Dropped off today Monster Garden Vermillion. Club Steam Rankings are automatically updated at least once a day from live Steam reviews data. Learn more. Movement indicators show the change in position since yesterday. Club Patreon Club aggregates all 54 million reviews on Steam to provide full ranking history, whereas Steam only looks at the last two days. Released day and date with the PS4's English-language launch, Dragon Quest XI is true to its core as a traditional JRPG, from its simple turn-based battle system to an epic tale that borrows from the very best examples of the genre, and it does it all incredibly well.
It may feel stubbornly ultra-conservative when its peers are experimenting with different aesthetics and mechanics, but there's also something admirable in how comfortably confident it is with its identity.
Dark Souls: Remastered Not just one of the greatest games of the decade, FromSoftware's uncompromising take on Western fantasy action RPGs is also credited as the game that really opened the floodgates for Japanese games on PC, as Bandai Namco's first release on Steam. True, it was a pretty poor port that took a mod to unlock its potential, but the remaster released this year largely fixes those issues, now also supporting 4K and 60fps, as well as a few other graphical enhancements.
Though improvements are fairly minimal, the brutal majesty of Lordran remains a towering achievement, as is the agony and ecstasy of conquering its bosses. Even if director Hidetaka Miyazaki has officially laid the series to rest, and whet our masochistic appetite for the Japan-set ninjatastic Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, the flame of Dark Souls still burns bright.
The game that began Tetsuya Mizuguchi's journey in exploring the synaesthesia of music and games, Rez Infinite is a trippy out-of-this-world experience like nothing else. When you get down to it, the gameplay is essentially a simple on-rails shooter, but once you lock on and fire, and every shot ripples into an explosion of colour and melody to compliment the clubby beats and abstract dreamscapes, the results are sublime.
For those with VR headsets, you can also fully immerse yourself in the game in the way that it's intended. But if nothing else, flying around in the all-new stunning Area X is worth the price of admission alone.
Bayonetta is Hideki Kamiya's crazy sexy cool masterpiece, whose titular witch shoots and kicks the shit out of all God's messengers while looking absolutely fabulous. Hardcore action combo-driven games are a rarity these days but when you need that hi-octane fix, the only studio that can satisfy you is PlatinumGames. Sure, the story's a load of hokum and you can debate whether Bayonetta 's character is sexist or feminist until the cows come home, but once you're activating Witch Time, spanking angels into bloody oblivion and heel-smashing demi-gods in the face, it's all just Platinum Perfect.
The port may have taken its sweet time to arrive, but with 4K, locked 60fps and next-to-no loading times, this is the fastest, slickest and prettiest Bayonetta has ever been. Hopefully one day the sequels will make their way to Steam, too, but for now - let's dance, boys!
Sonic Team aren't what they used to be when it comes to their eponymous mascot. The consolation, though, is that they're responsible for developing the best competitive puzzler ever.
Tetris will probably be the main draw of this crossover, but it's those mean beans of Puyo Puyo are where it's really at. Visually, Sinistron benefits from some strong art direction which helps both the colorful pixel art and the distinct level designs. There are also some nice exploding enemy animations that round out the experience.
The backgrounds feature nice parallax effects and benefit from smooth scrolling. The music is well done, but can be bit repetitive. There are some differences between Sinistron and its Japanese counterpart, Violent Soldier. Apart from a few subtle changes to graphics and audio, there are also a few tweaks to gameplay that can affect the challenge — especially when it comes to the fourth stage with the formations of asteroids.
There are also some story changes between the two versions. This cute and comical horizontal shooter is one of the lesser-known shmup gems, but has a lot going for it, including its sense of humor and weird and wacky enemies. The visuals are colorful and well-drawn, but they are perhaps a bit more simple than some other cute-em-ups.
The levels are varied in design, show some subtle parallax effects, and the artwork has a warm and playful style to it. The levels each have different sections and the bosses each have a few different forms. The sixth and final level also has an ultra-intense boss run. There are some awkward pauses before and after bosses, which breaks up the otherwise great flow. In L-Dis, you can choose between three different weapon setups before starting and power-ups are obtained by shooting little yellow bags with wings.
These power-ups will cycle through choices until grabbed and can either enhance the strength of the main weapon, add a secondary one, or grant the protagonist protective shields or bombs that can eliminate all the enemies on the screen.
The power-ups are on these little rectangles with Japanese characters on them as opposed to icons, so English speakers will need a little time to learn which powers have which effect. However, to help narrow things down, you can remember that pink icons usually power up weapons, blue icons give multiples and yellow icons give shields or bombs.
The bombs can also be saved for later, they follow the ship and can be dropped at any time by pressing the other action button. If not, you might wants to spend more time with others in the library first. Check for L-Dis on eBay. Dragon is equipped with wide lasers, fixed pods and long-range missiles, and Phoenix comes with Bubble lasers, rotating pods and short-range exploding missiles.
The game also features a two-player mode, however only one player has to be destroyed for co-op mode to come to an end. Power-ups can be obtained by shooting down special red spaceships. The power-ups include power increases P , auxiliary pods B , missiles M , and gradual health meter refills L. Star coins can also be collected to to charge up the burning bar located at the bottom of the screen. When the burning bar is full, you can use up its energy for a powerful laser beam, turn your ship into an invincible flaming phoenix , or pull off a sweet combo ship attack.
Much of your success in Burning Angels hinges on learning how to use your burning bar skills efficiently and effectively. Every time you get hit you lose a little health and some of your varied firepower is gradually reduced. The levels are surprisingly long and the addition of middle bosses are a nice touch.
However, the standard enemy attack patterns could use more variety. Also, once you get into the third level, the game starts punishing you for clinging to the bottom of the screen. Many enemies start coming from behind the player, which feels like a cheap shot until you adjust to the tactic. It can be a bit frustrating as you only have one energy bar and no continues, but practice enough and it becomes manageable.
The anime-inspired cutscenes are enjoyable without taking away from the action too much. For a shmup of vintage, the sci-fi art direction is pretty solid. Sprites are big, there is plenty going on, and some occasional layers of parallax round things out. Level detail could use some improvements, however, as some stages appear to be recycling the same tile sets and layouts. This mode, and others like it, bump up the horizontal resolution but use the same sprites and screen area as the lower resolution, meaning that the same amount of detail is displayed in a smaller area, leading to a more narrow play experience.
It should be noted that Dragon Spirit and Dragon Saber also feature similar options hidden behind special code inputs, so at least Burning Angels makes the option available right up front. Check for Burning Angels on eBay.
Macross is not only one of the first console games based on the anime series, but it also is a beautiful game that made some interesting attempts to mix up the typical shmup formula. You begin with a standard Vulcan gun and bombs in the first level, but as you progress, you can buy additional weapons and upgrades with the EXP points you accumulate from orbs.
Interestingly enough, the game prevents you from choosing the same weapon two levels a row. This is a unique way of not only forcing some strategy, but also pushing you to try different types of weapons.
Your weapons have infinite ammo, but become less effective the more you use them. This creates a much different battling experience during boss fights. Your mileage will depend on whether you enjoy this setup as much as a standard shmup battle, but you have to give the developers some credit for trying something different. It features vibrant colors and interesting animations and the Macross aesthetic translates well to the shmup world.
The parallax effects mixed with high-speed scrolling in incredibly engaging and complements the Macross vibe. The CD-based music is masterfully reproduced from the anime series. However, Macross is a nicely-crafted shmup that showcases some of the better audio-visuals to be found on PC Engine, and the overall package is especially attractive for Macross fans. Check for Macross on eBay. With so many sci-fi shooters out there, Naxat looked to take their shmup-design skills to a different landscape with their first PC Engine shmup arriving right before Burning Angels.
You control a ship on a mission to regain control of your mind and soul. This setting gave Naxat some great liberties to come up with trippy and haunting settings and interactions. The theme, and its resulting implementation, is quite conceptually innovative for The US TG16 version is heavily censored in its content and oddly re-arranges the levels, breaking some of the story and difficulty flow, so if you want the full experience, you might want consider going the PC Engine route.
The game showcases a unique weapons system, where the player is granted two defensive orbs that not only have the ability to absorb enemy fire but can also be upgraded. Difficulty is rather unbalanced, power-ups are sparse, and you lose all your upgrades when you die. The reordering of stages also disrupts the challenge curve, contributing to the uneven difficulty. Combine that with the changes made to the game in the US, you might wonder why it was brought to the US in the altered manner it was, especially given so many other Japanese alternatives that were ultimately overlooked.
In Cyber Core, you control an insect bio-jet called the Chimera piloted by a human who is out to rid the world of giant insects that have invaded the earth. Similarly to the Namco classics Xevious and Dragon Spirit, the ship utilizes two kinds of weaponry: air-to-air weapons against air-based enemies and air-to-ground bombs used against ground-based units. To power up you must shoot certain slow-moving, large-abdomened insects as they fly across the screen.
After taking a certain amount of fire they will drop a colored power-up orb. There are four weapons, each represented by a different color. If you collect a different color you change weapons, but if you collect the same color you power-up and acquire an additional level of shielding.
Each weapon type changes the look of your ship, and as you evolve your ship grows bigger and more complex-looking. The downside to this evolution is that, like as in Dragon Spirit, getting more powerful makes your hitbox significantly larger. Getting hit consumes one shield cell, and when all shield cells are gone the ship starts losing its power-up levels with every hit until, fully de-powered, the last hit kills you.
Some of the enemy sprites can be rather large and the game handles lots of enemies at time with ease. Colors are interesting and the backgrounds can be ok, but often feel uninspired.
In fact, some levels share the same background and rely on enemy changes for the main source of variety. Cyber Core seems pretty easy through most of the earlier levels, and then kicks up the difficulty near the end. Variable challenge, the large hitbox, and the bland at times graphics peg this shooter as lackluster, especially for the release date. The game uses an interesting power-up system involving adding modules to your spaceship.
These modules can be configured in two ways: connected directly to the ship, increasing its firepower, or separate from the ship to increase their coverage. You can choose which direction the ship modules will fire in and the positions they take around the central ship when separated.
This allows you to fine-tune the reach of your bullets and adds a bit of strategy. The twelve levels are somewhat varied but start to feel a bit monotonous after a while; the limited enemy formations are particularly tiresome.
Even though it was released in , the game looks and feels very dated compared to competition from that year like Solider Blade and Gate of Thunder. The backgrounds are still rather detailed and there is some decent sprite work. The pacing is nice — not too frantic, but not slow. Final Blaster hosts a number of features that are distinct to the game: the first is a charge shot that resembles a phoenix and is the only form of projectile that can destroy certain larger enemies.
In addition to the phoenix charge shot, there are plenty of options regarding the management of your companion pods you can utilize them as stationary frontal shields, have them trail or rotate around you, or set them off as smart bombs , but otherwise the standard weapons are quite pedestrian with a choice of lasers, spread shot, or a combination of both.
Final Blaster is also known to have some very frustrating elements to it such as enemies that come from behind your ship, quick and unexpected attacks, and attacks from enemies that went offscreen. Final Blaster looks pretty good for a shooter. Levels are varied, some of the bosses are memorable, there often is some parallax scrolling and you even have some partial control over the scrolling itself.
In fact, you can slightly slow down or accelerate the scrolling depending on your needs. Check for Final Blaster on eBay. The slinky is able to move along the floor, walls, and the ceiling by slinking along them; it can also make a short jump to move between walls and platforms to slink to a different section of each stage. The slinky is also equipped with a machine gun that fires to both sides of it to take out the myriad of enemies that swarm you on each stage.
While this setup is rather unique and interesting, it is not without its annoyances. While navigating the mazes, there is no navigation to help you track your progress or destination. To add to potential frustration, there are also teleports that have no indication of their destination. Some of these teleporters are even mean enough to send you back to the beginning which, needless to say could be infuriating after trying to figure out where to go for quite a while.
The player is allowed several hit points which can be increased with powerups , several lives, and unlimited continues. Defeated enemies sometimes drop power-ups that range from extra continues, extra life, super speed to extra shots and bouncing shots.
A time limit is given for each of the thirteen maze-like levels, and the goal is to find the Zodiac boss of the stage and defeat it before time expires.
Check for Somer Assault on eBay. This multi-directional scroller from Namco has a bit of a cute-em-up feel, but not quite as cute and colorful as Fantasy Zone or Twinbee that came before it.
Barunba is essentially a flying ball with a weapon ring around it which can be rotated to fire in any direction. Button II rotates the ring clockwise and the Run button counter-clockwise.
Much like Forgotten Worlds and its ilk, this control scheme can be a bit awkward with a d-pad controller, but practice helps. Each weapon can be switched to on-the-fly by pressing Select, and they can be individually upgraded up to three times- curiously, they apparently lose their power overtime and need to be regularly upgraded. Your success will depend much on memorization and effective use of your weaponry.
The five stages in the game are rather long and tend to feature some slow and boring parts despite being broken up by sub-bosses. The experience would be much more fulfilling if the levels were edited down to the best parts. The graphics and audio are also fairly bland, if colorful. This is a shame as the game mechanics are an interesting foundation that just needs more refinement and polish to make it a true classic. Check for Barunba on eBay.
Kiaidan 00 features lots of large and colorful sprite work that is reminiscent of classic Japanese animated series like Mazinger Z or Grandizer. The game puts you in command of a giant robot fighting an array of huge mechanical bosses.
Your robot has a variety of weapons at his disposal: forward gun, wave spread, rotating energy ball, fixed energy field and three-way lightning bolts. Button II shoots and button I cycles through the weapon types. There are not any weapon upgrades, but you can charge your primary weapon and trigger a more powerful variant of each of the weapon types.
The seven levels display colorful landscapes, but playing through them can feel awfully lengthy and repetitive, causing you to get impatient while waiting for the large bosses to arrive. At least you have mid-level bosses as well to keep things interesting. There is some solid challenge, especially as you dig deeper and its cool style and gameplay score it some major points. Check for Kiaidan 00 on eBay.
If you enjoy the cartoon-like stylings of a cute-em-up, but want something little darker while retaining the weirdness, The Lost Sunheart is worth looking into.
Interestingly, The Lost Sunheart actually has you pilot four different ships over the course of the game including a submarine and an ice jet. The levels are long and can be quite challenging. It can be incredibly frustrating when you get sent back to the beginning of a level after losing a life, but The Lost Sunheart does dull the sting a bit by allowing you to keep your power-ups after dying. But overall, The Lost Sunheart provides a good amount of solid fun and entertaining moments.
First of all, no, that apostrophe is not a typo at least not on my part, anyway. Originally released on the PC—98, the graphics and, more importantly, the scrolling have been upgraded in this port, and the hentai anime scenes between stages have been toned down a bit. You can choose between two different characters, each of whom have different weapon configurations. While it does improve on some of the scrolling issues from the PC 98 version, the Sega Saturn port has the best scrolling performance, redrawn graphics, and brings in a two-player mode and exclusive weapons.
This title is best known for being the first significant video game design project from futurist Syd Mead. Prior to designing the ships, enemies and pre-rendered backgrounds for TerraForming, he was best known for designing city backgrounds and vehicles for Blade Runner and the spaceship design for Aliens.
Some of the actual level designs are quite repetitive and rely a bit too much on Mr. At times, the visuals are a bit hypnotic, if not distracting. Your weapon lineup consists of laser, spread gun, and homing shards and they can be upgraded up to three times via power-ups. The primary weapon can also be charged up for a more powerful blast.
Due to the amount of enemies, you probably will save the charge shot mechanic for bosses. You can also change up your ship speed to your liking. With all that went into the design of the visuals and the generous parallax scrolling, it would have made a significant difference if Terraforming included more barriers and obstacles in the level design.
Instead, the game is filled with open areas. Being the first shooter on the PC Engine CD, Avenger is a fairly straightforward helicopter shooter, but it does use a tilting mechanic for taking shots.
You can power up our weapons along the way, but our basic weapon configuration from primary, secondary and special must be designated before the level begins as opposed to the common instant exchanging in the middle of battle. New weapon offerings are also unlocked as you progress through the game. The weapon system is solid, a good change from the typical shmup offering, and offers you a bit of configuration strategy as you anticipate the next level.
As you may expect from an early PC Engine CD game, the level designs are visually repetitive and short. There are some parts of the action that are intense, but otherwise the pace is mild.
Check for Avenger on eBay. You start with a basic gun shoots a vulcan gun ahead and bombs angle down. The ring can also be moved at the front or behind the ship, customizing your protection. There are other miscellaneous power-ups hidden that can increase your bombs supply or further change weapon behavior. Aside from the rather unoriginal level themes, there is a good amount of variety and the art direction and pixel art is quite detailed.
Many of the spires are smaller than average, but they are also able to throw more of them on the screen at once for a nice change from the typical. There is also some nice use of color cycling to add subtle background animation effects. The screen sometimes scrolls vertically to show you a larger landscape to traverse.
After a bit of practice, Beginner and Normal mode can end up being a cake walk. Once you bump it up to Hard and Expert Normal, W-Ring will definitely start testing your reflexes and making you work for it. Check for W-Ring on eBay. This shooter is one of the less-known among those that actually reached the States on the TG Eventually, you discover that Dead Moon has some impressive graphics here and there including up to six levels of parallax scrolling and have some level designs that actually make the TG16 hardware sweat a bit.
The design of the moon surface in level three is a parlictually good example of using parallax scrolling to create a subtly engaging environment. The weapons system is somewhat typical, but well rounded starting with a vulcan gun and letting you pick up additional weapons that can be upgraded up to four times each.
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Bad Faith. Serious consequences. Dungeon Drafters. A tile-based dungeon crawler that draws upon magic cards! Lucas Demo. Doki Doki Literature Club! Will you write the way into her heart? Team Salvato. A love letter to horror manga in the form of a visual novel. A little girl in apocalypse steampunk world trying to fix her robot friend. Gacha Club Studio.
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