Anyone buy LAST HOPE: PINK BULLETS for Dreamcast?

[fishsandwich]

I just got this in the mail and I was wondering what some of you shooter fans thought of it. I thought the original Last Hope was a bit difficult and I am curious to know if changing the bullet colour has made a big differance.

Nice to see yet another shooter release for the Dreamcast, even if it is a re-hash of a souped-up homebrew in a bright pink DVD case.

Anyone know of any other shooters in development? I thought DUX was pretty good.

[ubersaurus]

I got mine about a week ago. I've only put a bit of time into it, but it definitely has a different feel than the original. The redone levels and more consistent blocking for your shield definitely contribute to that. I also appreciate the less brutal difficulty and instant respawns, though I did enjoy slogging through the original. This one is more of a "pick up and play for a few" revision.

[Ed Oscuro]

Developer RHE has consistently been...ahh, how do I say it - highly entertaining on Shmups Forum. So very glad I didn't get the original release due to the alleged shenanigans some people encountered trying to upgrade to Pink Bullets, and also because, well, the game was broke. I suppose I'll try to get a copy of Pink Bullets sometime if the price is right, though.

I'm not sure if DUX would make me go blind, as Thunder Dragon II tries, or would just dazzle me stupid.

[ubersaurus]

Developer RHE has consistently been...ahh, how do I say it - highly entertaining on Shmups Forum. So very glad I didn't get the original release due to the alleged shenanigans some people encountered trying to upgrade to Pink Bullets, and also because, well, the game was broke. I suppose I'll try to get a copy of Pink Bullets sometime if the price is right, though.

I'm not sure if DUX would make me go blind, as Thunder Dragon II tries, or would just dazzle me stupid.

I don't know about shenanigans, I upgraded from my OG Last Hope release painlessly. And LH wasn't broken, it was just tough as nails. Shmups forum guys don't seem to like anything unless it's Cave style "million of bullets" type games, to be honest. It's like they actively try to fill the caricature those games paint for them.

Quite frankly if someone can play and love R-Type or Pulstar without nostalgia, then Last Hope's fine. Hell, *I* beat it, and I suck at most shooters.

[Ed Oscuro]

Alright, time to play the game so I can speak to it personally. I hope to update soon with some information about what I think. That said, it was just endlessly amusing to follow the whole ordeal that I couldn't ever forget many of the major points from the release, however.

Anyway, Uber - there were plenty of other shenanigans we were both around for, for example -

This page and post really kicked it off. Note RHE mentioning that people with smaller TVs suffer, saying "Understand a games concept first, then complaining about it [sic]." Then telling people to get rid of their TVs if the contrast is bad for them, and so on.

And LH wasn't broken, it was just tough as nails.

There's a score-busting bug in one of the early levels (EDIT: RHE tells me it was DUX, not this game, but in my mind they have yet to put out a polished game). Sharpnel looks like bullets. Japanese player review used the term "クソゲー" even.

Shmups forum guys don't seem to like anything unless it's Cave style "million of bullets" type games, to be honest.

Yet some folk on [http://www.neogeoforlife.com/forum/v...id=29210]other websites like EVERYTHING[/url] (see post #2). For myself, I don't think a single Cave game has ever gone in my Annual Top 25, simply because I haven't played enough or liked them enough.

Shmups people don't like being roped in a second time for what is obviously an attempt to fix some bugs and mysterious gameplay design flaws, as one poster writes.

The team behind Last Hope and DUX now have failed to produce bug-free shooters in their first attempt both times they've tried - DUX owners had to have a bug fixed disc sent to them.

Reading about the bug and the missing loops, I am so goddamn glad that I cancelled my order of this game a day before its release.

And I have to say the way RHE behaves (his arrogant demeanour towards his customers in the course of this whole thread, his unwillingness to admit his mistakes, always having the last word and giving sloppy answers) leaves me the feeling that I maybe do not want to support such a person in his future projects.

I think we can all learn something important from that: :idea:
It shows how much damage a bad puplic relations department can do to a company. And that not everybody is suited for such a job.

I really hope that he will reconsider the way he presents himself in this forum.

http://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=26441

More than anybody wanted to hear, I know.

[ubersaurus]

I can't say I am familiar with this score bug in LH Dreamcast. Do tell! Quite frankly the game doesn't strike me as high-score friendly; the focus on the original always felt to me to be survival. I heard about the DUX bug though, which is why I've decided to wait for the bugfix release. What gameplay design flaws though? Seriously, if it's the bullet thing I had no problem differentiating them on the standard release, and continue to think everyone who did just wasn't very observant :P

RHE can be kind of a dick, but considering the sheer amount of shit people give him on the site that is clearly not always founded in reality, I can't blame him a whole lot.

[Ed Oscuro]

I'm looking for details of the scoring bug...bear with me!

Edited my post above, dunno if it's worth looking through for a check if I wrote anything objectionable - tried to go over the rough outline of events to highlight RHE's amazing idea of customer service (after his evangelizing in the original Last Hope thread failed to reach 100% popular acceptance, he created another thread titled "On a serious note about Last Hope" and sidestepped criticisms both unserious and legitimate).

I also think...I don't want to dwell on it, but, well, I take umbrage with this quote:

IIt's like they actively try to fill the caricature those games paint for them.

I take your meaning as that people on Shmups appear spastic or demented, or something. You can get this sort of reaction from true believers anywhere, but you have to consider that on Shmups Forum a game isn't really good unless you can dedicate years to it and still enjoy it. Twiddle and I would consider Raiden Fighters Jet such a game, for example; Rob likes Mars Matrix and Gunbird 2, and so on.

I am as guilty of stockpiling games without playing them as anyone, but lately I have been noticing that I don't buy games simply because they look cool or something as much as I had. Thinking about all the things that are awesome which I still don't have, it becomes more apparent that it's futile to be scattershot in giving out appreciations of games which do not have apparent quality proven to persist in the long run; and it's futile to give respect to somebody who does not carefully consider fan criticisms valid, ever, and even suggests that they don't consider "fun" as important as they do, and so on.

And as you say, if somebody can enjoy games like R-Type or Pulstar without feeling nostalgia - to go further, if they can enjoy playing a shooter casually instead of for scoring - what's wrong with thinking that it's likewise OK not to insist on high levels of production quality?

I like to "support the community," but to get help you first have to be willing to accept it, you know?

considering the sheer amount of shit people give him on the site that is clearly not always founded in reality,

I don't want this to spill over, but in looking through those old topics, all of it had some foundation in reality, except for a picture of a certain Uwe giving the bird (which prompted an apology from the poster of it, later).

[Ed Oscuro]

Update: Got two credits in on the NGCD version via Raine, 25K (reached the boss)...I've played better. Visibility is still pretty bad, and I notice that in the first stage the big worm things don't seem to directly threaten me at all.

[ubersaurus]

My meaning actually was that the caricature of the shmup player today is someone who is hardcore about the bullet hell subgenre, which is in itself the extreme end of the game spectrum. I take umbrage with the disproportional dislike the loudest forum users in general seem to have for tube or arena shooters or static screen shooters or, well, even other types of "normal" shooters that don't have those bullet patterns. Playing for high score is fine, I can get that. Hell most of those guys are better at those games than I ever will be.

My personal view, as one of the largely drowned out minority on that page, is that Last Hope - at least the DC version I played - gets a bad rap because it's pretty much strictly a memorization game. That's really the sort of shooter it is, it's the sort of shooter those guys set out to make, and it isn't for everyone. You have trouble with the bullets, I didn't have any difficulty differentiating it from shrapnel. Like i said, I beat the game, I had a lot of fun with it, and it's one of my favorite indie games. The remake makes it more "accessible" I think, which works out fine for most people.

As I said, RHE is kind of a dick, but he gets a lot of shit on that site. Hell I think he took some of those criticisms to heart when he made DUX, which the only complaints I've heard involves the scoring bug :P But then, I don't frequent that site too often. Some of the frequent posters on there drive me nuts.

[Ed Oscuro]

My meaning actually was that the caricature of the shmup player today is someone who is hardcore about the bullet hell subgenre, which is in itself the extreme end of the game spectrum. I take umbrage with the disproportional dislike the loudest forum users in general seem to have for tube or arena shooters or static screen shooters or, well, even other types of "normal" shooters that don't have those bullet patterns.

Ima let you finish, but all the criticism I saw was focused on the game being a weak addition to the subgenre R-Type and Pulstar are found in, and I know most of the players who criticized it are fans of older shooters like R-Type. I don't play anything much newer (in design) than Armed Police Batrider, for instance, and play a lot of stuff from the Fire Shark / Soldier Blade era. Not so big on horizontal shooters but I enjoyed some P-47 Aces recently, and I play Gradius Galaxies lately.

Yes, there was a discussion about memorization; forcing somebody to play stages multiple times to learn them because shooting enemies before they can shoot at you works better than having good shmup skills is the sign of a bad game design, the end. The player ought to feel that they are being rewarded for having good skills instead of constrained waiting around in an otherwise boring game waiting for the next Dragon's Lair button push moment. This is coming from somebody who thinks that planes coming from behind and sniper tanks are just fine, and caravan games too (as seen in Thunder Dragon II, this week's STGT '09 competition game; the difference there is that stages are both memorization-intensive but also make you work on your skills, and bosses tend to be more coordination intensive).

[Sosage]

I just want to know what Xoxak thinks.

[Ed Oscuro]

I just want to know what Xoxak thinks.

I only saw him post one thing on the game which was only tangentially related...

Also, had to update my posts above because the scoring bug is in DUX, not Last Hope; I apologize.

[fishsandwich]

Well, I had a chance to play it and compare it to the original and I must say that I do like Pink Bullets quite a bit better. It's not as hard and some of the new features are pretty cool. I'm just happy to have another DC shooter in my collection, even if it's one I already had before anyway.