leet_x1337 said:
So anyway, enough about my own little discoveries - what games did you find without them being pushed into your face and wound up loving?
Most of games I have a pretty good idea of what to expect, especially with western AAA made games. Niche Indies and Japanese games due to their quirkiness are where I get most of my surprises.
I have to agree with you on the quality of the Exceed games which although looking like Touhou have a different playstyle to them. Exceed 3rd Black Package is one of my favorite shmups and has a good balance of intermediate difficulty and aggressive scoreplay.
My 2 big surprise shmups have to be:
1) Blue Wish Resurrection: My first bullethell shmup that I found while looking for some good freeware games to play. And boy was I bowled over by all the mayhem onscreen, similar to Exceed 3rd it plays like a easy CAVE shmup with slow moving bullets which makes it much easier to learn to play these games.
2) Crimson Clover [Yotsubanes] A fantastic mix of Rayforce & CAVE bullet hell, the break mode super weapon is good enough, but the first time I went into double break mode and the screen fills with your beam of death is so over the top and I love it!
Non STGs
3) Recettear: Running an item shop doesn't sound like fun to me, but wow was I wrong.
4) Noitu Love 2: I tend to not like 2D sidescrollers that are m&k controlled at they tend to lose much of the gameplay that makes sidescrollers fun in the first place. But somehow Konjak was able to make a 2D m&k game that have a good arcade game feel to it.
5) Fortune Summoners: This was panned by most folk who said the controls where bad, its quite the opposite infact, they are just oldschool like a NES castlevania or fighter rather than a crappy instant attack button masher like Castle Crashers that most of us are spoiled with nowadays. The enemies have the best AI ive ever seen in a 2D sidescroller.
6) Gungirl 2: Ive played the original which is fun (both freeware) but the sequel is really impressive! Plays similar to Cave Story but as a 2D version of Dead Rising with awesome weapons and zombies to wail through. Feels so good!
7) Y's Origin, such a tight and action paced 2D Zelda type game, fantastic balancing and great boss fights, almost zero grinding.
