though 999 difficulty + the bonus stage provides a solid challenge for veterans to say the least.

The cheevs are all over the place. There are cheeves for all the ending variants (each girl has 2) and 1CC, so you have to beat the game a minimum of 15 times (realistically, you're not going to 1CC your first or second run) for the ending cheevs alone, and the "vanilla" cheevs don't trigger at all in 1.1 or MBL which is kind of annoying. There are also a handful of nonsense cheevs that need to be researched, and I repeatedly failed to trigger some of them, so if you're a perfect game kind of player this one may have you pulling your hair out.

I quite enjoy this game, but I'm not inspired for 1CC or scoring, it's really just a fun way to blow off some steam. If it were shorter I'd probably run it more often. As it is, it's long enough to feel like a commitment; the way the cheevs are set, I feel like I need to do a full run each time to chip away at my completion percentage.

Blazing Star is a Neo Geo arcade horizontal shooter by Yumekobo that has been ported to Nintendo Switch by Hamster. BS and it's elder sibling, Pulstar (also on Switch), are regarded as the definitive Neo Geo shooters. I tried this game on MAME, enjoyed it, and was really happy to find a port on Switch.

I've played a few of the Zerodiv Psikyo ports but this was my first ACA game and coming to it driectly from MAME VCS I'm impressed with Hamster's treatment. The game comes with both the English and Japanese arcade versions (the game is mostly in English, so the only difference is a few text sections in Japanese), a High Score mode, and a Caravan mode (High Score capped at 5 minutes). There are a myriad of display options, including screen dimension adjustments, shaders, you name it. They've also added modern accessibility features such as autofire (enabled through control options for arcade mode only) and an interruption save slot, which isn't strictly needed as the Switch has a sleep mode but it's a nice feature.

Blazing Star may be best known for how chatty it is. The game uses voiceover and text to announce incoming powerups, enemies, and bosses ("Brace yourself! It's not time to relax yet!"); congratulates your victories ("You beat it! Your skill is great!"); and expresses incredulity when you die ("Seriously?!"). It's not quite Dimahoo-level enthusiasm but it is infectious. It features 6 ships for a variety of playstyles and offers the standard collectibles and powerups as well as LUCKY letters for a bonus. Ships have a regular attack and a more powerful shot that can be charged, adding some versatility. There are 8 levels and all are visually interesting, with the latter few involving some tricky mazework and a lot of bullets.

My main gripe is enemy bullets are sometimes the same color as the player's, which causes visual confusion that is compounded based on difficulty and if you're in 2-player coop. Otherwise, it's a fun and colorful shooter that offers forgiving early levels and brutal later levels and an incredibly weird fetal final boss that... sprouts other fetuses, IDK man it's creepy.

This is a game primarily for fun and scoring. 1CC is evidently possible, I'll just leave it at that; have fun. I greatly prefer vertical shooters and this is the first non-danmaku horizontal shooter I've enjoyed enough for multiple playthroughs.

Hamster has been steadily publishing Neo Geo MVS titles and while these games are of varying quality, it is really wonderful the current generation of players has a chance to legally purchase and play otherwise inaccessible titles at a reasonable price. Playing Blazing Star on the original hardware is prohibitive, but you can play on current gen for a paltry $8 USD. That's the cost of a hot lunch. It really doesn't get much better.