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Good shooter with fresh features

A classic top-down shooter (with extreme level of frustration and addiction) that adds some customization elements that differenciate from the rest.
Tips for playing: change the direction of your weapons and try new weapons for each boss/level where you got stuck.

Pros:
- Weapon orientation (very strategic for the player)
- Variety of weapons (really different)
- Good controls (specially if you use a usb joystick & joyToKey)

Cons:
- No story whatsoever.
- Some enemies preffer attack you from the back of the screen without warning (and in some levels this factor is really frustrating).
- Almost every "new world" will make you dump all the weapons from previous levels, making the process of selling/buying repetitive.

Conclusion:
A solid shooter if you like the genre (not for amateurs). Adds new elements to the familiar genre with some fresh twists. Nice graphics and sound, but absolutly no story. Fun for occasional play.

Suggestions for a possible sequel:
- Add more rpg elements (like actually spending points to advance shield/speed/armor instead of automatic progression)
- The possiblilty of changing your ship/hull sizes (more weapons slots for example)
- A slot for non-weapon items (like a magnet thats attracks coins? anti-mine detection, etc)
- A solid story (please).

Awesome Game

I honestly don't know why people are complaining about the difficulty, I beat the entire game without a problem. The hardest part was the final boss, but I took him out after a few tries. The trick is to change your weapons orientation according to the level and to keep moving. I would recommend everyone use homing missiles for the majority of the game, except when playing levels with the descending laser beams.

Murderously Difficult

"SHMUP" is polished to a fault in the sense that this belongs in an actual coin-op with its "Shop" element retooled so that you can only pick a single new setup for the next mission. Yes, that way it will go down in history alongside "Haunted Castle" as virtually UNPLAYABLE.

This is another stupid one-ship-against-armada stories that fail to incorporate any true sentiment of wartime realism. Thus, the plot and story are worthless.

Now, anybody will tell you a shooter game is often the epicenter of graphic detail. True to form, Hyptosis and Afro-Ninja took great pains to ensure that this game looks good and doesn't handle like a kangaroo with a brain disease. Josh Kemp's techno-driven soundtrack is passable but forgettable. A good deal of technical prowess went into creating this game. Those are the only good sides, because when it comes to challenge, pacing and overall fairness, "SHMUP" is just another token hog.

Okay, so you have to go around shooting everything and collecting these gems to exchange them for improved engines, weaponry, and ray shielding, which sucks because every new area has a shop that replaces every last customization you made in the previous area. Let's not forget that Leveling Up corresponds to only marginal improvements in your stats. Finally, the bosses are vindictive, emotional, and almost pornographically horrifying. Then you learn that the one weapon you shrugged at in the shop turns out to be a veritable panacea against the relentless hordes that NEVER DIE FAST ENOUGH, but if that's not all, your head is spinning from all the frustration that you wonder why in the name of Christ did you ever begin to play this game? The awards and achievements?

Afro-Ninja wanted to cover the top-down shooter genre, but seriously, he should have left this one alone. A pretty bunch of space debris isn't worth looking at if the debris is and always will be your fucking ship.

An alright game, but needs some improving.

Now when going into this game, I thought, "Hmm. Looks interesting. Doesn't look like the players are too fond of it though" And I can kind of see why. Like most games of this genre, the simplistic approach leaves much to be desired, and the speed of the enemies can be gameplay a bit difficult. Plus the lack of any good things to buy til way later in the game leaves the player thinking "Is this really worth it?"

My major tidpick was the lack of warnings if something was coming from behind. As most players will tend to do, I tend to lag back near the bottom as I mostly expect the enemy to be coming from in front, but when I suddenly see my health decreasing at a drastic rate, then I feel a bit cheated.

But with a bit of finetuning, this game could be a brilliant addition to the genre.
Keep up the good work :D

I think the game is fine

Its really hard because the enemy came closer towards the player really fast..but I got used to it, you shoulda include a mute button for the music coz sometimes when I play a game, I listened to other music.