I know, I know. It's a question that's been asked and answered a million times, but I have very specific criteria and I was hoping you guys could help me out.
Until recently, I didn't even realize that I enjoyed this genre. If I hadn't gotten both Tyrian 2000 and Jamestown for free, I probably would've stuck to my passing interest of "I like the art but hate the game" but for some reason these two games have really stuck with me. To give you guys an idea of what I'm looking for, here's my mini-review of Tyrian 2000 (which I just beat.) While I have quite a few systems, I'm mostly looking for PC/MAME/Xbox 360 recommendations right now so I can use my arcade stick (at least until Lizardlick gets some more Cthulhu boards in.)
Liked:
• The campaign structure: I know that this is a genre borne of the arcade, but I really liked the ability to play the missions at my leisure and exit the game any time I wanted. This goes for Jamestown as well. There was also a couple of points at which you are given simple "A or B" options as to which stage to play next, which is always nice.
•The upgrade system: This is what really makes Tyrian 2000 shine. Every point you earn doubles as money, and between missions you can spend your points on upgrades to your ship. Rear and forward weapons, generators, shields, and Gradius-style "sidekicks" make up your choices here, and I spent a lot of time fine-tuning and optimizing my build. There were a couple of missions that stripped you of your upgrades, and they really drew into sharp focus how boring the game would be without them. I didn't like that Jamestown basically locked you into two weapons the entire game (I know there's other ships, but in single player only Beam is useful anyways)
•Enemy variety: Tyrian delivers here in spades. I was still seeing new enemies all the way up until the end of the game, and there were some crazy boss battles (like a giant nose that shoots snot at you... It's weird) Really kept the game from getting boring, as there were a lot of diverse patterns and strategies that you had to utilize.
•It's free: Price is definitely a factor here for me; I'm not going to run out and spend $200 just because some obscure game that was only handed out to Golden Ticket winners at Willy Wonka's. I don't care if it's literally the greatest shmup ever made: no game is worth more than ~$50 to me right now, as that's just too big a risk to take for a game I might not even enjoy.
•Art direction: While the background are a little bland, this is still a game about blowing shit up in my spaceship. Enemies are big, explosions are bigger and at no point did I not feel like a total badass. If you like to play games where you fly your horde of lolis around blasting lasers from their tits, great! Frankly that kind of game makes me nauseous. I'm not that strict here - Espgaluda looks pretty awesome - but I'm never going to buy a game like Otomodius Excellent.
Neutral:
•The music: Hit and miss. Some of the tracks were really great, but on the whole I'd say more tracks were bombs than not.
•The bonus stages: While the space invaders homage was nice and some of the bonus stages were truly absurd, I didn't feel like these levels were as well-done as the main game so overall they detracted from the experience.
•The story: This is a surprisingly well-written and geniuinely funny game. The story breaks the 4th wall at times. However.... These is Shmups we're talking about. I didn't want to spend 10 minutes reading background info (thankfully optional) between every single mission; I want to get to the next level and blast some aliens
Disliked:
•Balance: Some of the levels in this game were absolute bastards to beat, while others were literally as easy as sitting in the middle-bottom of the screen and holding down the fire button. I decided to play on the "Easy" setting, being a beginner, but I can't imagine going to any of the higher difficulties to actually enjoy the easier levels when the hard ones were so damn hard.
•Can't replay levels: The game is divided into 5 chapters, and while you can start any of these at any time it's impossible to go back and play earlier stages again. While this makes sense from a balance standpoint, there's unlockables and secret levels to be found and if you missed them it's annoying that you can't try again.
•Too long: Some of the individual stages in this game take upwards of 10 minutes to slo-o-owly scroll through, mindlessly blasting enemies only to die against a tricky endboss. I probably sunk a good 5-8 hours into this game all told, and I don't particularly see myself doing it all over again anytime soon. The length of the stages really hurts replayability here.
•Too busy: I'm not a huge fan of bullet hells, but Tyrian is the reverse. By the time you reach the later chapters, your arsenal becomes so ridiculous that it practically eclipses the screen. This never leads to slowdown or anything, but it's not particularly visually appealing and it's frustrating to die to things I can't see. Which leads me to my next point...
•Environmental hazards and knockback: This isn't Ninja Gaiden. I do NOT want to be knocked around when I get hit, under any circumstances. Losing control of my ship is probably the number one thing that annoyed me in both Jamestown and Tyrian, and I think it hurt both games. (Croatoa anyone?) Getting thrown into a cheap death on some wall I couldn't even see under the storm of bullets is nowhere near my idea of fun.
•Aspect ratio: Tyrian really highlighted for me why most shmups are letterboxed. Playing a vertically scrolling shmup in 16:9 felt really claustrophobic, and I didn't feel like I had as much time to react (I have no idea exactly what resolution it was running in, so it may have been stretched and I wouldn't even know)
Also, does anyone have recommendations for a fairly cheap VESA mount that'll allow me to rotate my screen 90 degrees? I have a feeling I'm going to want to pick one of those up eventually.