Absolutely nothing beats the sensation of recklessly climbing upscreen on 4/5ths meter to swipe a flashing bee before making The Transcendental Gear Shift from hunted to hunter, popping hyper and sliding back downscreen, at a glorious, delicious 6 frames per second as wave after wave of hyper wide shot completely vaporizes the next several seconds of carefully curated level design. The ability to completely subvert certain sections of stages and boss phases through DFK’s stupid overpowered hyper makes 1cc/1all/2all/etc. attempts double as deeply compelling resource management puzzles and snappy shmup gameplay gauntlets. CAVE cranking the knobs on player strength (hyper, strong autobomb, always max power, etc.) and enemy strength (laser wheels, laser wheels, laser wheels, etc.) works really well and makes DFK feel really unique both as a DoDonPachi release and as a shmup in general.

At last, it is time for you to die. Farewell.

I got DDP Resurrection because I watched a review for a switch release of DDP DOJ, and then bought the wrong game. This game feels so WILD, you're pushed to be super aggressive, something the generous auto-bomb system seems to hint at... in the few stages I tried to learn (just 1-1 and 1-2) it felt like you had to be really preventative, like quickly managing all the escalating risks that would fly onto the screen - on top of the actual bullet avoidance. Being able to hyper your way out of a situation or to play it safe felt really cool.

I appreciate all the thought that goes into the design, the subtle ways in which bullet patterns escalate and build on each other, the fun of learning stages and then pulling the whole thing off in the end.

Of all things, shmups remind me the most of being a kid and trying to memorize songs on the piano, working through harder sections one at a time to try and pull the whole thing off ("Playing for Survival") and then going back and actually working in personal flair/expression ("Playing for Score"). Sort of like with shmups, I never really got too much into that hobby as a 'soloist' beyond playing in orchestra/band. And I don't think shmups and playing music are really that alike, but there does seem to be something similar in how you have to train/learn at both, and the way in which stuff that feels impossible slowly becomes possible.

Actually, it's hard not to try and compare shmups to many things in life! They (like other arcade games) really distill the whole difficulty/learning thing down to some pure essence. But in particular, these bullet hell shmups feel like they're compressing that essence even further - it's an interesting design space to learn from and experience.

cave games have been my ultimate come to since the beginning of this year lol
dodonpachis ost is amazing and shines through (black label ost even better), the numerous modes you can play with give it some variety while, no matter what ship you selected, stage 5 will be the death of you. the shooting patterns are nice, the story is pretty decent for a shmup giving this game some depth as to why the game is restarting over and over from the start. overall i think this is really one of the peak cave games :)