Love, Love +, Love Custom: Freeware Game Review

 Here is another masocore triology of platformers called Love (classic), Love + and Love Custom. All three are nearly the same as each other just with changed levels. Because of that I’ll be mostly writing about classic Love. Programmed by Fred “Trunks” Wood who is one half of the creative talent behind the web comic The Wild Adventures of Trunks and Soto. He is currently at collage studying game design. Given that Love is his first project, it will be interesting to see what games he’ll make in the future.

 The aim of Love is simple, get to the exit of each of the 20 levels without fully depleting your stock of 100 lives. A hundred lives may seem like a hell of allot, but they don’t last long with all of the tricky jumps you need to perform to reach the levels exit. Since you will be dieing so much the programmer has been kind enough to give you a button that lets you create a respawn point anywhere you like as long as you’re not in mid air. This feature can be a double edged sword if you create a spawn point in a trap or next to one making you lose many lives in quick succession due to there been no invulnerability after dieing. I can see this frustrating players but I think it add a element of risk and strategy that I very much like. Also how some of the stages are designed you might find yourself setting a spawn point in a dead-end trap with no way of getting out. Luckily you can both kill yourself and reset your spawn point to the start of the level with a press of a button.

Here is one of the 5 hidden screens found by pressing a

direction on the d-pad while changing between levels

 You will of noticed that the graphics are very simple, with only a colour palette of 2 or 3 colours in a level and a stick man as your avatar. The simple graphics go hand in hand with the simple gameplay of there been no enemies to fight or dodge, it's just pure and simple jumping. Games like this that are simple with no frills are in my opinion like electronic marmite. Either you’ll dismiss the simplicity as primitive and boring. Or if yor're like me, you will take the opposite viewpoint, appreciate the game for what it is: That is a game that while simple still retains at it's core enjoyable playability and good game design making a very fun and addictive little plat former. Titles like this, Jill Off, and the shmups Nomltest and Arcanacra all have it. To further improve on the simple style of Love, Fred Wood the programmer has enlisted the help of music artist James Bennett to provide the tunes and very good tunes they are. They’re a mix of blip, synth and funk, each song fitting very well to the theme of the level that it plays in. This shows Fred Woods talent as a indie game maker. As its ok to have simple looking graphics in a video game as long as there is a style to it, but good sounds and music are must and given that they stick to the flavour of the game as a whole can make for a enjoyable experience, more so then a game with good graphics and bad sounds.

The simple graphics you will either love or hate, kinda like marmite spread

 Love Classic is a great game but what about Love + and Love Custom? Well Love + is a still beta with only 10 levels made up mostly of refined stages from the classic version. Other changes include your character having slightly altered jumping especially on spring boards which don’t jump as high and are smaller in size. All the changes make for a harder game then the original which is in most aspects is a good thing. Although I do hope Fred Wood still uses some of those more powerful spring boards found in the classic game as it was allot of fun bouncing high into to air even if it was easy to bounce from spring to spring most of the time. The third and final game Love Custom is a different kettle of fish as it’s a simple tool that allows you to create and play you're own maps. It works by taking 3 picture files, one for solid platforms, one for springy surfaces and the other as traps where touching it means death. I haven’t made a stage myself and can’t as of yet find anybody else’s work on the net and the only example is the single stage included in the game, but it does look relatively easy to use all you to ensure are that all 3 pictures fit together properly. I really hope many people catch the map making bug and provide allot more content to jump through. The lack of stages between all three games is the only thing Love is lacking at the moment.

Like Mighty Jill Off, Love is freeware and a fun little game you can spend hours enjoying. Just remember to press Alt-Enter to get full screen in the classic version since the game in its original resolution is very small. 4.1 out of 5  Download the Love games at this site.

Mighty Jill Off - Freeware Game Review

 Hi chaps sorry for my absence for over a month which was caused by my PC biting the dust. Well I’ve bought a new PC and am back. First I would love to cover some indie platformers, this review been Mighty Jiff Off a tower climbing game by Auntie Pixelante aka Dessgeega. If you look at the video and screenshots you might remember the character looking very much like Bomb Jack which is a fun 80s arcade game (that had some great 8bit computer ports) and also Mighty Bomb Jack which took Bomb Jack and put him into a NES platformer. Instead of Bomb Jack, Auntie Pixelante has changed Jack into Jill, a rubber suit wearing dyke who enjoys S&M and licking her queen's boots! Hehe that’s quite a transformation, that with the games introduction makes the game very much tongue in cheek. (or boot)

 The object of the game is quite simple, climb to the top of the tower as quick as you can where your queen is waiting for you with open arms and err rope and whip. The controls are just like Bomb Jack where you can jump very high and if you tap the jump button Jill will use her cape to glide slowly down. Using glide you can dodge all the traps that fill the tower. Those been fire and spikes plus the games only enemies, that are spider like monsters that you encounter first as statues that if you get too close will turn into spider monsters that slowly home in on you. I like the graphics especially the limited colour palette that makes the game look just like an old NES game. The retro feel is further pushed across by the game's music that is a simple blip tune that fits well with the game's style.

 The game is known as a masocore (look up this definition) but I would say that Jill Off is a masocore lite due to the game been relatively easy. Things change if you reach the top of the tower in under 12 minutes (or donate a dollar to Dessgeega to get a code) you'll get to play Jill Off Harder which is a second tower that is much harder then the first one. He you will need to make pixel perfect jumps and will very much frustrate the player. The game is even more frustrating but in a bad non-masocore way due to there been a bug in the second tower. If you die in one area of the tower it will respawn you half way in the floor with no option but to quit the game and start from the beginning. And by that I mean the first tower as you need to climb the first tower under 12 minutes just to play Jill Off Harder every time you start that game. Also like most of the games I’ve reviewed there is no joypad support so JoyToKey or Xpadder will be needed. (If your a Windows 7 user like me, to use the free version of Xpadder you'll need to run it in compatibility mode otherwise the program wont run.)

The game has been out for quite some time now and if you haven’t yet played it you owe it to yourself to give it a go and see how quickly you can climb the towers. I can make the first tower in under ten and half minutes, and Auntie Pixelante can make both towers in about 8 or 9 minutes. So what’s 10 to 20 minutes of your time? Nothing that’s what. So there’s no excuse not to play. 3.9 out of 5.

 PS There is a mini game you can download from the same page as Mighty Jill Off. Its a simple game that only uses the jump button (along with the glide feature). Here you must try to stay alive as long as possible to entertain the queen.

Gaming Journal: Why Gradius 1 is so damn good

If your a old hand at Gradius then this article isn't for you, what I’m writing this for is for people who like me until very recently knew what Gradius is and had even played it once or twice, but other then that dismissed Gradius as old hat, a shmup that for someone who mostly plays modern manic verts, Gradius is a old style horizontal that contains all the things I hated about old shooters, that is no auto fire, speed ups, check points and last but not least cheap deaths, either by the enemies or the scenery. Cheap deaths are the one thing most hated by people who play modern shooters. For those who don’t know what “cheap deaths” are, What I’m talking about is how the games designed, when you a playing a shmup good game design would be no matter how hard the game gets, everything should be doable even if its your first time playing that part. If you're playing a shmup, are playing well and haven’t died yet, then all of a sudden the walls come crashing down or that enemy you let passed shoots a bullet at you after it’s off the screen. These sorts of things a called my many shmuppers as “cheap deaths” traps that you cannot avoid with having experienced it beforehand. Cheap deaths are what makes a shmup usually an old style horizontal, a memorizer as much of the difficulty lies in knowing exatly what lies ahead as the taxing your bullet dodging skills. As I mentioned before there is a large part of the shmupping comunity that plays only modern verts and genrally stays well away from the old school horizontal memorizer.

 Anyway I’m here to tell you guys that cheap deaths and all the other hated design features are not only ok in a game like Gradius, but nowadays I actually welcome them, only in hori shmups mind you, in verts especially manic I still think cheap deaths etc (apart from maybe check points) are a bad idea. You see in the past I’ve been playing Gradius and its hori cousins wrong, it’s no use playing a memorizer casually now and again  like I would any other vert danmaku. No the best way to play them is for completion be it 1CC, 1LC or whatever the important thing is to spend enough time that all the cheap deaths etc don’t matter anymore. You see unless you’re shmupping skills are god like, if you were to try to 1CC any moderately difficult shmup vert or hori, it would take you at least a week or two by that time you will have memorized the stages, bullet patterns and best ways to score, so weather the game has cheap deaths or not it really doesn’t matter anymore.

Stage 1 of the NES version

With this new understanding I found Gradius (in my case the NES version) a lot more approachable. You will probably know this since it’s well documented, that like Xevious for verts, Gradius was for the hori, introducing many aspects that make up memorizer type horizontals. Before Gradius all horizontal shmups played like Defender or Scramble (which was Konami’s previous shooter to Gradius). This makes Gradius a good place to start for anyone wanting to bust his hori 1CC cherry, since although Gradius NES is hard and the arcade original version is even harder, it’s not as hard as some of the later and more sophisticated hori memorizers that are classics. Anyway after a few credits of the game I got sick of always dieing at the stage 1 mid boss the volcano, I thought it best to read a strategy guide of the game. It’s a rule of mine to find out what make a particular shmup tick that I’m attempting to complete, it makes the game so much easier, although I think it’s good to read up on a shooter, I’ll stop at watching videos unless I'm totally stuck. A video can spoil shmups for me as its fun to try to work out routes myself, it’s like looking at the answer page of a crossword.

The boss at the end of most stages, you must "shoot the core"

It was interesting to find out that the NES version had hidden extras the other versions did not that is the hidden score and 1ups and the warps. The warps are that if you fulfilled certain requirements like destroying 10 moahs in stage 3 you would enter a warp where you had to dodge lots of flying moah heads and totally miss the next stage. This warp trick would have been very useful for anyone playing on the original console as a way to make practicing the later stages easier but for me on a emulator I saw it just cheapening the game so I rarely used them.

After playing for a couple of days I found easily get passed the first couple of stages, all I needed to do was to make sure I collected enough power ups so that I was fully kitted out with options and a shield. Even though the rank (difficulty) goes up the more weapons you have, been fully powered up makes the game so much easier but also makes the game allot harder if you die, this is funnily enough called the Gradius Syndrome, this makes the game practically a 1LC with some parts of the game nigh on impossible to get past fully powered down, stage 6 been the worse. This isn’t just a Gradius thing though, but Gradius brought to the genre of horizontal shmups R-type is another classic that excels at it. So while its ok to have a lapse or two of concentration while playing a danmaku, playing a hori you do need to be on the ball all the time, and considering many horizontals have more levels then the average modern vert, playing a hori is a test of endurance as well as a test of skill.

 Stages 2 and 3 including the famous moah heads

Trying to clear stage 3 was the first big hurdle I came across because of those infamous moah heads that fill the screen with projectiles, its quite a challenge and one that took a while to get past and I was playing the NES version, the arcade original is much harder as the top and bottom of the screen loops around and there is a extra row of moahs at the top of the screen. This is chopped off in the NES version and makes the top row the safest route most of the time. I found that it’s easier to swap from the laser weapon I had used in stage two over to the double shot in stage 3. Although clearing the bosses is easier with the laser, using the double with the missile (the ground hitting bombs) allowed me to hit the moahs above as well as below, although It does make activating the warp cheat easier since 10 destroyed moah heads activates it, something I would rather not but found myself doing a few times since it makes getting passed the moahs easier. Passed the moahs the stage 3 mid bosses are imo the hardest in the game if you like me most of the time not using auto fire. These ships called mothers would move across the screen one at a time releasing indestructible projectile babies of itself that are tough to dodge. If you are fully powered up the rank really makes a difference here increasing the number of mothers you had to get passed, the shield is certainly your friend here.

Stage four is not too difficult if powered up, it’s a repeat of stage one but upside down with the volcanoes at the top of the screen. Just make sure you have the double or option power ups so you can destroy any stray rocks at the inverted volcano. Stage five and things are easy as well, There’s a lengthy pre-stage, by pre-stage I mean the beginning of the stage where you can shoot those lines of enemies that give up power up icons, this makes the pre-stage area the part you try to collect enough power ups to get yourself kitted out to tackle the rest of the stage. Apart from the popcorn baddies at the pre-stage, stage five enemies are all meteors with tentacles that fire shots at you. If you have the laser its easy enough to destroy the arms or the whole thing, or if you let 2 or more of them onscreen at one time the slowdown kicks in making dodging the bullets easy work, just watch out for when it suddenly speeds back up. Onto the penultimate stage six that can be quite easy or granite hard depending on how powered up you are. The pre-stage is very short making weather you died in the previous level a key factor. What makes this stage so tough are three things; first is that the level is filled with a web / net like substance that similar to the stage to balls that you must shoot to get past. Unless you have all your options you wont be able to dodge very well making the other things trying to kill you so much harder. The second hurdle is these amoebas like baddies that fly towards you and are hard to kill without the laser or auto fire, and third are the turrets at the top and bottom of the screen that fire many shots at you that are hard to dodge with the netting filling the stage. When you get to the boss you had better of collected enough of the many power ups to have at least the shield even better lasers and options arranged above and below you because the boss shoots random bullets at you similar to a volcano. The odd bullet will hit you making this a race to destroy the boss before your shield gives up.

The tunnels of the last stages (arcade version)

The last stage is another level that suffers from the Gradius Syndrome as you are flying in a narrow tunnel inside the baddies base. Here many Duckers those walking turrets move quickly from the left side of the screen to take you out if you play like you would a traditional shooter staying to the back to shoot what’s coming in front of you. Here and in many other parts of the game it’s better to stay at the centre of the screen, watching for sneak attacks from behind as well as been able to pick of the turrets as soon as they appear to the right making sure they don’t get a chance to fire.

This gives your shield a bit of breathing space as the trick here (and elsewhere) is always have an idea how much power your shields have. If they get low then if you have another shield ready to replace it, then its best to fly into bullets so you can quickly fire up a replacement shield and collect enough power ups to buy another asap. That method makes the game allot easier then just letting a shield nearly run out and get hit by a quick succession of enemy bullets before you get chance to press the B button to start the replacement shield. When I got passed the long winding tunnel I enter a large area full of turrets and bullets to dodge, it is here where I came across these gates that quickly closed on me thereby making me crash into them the first time I encountered it. It was a baby puncher as well since it was my last life and took me a length of time before I had managed to get that far as to nip passed the gates before they closed on me.

The are different ports of Gradius, here is the arcade (left) and PCE (right) versions

After the gates you come across the last boss, a brain that doesn’t fire it just sits there and explodes after a few seconds. Gradius’ last bosses are famous for been a push-over, the total opposite to R-type’s last bosses. Although the jury is still out on weather I would call it a boss as it’s more of a cutscene then a boss due to me not having to shoot just wait until it blows. After that you are show a picture of vic viper flying away from the enemy base in its destruction (another staple of the series) and a message spelling congratulations then you restart (without power ups) from the stage one of the game only this time the game is harder then before. This feature is a throwback to earlier shooters like Space Invaders and Galaga that looped on forever and were played for score. With Gradius the game gets harder and harder for the first ten loops and after that stays the same until the game ends after the 256th loop. This allows those who want to take Gradius further then a 1CC or 1LC and play for score or just to see how far you can get. Having loops also changes the game into one hell of an endurance test albeit with a pause button. Atm I’ve only played Gradius for a simple completion but at a later date I plan on playing again only for score as the Shmups forum has leader boards up for Gradius and some of it’s sequels.

I do hope that my rather lengthy journal has made you guys who only play verts to possibly go and give horizontals a try, even better if its Gradius since there’s so many sequels to the game, plus all the different versions of just Gradius alone. Check out this FAQ site and read up about the different versions. Also check out Hardcore Gaming 101 they have a good article about the Gradius series, also check out the Parodius series there, it’s a cute wacky spin off of Gradius and is a lot of fun in itself.

Crescent Pale Mist Review

Having seen a couple of video of the ACT game Crescent Pale Mist I was so impressed with the 3D graphics and seemingly great beat em up gameplay that I played the game as soon as I could. After getting hold of the game and patching it up with the English patch from RomHacking.net I got straight into it. The first parts of the game especially the boss battles I really enjoyed but I soon noticed nagging faults that would later on wreak the game for me. I'll get into why later on.

In CPM you are a witch who has come to the demon realm to stop the source of the poisonous pale mist that is seeping into the human lands. Of course things aren’t gonna be easy with the witches who live there all trying to stop you.

Gameplay

As I said before the basics of CPM is that it’s a beat’em up but instead of been able to walk in all four directions like in Streets of Rage your movements are like been on a train track, where normally you may move left or right but at certain places you can jump forwards or backwards to another track. Having this game mechanic can make a level seem like a maze at times especially as the levels are quite bland with not that many landmarks to beg your bearings from. Although I will add that at times there are some really enjoyable platforming especially when im hunting for the many secrets that the game has hidden.

The controls while taking a bit of time to get used to are ok for the most part but my biggest gripe is that your character takes too long to change directions after an attack which resulted in me accidentally attacking in the wrong direction many a time. You have a few differing attacks, your normal sword attacks, a weak throwing dagger that you can also use to teleport past magical barriers that block your path. And then you have your special attacks. Of these you have to basic attacks, one that spits magical daggers at enemies and another more powerful attack that shoots magical swords. Each of those two attacks have 2 strengths 1 weak that takes energy from a self replenishing bar and a much stronger attack type that uses up your reserves of pale mist. Pale mist can only be replenished by attacking enemies and collecting the white pale mist orbs before they disappear.

At the end of the stage you will fight bosses in a special area that allows you to fly which changes the game from a beat’em up and into something more like a shmup akin to Orange Juice’s Sugari. It’s these parts of CPM which are the most fun for me and can be challenging if you don’t have a good grasp all the controls and what you can do with them.

Negative Aspects

As I said at the beginning of the review CPM has its faults, big enough to be game breaking for me personally. Firstly is that your normal sword attacks is way underpowered making killing off even the weaker enemies and grind if you need to use your sword to create pale mists either to heal your health or to use later in special attacks. The stronger enemies are best taken out using specials but even using pale mist attacks some of the baddies are way too overpowered needing you to run away several times to grind weak enemies for health, those damn onion monsters of stage 3 come to mind while mentioning this.

The other major gripe I have is that along with the enemies (at least in normal mode) taking too long to kill the stages themselves are way too long with no save points so if you die you have to start from the beginning. It was this that broke the game for me that along with another gripe of the game freezing and crashing on me every now and again. After numerous attempts to get past stage 3, and it taking 30 to 60 minutes to get to the end of stage boss. I have thrown the towel in on trying to finish the damn thing before I write about it. That’s not to say it will crash for everyone who plays it but its worth keeping in mind.

Score

Crescent Pale Mist by the doujin circle Classic Shikoukairo and if you can forgive the long levels and don’t get plagued by crashes has the charms of a fun action game, especially the boss battles and the sections of platform jumping. For me personally I will revisit CPM at a later date and hopefully if I can get things to run more stable I should be able to enjoy myself without pulling my hair out. 2.2/5 (add another 1.0 if it didn't crash so much)

MMT, doujin game review

MMT or the oddly translated full name (deep breath) incredibly bad relationship where there once upon a time Thanks for coming for the princess and the twin tail. Which as you can guess I wont be saying again, is a cutesy platformer that uses the pick up and throw mechanic of Doki doki panic or Super Mario Bros 2 in the west. But where as before we had a fat plumer and his crew or a family of turbin wearers in MMT, doujin been doujin, you will control a cute girl who fights lots of other cute girls by pulling even more cute girls out of the ground and like in Doki Doki Mario throw said cute girl and enemy cute girl. As I said this is doujin and males in these games are an endangered species.

 Since the game has a intro and generic before boss battle cut scenes there must also be a story and a plot but since its all in Japanese I cant read squat. From what I can gather you are a princess or witch that lives in a land where people have planted themselves into the ground (weird I know), and you’re fighting against your twin sister and later on another magical girl. As to why your fighting your guess is as good as mine. Luckly for us the story is unimportant and you not knowing how to read kanji has no bearing on you playing the game as normal.

Gameplay

 Gameplay is quite simple you walk from left to right jumping on to differing platforms or using a second button to pick up plant people or enemies and lob them at other enemies. If you hold down the pick up/ throw button you can throw a charged shot which depending on what you’re throwing will make various attacks. The different types of girls you can pull out of the ground all have special charge attacks: Green girls are normal striaght shots, red girls will propel you forwards destroying most things you attack with that single hit, blue girls will make a simlar attack but propel you upwards. There are more plant girls but they’re pritty rare until the later stages so you will mostly be using those 3 basic charged attacks. The later 2 been great for getting to platforms you otherwise could’nt reach.

 The game has 5 long stages that are ok to play though but for me the best parts of MMT are the end of stage boss battles. The bosses on your 1st attempt are quite hard to beat, I found I had to continue the game once or twice to get past them, with the last boss by far the hardest nut to crack imo.

 Another good aspect of MMT is there are lots of secrets to find, with many hearts and lives hidden behind false walls or seemingly out of reach platforms. MMT does have a lot of replay value if you’re into finding secrets. The best items to find are keys. Each stage has a key that is hidden, if you manage to find one the game will always remember how many you’ve collected in total, plus will show you in the main menu. I havn’t collected every key but I’m guessing that if you collect all of them, the hidden option in the main menu will be unlocked. What that option does is a mistery, although I’ve seen a video called Neo MMT, a demo that is in hard mode. Since there is no option available to change difficulty then the hidden option may have something to do with it.

Negative Aspects

 Playing on Win XP with the Japanese Language Pack installed I came across only 1 bug, that is when you’re fighting the bosses and you keep on dieing, for some strange reason the timer isn’t reset. So that for every 3 or 4 lives lost fighting a boss you’ll lose a life to time out. After which you will restart with a imo lowly 150 seconds. Its not a too big a pain in the arse though since you can amass lots of lives and you do get unlimted continues aswell.

 Compared to other platformers the game is a little too simple especially playing the earlly stages. Things definatly pick up half way through the game when you reach the castle, stage 1 on the other hand is very boreing and you’ll find yourself racing to get to the end of level boss and the fun. Although ive seen many worse examples then this, a major design flaw many bedroom game makers do is to have the stage 1 gameplay way to simple and boring and expect the player to be still playing the game when the good parts starts. This might have been ok 10 years ago but todays gamers including me are less willing to put up with shit game design.

 As I said the stages do pick up when you reach the castle but this is mostly to do with the host of stronger enemies that you face and generally not because the platforming aspects of the game are done better. Infact if you were expecting jumping / platforming to be on par with Doki Doki Mario you will be disapointed. MMT more of a beat em up with some platforming added on. Treating the game as such makes for a much more enjoyable game.

Score

 For what it is, MMT isn't a bad game just not a great game either. Many people will only complete it once (or possibly give up at the last boss) and never pick it up again. Still if you want to try to collect all the hidden keys and unlock that option, then MMT looks a much better prospect. The game was released by the doujin circle Daisessen at C72. If you look around you might be able to grab hold of a copy. 3.1 out of 5

Arcanacra ver 0.4.3 Black Label

I dont usually play that many flash games and if I do they rarely hold my intrest longer then a hour. Arcanacra Black Label is an exeption, made by Keim the chap who made Nomltest, so if you've played that game you'll know that he knows how to make an addictive shmup. Basically he has made the impossible possible, that is to make a flash shmup play just aswell as a normal shmup that you keep on your hard drive. Personally I think Keim is a master at programming to be able to make such a thing. Ok graphics with no jerkiness, no good awfull mouse control scieme (keyboard only like all flash games so Xpadder is a must to use a pad). No kindergarden level gameplay with no pointless achievements to make up for the lack of good gameplay. Keim has managed the unthinkable and actually made a flash shmup that is fit to be called a shoot 'em up and he did this in 2007. Personally i think he will be going to hell when he dies because he has sold his soul to the devil. How else could there be a game such as this?

Jokes aside, Arcanacra is a fun game and unlike other flash offerings is made for a gamer who plays alot of shmups and has some skills in playing them. Aside from the graphics been abit on the plain side and there been no joystick support (I wouldn't know were I would be without the trusty Xpadder), Keim's game is a hell of alot of fun if I would say alittle hard in places. I think this might have more to do with just finishing playing Recca and Kairuga which are have completely different styles of play to a normal shmup of which Arcanacra is. Keim says his insperations for the game were Cho Ren Sha 68K, Warning Forever and Kenta Cho's P47. The simalarites are there especially Cho Ren Sha, which is what first came to mind when I played it well before I read Keim's comments.

Gameplay

 You control a spaceship with the usual small (cockpit only) bullet hell sized hit box through 6 stages where you will battle a mixture of popcorn enemies and larger ships that depending on the type will eather throw out a spray of bullets in a simple pattern or shoot aimed shots at you. The weapons at your desposable come under 4 categories: A standard forward faced shot which is paired with a side shot that increases the arc of your firepower, A stack of 3 bombs per life of which you can have 5 at maximum, they damage everything on the screen including wiping out the enemies bullets making them both offensive and good for defence. Although I find the bombs to be abit on the weak side with just one bomb not enough to destroy some of the larger enemies out right so expierienced gamers will be using bombs for last ditch defence only and will otherwise hoard them for points at the end of the level score tally. Arcanacra's fourth weapon is a Rayforce-eske lock on weapon. If you hold shift a target infront of your ship will apear and any ship under its cross-hair will automatically get hit by missiles and the longer you hold a ship over the crosshair will be hit by more and more missiles up to a certain maxiumum. As long as shift is held down you can then move the crosshair off the enemy and the missiles will continue to fire, this makes the lock on the first choice of many a gamer when tackling the end of level boss since it allows you to dodge while still lay down fire. Lock on will also slow your ship down which is handy for dodging tight spaces like in stage 2 where you have walls and blocks to crash into. Using the lock on will also stop your side shot from firing so that you will only have your forward fire to rely on.

 This creates an extra twist to the strategy since on many on the stages you can't be focused on destroying those large ships for too long as soon the screen will be full of popcorn enemies making the game harder if you arn't selective in what you destroy first to get the enemies back to a managable level. Do you go for the groups of popcorn baddies or takle the larger ships that shoot out waves of screen filling shots that make dodging the smaller ships that shoot aimed shots. Just Like Cho Ren Sha there are bonuses for you to shoot which will then desplay 3 or 4 power ups aranged in a circle that spins[, and as a joke to CRS if you manage to stay in the middle for a length of time you will instead of get all 3 power ups the screen will say Item Break and you'll get nothing hehe. You are able to power up each of you weapons to 3 with one weapon of choice to 4. What do you charge up is a matter of choice but its imo best to charge your forward facing weapon up to full asap as that weapon will allways be firing. After thats at full you can choose to power up your side weapon (great for stage 2 and killling waves of popcorn. Or your lock on (for large ships and boss fights). On those item spheres you can pick up a shield of which you can only have one at a time. Extra bombs or if you have scored enough, extra lives are awarded on the next item sphere you come across aswell.

 The game has another mode for you to play which is simler to normal mode but with lots more bullets. Skilled shmuppers only need apply. A pratice mode is also included so you can pratice a single stage as long as youve reached it in main game. There is also an online leaderboard with has a few familier names (from the shmups.com forum) at the top. You can also watch replays of your last play or your highest scoring run also you can watch replays of the top 10 players on the leaderboard. (MrMonkeyMan as always is at the top and watching hes replays hes a damn good gamer) It is good to note that everything is saved and when you return all the settings are as they were last time you played.

Scoring

 The score mechanics are nothing too out of the ordenary. During play every thing is simple with the added bonus of double points for quickly destroying the largest ship types plus text will flash upon the screen to let you know you got a 'fast break'. Other then the fast break it is the end of stage score tally that awards you with extra points for each ship and bomb you have left. Points are awarded for what percentage of enemies you kill. Get a 100% kill rate and you will get a bonus of 40k making a total of 50,000. There is also a extra award of 20k for what the game describes as a secret. Im pritty sure that you have to keep shift held down for the lock on but make sure that your missiles dont fire, only use the forward fixed gun to destroy the enemies. You'll need to do this non stop for most or all of the stage, depending on the stage it can be very hard to keep this up, Imo stage 4 is the easiest since ive only maged to do it on that level.

 Other points are awarded for how much damage you layed upon the boss. Since unlike any other game ive played the boss will always blowup after a set about of time, how much you damaged it doesn't matter for progressing to the level only score. But if you manage to damage the boss alot, the warning text will flash on the screen again plus the boss will go into a frenzy shooting alot more bullets at you and if you arn't on top of your game you wont last long under the amount of hurt its sending your way. You will also be awarded an extra 20k for achieving this. In total if you play well the end of stage score arward screen will give you about as much as you can get during normal play. So like all the best shmups if you play like a pro ie hoard bombs, dont die and most of all get a 100% kill rate, your score will be alot higher then an average run where you don't manage this.

Negetive Aspects

 Onto Arcanacra Black Labels faults which are as usual for a freeware game based on the usual things that is partly to do with the limitations of the program it is programmed and run on instead of faulty game design. Like I said before there is no joystick support, making Xpadder your best friend yet again. If you like me and use an utility like Logitech Profiller you will find it wont support the game due to it been browser based and having no .exe file that the utility needs to beable to work. By far the worst aspects of Arcanacra is the fact it is slightly old and Keim hasnt been upgrading the game to work with the latest versions of the browsers. The latest vesion of Internet Explorer wont work with the game, for some reason the main menu wont show on screen. The other browser I have on my PC is Mozilla Firefox which does work. But even thats without its own hick ups. For everytime I get a new highscore and it's worthy of been on the leaderboard, the game will ask for my name and a comment. If I enter anything in and select ok the game freezes, forcing me to reload the page. All records of my highscore are lost, no saved replay and worse of all no name on the online leader board. The best solution is to select decline and no send any info to the leaderboard. Atleast this way your replay and highscore are saved for you alone. Wether this happens in a different browser I cant say but this is a really big shame as the main reason many people will play a flash shmup even one as good as Arcanacra is to see if you can beat your fellow shmuppers on the online leaderboards. Still me and a couple of others have left comments on the games comments section so that Keim will read them and hopefully fix the problem, fingers crossed.

 There are in my opinon a couple of gameplay aspects which some may find unsavory. First is that the the difficult curve of the bosses is off. The stage 2 boss is lot more harder then stages 3 and 4 bosses. This is negated to some extent for gamers just playing for suvival, because with the boss will blowing up after a certain time it's possible to just bomb your way through the boss and use the invunalbilty you get from picking up power ups to cheese your way through it. Wether you see this as a good or bad thing will depend on how good a player you are since a gamer who is finding the game too difficult may see this as a blessing.

Verdict

 If you like Cho Ren Sha 68K or any other normal average shmup that doesn't try to be too different then you will enjoy this game. Sure there are alot of other doujin and commercial shmups that are better then this game. But the main thing Arcanacra has going for it is that its totally online so you can play it when you're not on your home PC but somewhere else like at work. Even though it hasnt many bells and whistles its still a solid game that is hard enough to challenge anyone, especially those playing for score who dont bomb their way past a boss. For those wanting to achieve a score worthy of the leader board he will probably need to get to atleast the last stage with decent scores in each of the stages. Even if you find you can't put your scores on the online leader board there's always the highscoring shmuppers best friend You Tube. And the game having replays makes this so much easier to make a video.

 If you find the Black Label too easy there is a slightly harder version of the game which raises the score threshold for extends and only allows 3 bombs max. If there are other differences between versions it's unknown since i've not spent any time with the game. The same bugs evident in version 0.4.3 Black Label are apparent in version 0.4.1 including the leaderboard bug. Which is a shame because the scores on the older version arn't as high as the later game, thus allowing unskilled plebs like me more of a chance of greatness. Ah well. Both version can be accessed at keim's website. But why dont you just visit here instead. If you scroll to the bottom of the page you will see Black Label there for you to play. You can play the game in between reading articles ive posted, Ive given you true bliss :-).

Score

 For a freeware flash shmup Arcanacra Black Label is the best example there is on the web today that's even despite it's bugs, If Keim ever sorts out the bugs it would be a 4.4 out of 5. As it is now I give it a slightly lower 4.1 out of 5.