RACKET STGT: Week 1: ECO FIGHTERS

[mjmjr25]

360 is good to go.

MAME is not emulated well. However, there is a new build for CAVE SH3 games that Chaz and Doc have been messing around with and apparently if you do something with something called your blithering rate, it emulates pretty well.

[pierrot]

Can't consistently get past the back of the stage 2 boss, and keep taking stupid deaths on stage 3 when I do. Effit. That's enough. I'm done.

320,900 - pierrot - Iranian Backed Hezzbullets - stage 3 -MAME

I'm a man on a mission with something entirely unrelated to video games tomorrow.

[EllertMichael]

I am in exactly the same place with this game! I will do my best

in hash we trust

Aw fuck. MM and MMP? I'm in trouble.

[hashiriya1]

I feel like Vince Vaughn in Dodgeball.

[EllertMichael]

[DocHauser]

Eco Fighters is not terrible! Artwork is nice, level design is actually pretty good; playing for survival is a decent challenge. All it really lacks is a chaining/combo score system. If it had one like Progear then everyone would probably rave about it.

Then again, you occasionally see 'shitty hori' comments about Progear as well, so some people just have it in for horizontal scrolling shmups...

[DocHauser]

Meanwhile, if anyone is bemoaning their lack of progress with Eco Fighters, just take comfort in the fact that you're not this guy:

[mjmjr25]

Eco Fighters is not terrible! Artwork is nice, level design is actually pretty good; playing for survival is a decent challenge. All it really lacks is a chaining/combo score system. If it had one like Progear then everyone would probably rave about it.

Artwork...agreed. Everything else...no. The lack of scoring is huge, but that is far from what is missing to put it on par with Pro Gear.

The rotating mechanism is imprecise and if you go a hair past where you think it is going to be with the button pressure you apply - you have to rotate all the way around again.

There are too many safe spots during bossfights...well, during the whole game really. I didn't know about them, but by having to play this, i've found them and it made the game more boring and unrefined.

The shield barrier / extension weapon is inconsistent. Sometimes the top half or bottom half of the barrier makes contact and cancels a bullet. Sometimes it sneaks through. Feels very inconsistent.

The bullets are all the same. Speed picks up a little in later stages, but that's it. No patterns - just straight / small / white bullets.

There is no increase in speed of your ship, just plods along the whole game. There aren't multiple ship options. The bosses all have easy / direct path / fast kills, which again, just takes a few runs to get them down.

I'm prepared to take the Shmup Card of anyone who mentions Pro Gear and Eco Fighters in the same sentence. #nobluetext

[noiseredux]

+1 everything Mike said.

Screenshots of Eco make it look like it should be a fun game. But it sucks.

[DocHauser]

I wasn't directly comparing it with Progear! I just said that if it had a similar chaining/combo system. That's not the same as mentioning them in the same breath...

You don't need an increase in the speed of your ship. Default speed is fine. As for different ships, ok, but you have the different arm weapons to provide variety there.

No patterns...well, it's not a bullet hell game. You could say the same about a lot of old-school horizontal scrollers: Gradius, Darius, R-Type, etc. I just think that Eco Fighters was a decent game for the time, and it doesn't fit in with current preferences that most shmup players have.