Shmupsnstuff

Good on you for reporting on this!

The central idea of this is completely flawed. Through all its various controller innovations, Nintendo continued to create 'standard' games themselves and - to a greater or lesser extent in different gens - get third-party games on their systems.

This points to two important things:

In the past no company has ever gone so far as to create a controller or hardware that could not be used to also play 'normal' games.

In the future, companies can continue to innovate with input methods and 'normal' games will still be playable using that controller - developers can choose to make use of whatever innotations it has or not as they see fit.

@jobvd I believe this is its first ever console release. Don't quote me on that, but I can't find any information about any previous console release.

As someone with pretty much no interest in Animal Crossing...that's one of the best game articles I've read in a long time!

I see you're getting a lot of flak on Twitter for this line:

It’s the Sheffield United of football management games; ugly to watch and completely lacking in any flair, but effective enough to get results.

I'm not a Sheffield United fan at all myself, but, honestly, that flak is absolutely deserved. It's a stupid line that suggests a total lack of familiarity with the reality of how that team is actually playing. I'd suggest a quick edit, and I'd definitely remove that quote from Twitter.

Another great review! Apart from all the solid information, I actually just really like the way you write.

And nice sneaky little bonus Nirvana reference

Great review. To me, nicely treads the line between having all the details only a shmup fan would need and providing context for those with less experience.

@RadioHedgeFund No one wants to spend time in 'the hallway'. But because of the current layout, that's what we have to do. The whole point of making changes like adding folders or pinning applications is so you can get out the hallway and into the games more quickly.

Nintendo Life videos are always faaar too long. 22 minutes for a top ten accessories video? Come on. Pretty sure you'd get a lot more views if you cut all the rambling and made most of them a quarter as long.

I was quite interested in seeing what Ring Fit Adventure was like too, but, again, far too long for far too little actual content and I stopped watching after the first minute during which I essentially learned nothing about the game.

@Yorumi It's absolutely deceptive. In fact, unless they also want to stick up a few hundred more articles - one for each and every game and accessory and how their price is going up too - it wouldn't be unfair to call it a dirty piece of clickbait that any self-respecting site ought to consider beneath itself.

Nice review and very well deserved score. At the price, this is an absolute no-brainer.

@Haywired Hahaha!

@BulbasaurusRex "fanservice that...is included for no real purpose"

Included for no real purpose is essentially the definition of fan service.

@Arcade_Tokyo Difficulty's an odd one when reviewing shmups, isn't it? They're basically all hard so, if your audience is purely shmup fans, that's not worth mentioning, whereas if your audience is more general gamers, they will almost definitely need that information brought up.

Hard to find a way to suit everyone, but for Caladrius I'd still say (talking about normal difficulty here) it's a hard game overall, but not hard for its genre - if that makes sense.

While I enjoyed reading this - go check out the author's Arcade Tokyo blog for some of the best writing on the internet! - I do feel there are some pretty glaring inaccuracies / omissions here.

First, for its genre, this game is not notably hard. In fact, with its multiple difficulty levels, no hit option and stage select, it's actually remarkable for its accessibility. This isn't my opinion - the game IS in arguably the most notoriously difficult genre on earth and HAS these options.

Second, while the story is pretty dumb, it's far more developed than in most shmups and comes complete with multiple nicely rendered stills that can be viewed in an extensive gallery.

Third, I find it incredible that someone could review this game and not make mention of the scoring systems. These involve using only elemental weapons and offsetting the desire to up your multiplier against keeping your elementals charged adds an important layer to the gameplay. There are also extensive online and local leaderboards that put most shmups to shame (no pun intended).

Finally, as for the shame breaks...well, each to their own. I won't argue about them being unnecessary (although I will say that's an oddly utilitarian argument that would seem absurd in other contexts eg the comedy sketches in Gunbird), but I think the criticisn goes a little too far. Remember, there are two males who also get their clothes shredded and the 'shame' aspect is clearly referring less to the characters being shameless and more to their own embarrassment at being stripped, which is far more natural. Also, the game features an option allowing you to turn them off.

I'm fine with people having different opinions, but a lot of the above are not things that are up for debate - the game HAS these features and they're not mentioned or seemingly taken account of.

@sfb Thanks!

Can anyone who's played this on other systems tell me:

Is this specifically designed as a multiplayer game? Or is it just as fine in single-player?

@invictus4000 While I would understand someone saying this makes no difference to me or I don't care about this, if you genuinely "find absolutely no difference between a D-pad and the Switch directional buttons" then there's something very wrong with you.

@JayJ It's not about how people feel. People are free to feel what they like, but this is a professional publication and reviews aren't simply about stating what you 'feel' (although it's obvious that will also be a part of things).

The problem is this review describes a classic game in a very slick and feature rich package then awards it the same score as a budget and technically flawed game in the same genre.

I have no problem whatsoever with anyone saying they prefer Q-Yo Blaster to this, but there are objective measurements to consider too and it's unbelievable to say these two games are of the same quality.

@EmirParkreiner Yes, it's unbelievable that any serious site could give this and Q-Yo Blaster the same score. Reviews were done by different people, but that is going to be a ludicrous position to defend.

Also agree about this Vs the Psikyo ports. Great games, but often with NOTHING other than the game. This has so many options and ways to play with multiple high score tables online.

Not going to argue too much about one particular score, but you need consistency from a single publication.

I don't want to argue about the assessment in this review - everyone's entitled to an opinion - but there are a few things that make me think this was written based on a very limited play time.

There are more difficulties and many, many unlockable weapons beyond the shield and laser. The weapons particularly come so early it's hard to take this review seriously - especially comments about replayability.

@retro_player_22

The chart is not for next week. It's for last week (as in, the week before E3). You must be aware of this, right?

"Is this a pretty accurate retelling of what went down when you watched the video?"

No.

Well,so long as whoever's writing it isn't the same person doing the press release, because that screamed amateur.

A game like this depends a lot on good writing.

Anyone worked out what the actual obscenity @nhSnork is referring to is yet?