Eric Bratcher reports:
''Castle of Shikigami is one of those games that we really wish we saw more of these days. It's a vertical "bullet hell" 2D shooter, which basically means there are more pink death blobs in the in-game sky than there are paparazzi hanging out at Britney Spears' neighborhood McDonald's. It's challenging, it's colorful, the controls are blessedly simple (no motion-waggling required), its dialogue is wonderfully campy and wacky.
It's deeper than you first imagine, with ten playable characters - not ships, characters, because these folks don't need machines; they just fly around on their own spitting fireballs and laser beams. Each has different shot patterns and special attacks, and you choose two at a time, swapping between them at will. Also, two players can play cooperatively, a cool feature every shooter should have. If this were a downloadable title on WiiWare, Xbox Live Arcade, or PlayStation Network, it's a safe bet that we'd be telling you to go fire up your console and start it downloading right now.''
When a gamer hears the phrase "arcade shooter," they're likely to think Time Crisis or House Of The Dead. It's doubtful one would immediately focus on the sub-genre of bullet hell.
The GUFU Blog writes: "SHMUPs or Shoot-em Ups, are some of the oldest video game genres in existence. It’s true. Even before games like Ultima and Wizardy – shooters preceded them all. It all started in 1978 with the release of Space Invaders. A revolutionary game by the Japanese developer known as Taito which still makes arcade boards and other video games. More than 30 years later since the release of the original. Now, in the year 2010.
The genre has became one of the least accessible and is literally never mentioned in mainstream video games. Even Rogue-like fans who recently got The Dark Spire and Shiren The Wanderer are laughing at fans of the shooter genre. Here is a blog totally dedicated to the dying genre. I will include some recommendations for beginners, hybrid shmups, and what I think are the best games and developers in the genre. Before I begin, these are merely my opinions and shouldn’t be considered anything more than that."
Dabe writes "Here is a top 5 list of the worst video game voice acting work, including a special mentions section at the end for some truly incredulous entries that couldn’t make this list of horrendous proportions. Anyways, without further ado, descend the page and descend into the madness of poorly scripted and translated Japanese imports..."
I agree Resident evil had some bad voice acting, and lets not forget the horrible FMV as an intro, but let's be real here, that was part of the charm of that game, it was for me anyways.
