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Darius
Dec 4, 2015 11:25:11 GMT -5
Post by Discoalucard on Dec 4, 2015 11:25:11 GMT -5
I was pretty tepid on the original Darius Burst, but this package is solid all around. I still feel the core game is a step back in a few ways - it's missing the abilities to capture mid-bosses, and the stages still lack the colorful trippiniess and exotic environments of Gaiden/G-Darius. But it's somewhat made up for the fact that there are tons of ships, the various Burst lasers are cool, and the level design, with the huge swarms of enemies, is a lot of fun. The music is great too - the CS Mode has a lot of tracks from the older games. Still waiting to hear some G-Darius music though.
The "3000+" stages comes from the various stages/bosses re-arranged into different scenarios and fought under different conditions. You're not supposed to beat all of them, but rather you share an online "cabinet" on a cloud server with other gamers, and work together to unlock new missions. Some of them are inaccessible in the Vita version because they require multiplayer, which the system does not offer. There's also the CS Mode, which has a similar concept, but reworked a bit with a few extra challenge types, plus it's designed for the home port aspect ratio (which is...18:9, maybe? It's still letterboxed) rather than the 32:9 arcade screen ratio. I forget how many stages are here but these are all playable in the Vita version, but it doesn't have the cabinet cloud feature.
I'm gonna be scrapping this article soon and probably just post a review of Darius Burst CS, then update the rest of the article as it's completed. We've got the cover done for the next digest (scheduled in February next year, hopefully) which features Darius and Elevator Action Returns, which I'll be revealing in a bit.
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Darius
Dec 4, 2015 12:24:17 GMT -5
Post by ReyVGM on Dec 4, 2015 12:24:17 GMT -5
Hopefully you can also add that stuff I posted years ago in this thread
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Darius
Dec 4, 2015 12:33:04 GMT -5
Post by Allie on Dec 4, 2015 12:33:04 GMT -5
[...]the CS Mode has a lot of tracks from the older games. Still waiting to hear some G-Darius music though. All I ask for are "Captain Neo" and "Visionnerz".
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Darius
Dec 4, 2015 13:21:30 GMT -5
Post by Discoalucard on Dec 4, 2015 13:21:30 GMT -5
All I ask for are "Captain Neo" and "Visionnerz". Visionnerz is. Usually there are "themes" to the chosen set of stages, so any stage that starts with Visionnerz has a few other tracks from Darius Gaiden. No Captain Neo yet but I'd be really really surprised if it wasn't there. There was a set of stages with Darius II music (Olga Breeze, etc).
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Post by zilliont on Dec 6, 2015 5:25:08 GMT -5
Chronicle Mode (think of it as a multiplayer-capable Mission Mode) also uses themes from previous games in the series in certain stages, where it usually limits you to using either the standard Legend ship or one of the old-school ships (Origin, Second, Gaiden amd Genesis). I do feel, however, that G Darius is sadly under-represented in this game Instead of having a stock of Capture Balls like it did on its original game, the Genesis ship has (destroyable) options which can be set to various positions, including a very Gradius-like one. It DOES have a different Burst mechanic than most other ships, however, which is actually very similar to G Darius' Alpha Beams (as in, you don't need crazy-good timing and accuracy to counter-burst, but to balance things out you can't use the Fixed Burst nor cancel your beam mid-burst to save meter). Some of these traits are shared with the Murakumo ship, too, and I didn't hear any songs from the game being re-used... yet.
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Darius
Dec 6, 2015 10:23:53 GMT -5
Post by Discoalucard on Dec 6, 2015 10:23:53 GMT -5
I read somewhere the Murakamo was based on the plane from Scramble Mission. One of the Chronicle Mode songs played some songs I didn't recognize, so I'm assuming it was from there. I should probably give that game a shot.
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Darius
Jan 8, 2016 11:52:41 GMT -5
Post by Magma MK-II on Jan 8, 2016 11:52:41 GMT -5
First DLC for Chronicle Saviours confirmed. We'll get content from Rayforce, Night Striker and Metal Black.
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Darius
Jan 18, 2016 2:30:05 GMT -5
Post by Discoalucard on Jan 18, 2016 2:30:05 GMT -5
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Darius
Jan 19, 2016 17:01:47 GMT -5
Post by Discoalucard on Jan 19, 2016 17:01:47 GMT -5
Okay, finished up tweaking the Darius article, again linked here: www.hardcoregaming101.net/darius/darius.htmThis was rewritten almost entirely from scratch. The major issue with the article's original incarnation is that it was really harsh on the first two arcade entries (and both SNES games) and weren't really put into proper historical context. I still think the original Darius is kinda boring, but it's still an accomplishment considering it was released in 1986 (well, Japanese Wikipedia says 1987, but the title screen says 1986). Replaying it I ended up having a better opinion of Darius II also, though mostly thanks to its ports. (I still think Gaiden and G-Darius are easily the best...Burst has some great stuff and a ton of content but its art design is relatively lacking.) There was also a lot of missing information regarding some of the ports (especially the particulars of the PCE games), as well as missing the bizarre European computer versions, so that's been added. It also includes a rundown of all four versions of Darius Burst. (The original article was posted long before Burst was released, and was not updated to include it.) Even though I'm posting this publicly, this article is still kind of a prototype. We haven't finished fully editing the article for the book so we're still cleaning up small bits and pieces, plus there are a lot of details (especially regarding Burst) that I want to make sure we get right before we put it in print, so also please consider this something like a "peer review" phase. If anything looks wrong, please post!
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Darius
Jan 19, 2016 17:22:07 GMT -5
Post by Neo Rasa on Jan 19, 2016 17:22:07 GMT -5
I'm glad you updated the article, though now that it's in so much detail the amusing days of new PCE collectors dropping $3,000 on Darius Alpha and then being flabbergasted to find out it's just a boss rush are over. :/ First DLC for Chronicle Saviours confirmed. We'll get content from Rayforce, Night Striker and Metal Black.
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Darius
Jan 19, 2016 17:30:16 GMT -5
Post by Discoalucard on Jan 19, 2016 17:30:16 GMT -5
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Darius
Jan 20, 2016 6:44:37 GMT -5
Post by qishmish on Jan 20, 2016 6:44:37 GMT -5
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Darius
Jan 20, 2016 8:43:17 GMT -5
Post by Magma MK-II on Jan 20, 2016 8:43:17 GMT -5
Really excellent update!
You could add a picture of the second boss from Space Invaders 95, which is basically a big sushi bowl with Darius bosses.
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Darius
Jan 20, 2016 12:52:53 GMT -5
Post by TΛPETRVE on Jan 20, 2016 12:52:53 GMT -5
Darius Burst CS really is the tits. A shame that it'll very likely remain a singular affair, seeing how the shmup market is otherwise very much entirely dominated by dull and monotonous bullet hell crap, whereas the classic shooter genre is pretty much completely dead.
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Darius
Jan 20, 2016 17:35:51 GMT -5
Post by windfisch on Jan 20, 2016 17:35:51 GMT -5
Okay, finished up tweaking the Darius article, again linked here: www.hardcoregaming101.net/darius/darius.htmThis was rewritten almost entirely from scratch. The major issue with the article's original incarnation is that it was really harsh on the first two arcade entries (and both SNES games) and weren't really put into proper historical context. I still think the original Darius is kinda boring, but it's still an accomplishment considering it was released in 1986 (well, Japanese Wikipedia says 1987, but the title screen says 1986). Replaying it I ended up having a better opinion of Darius II also, though mostly thanks to its ports. (I still think Gaiden and G-Darius are easily the best...Burst has some great stuff and a ton of content but its art design is relatively lacking.) There was also a lot of missing information regarding some of the ports (especially the particulars of the PCE games), as well as missing the bizarre European computer versions, so that's been added. It also includes a rundown of all four versions of Darius Burst. (The original article was posted long before Burst was released, and was not updated to include it.) Even though I'm posting this publicly, this article is still kind of a prototype. We haven't finished fully editing the article for the book so we're still cleaning up small bits and pieces, plus there are a lot of details (especially regarding Burst) that I want to make sure we get right before we put it in print, so also please consider this something like a "peer review" phase. If anything looks wrong, please post! Thanks, as someone who really enjoys the special feel of this series, I appreciate the update a lot! It is cool to have Burst finally included and a game like Force deserves a least some praise - unfortunately it is also really, really hard.. However, I am a little dissapointed that the part about the Gameboy Sagaia still only consists of a few sentences and two screenshots. Since it is not a mere port (as pointed out in the article), the whole paragraph could be a lot longer. I believe, that it is one of the best shoot em ups for the system, only rivaled by Nemesis 2 (which also was mentioned much too briefly in the Gradius article), Parodius and ZAS.
Because of its power up system Sagaia's level of difficulty is not as balanced as it is in the aforementioned titles, but it really makes up for it in substance AND style: With 8 stages it is longer than most GB shmups (except for Parodius) and the stages are really well designed, with rhythmic, diverse and challenging enemy and obstacle placement. On the presentation side the bosses are some of the biggest and most detailed ever seen on the tiny handheld (and manage to convey the same charm of the arcade/console versions), it runs quite smoothly with only mild occasions of slowdowns and flickering, while featuring parallax scrolling and lots of sprites on screen a the same time. And hearing Zuntata-music in its most basic chiptune-form is a really sublime experience Overall I consider it a better game than Twin or the GBA port of the first Darius. I would even say that GB- Sagaia flows better than the original arcade Darius in terms of gameplay.
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