not a shmuphead by any means but i found the 2014 entry surprisingly entertaining and was in a car for 6 hours so I tapped in on this. manipulating bullet patterns on a crusty 2017 ASUS laptop with a suspect shift key is just only a notch below an arcade cabinet in terms of intended shmup experience, and after a bit of mangling with the different modes and ship types i was hittin that rhythmic groove that made me fall in love with PCB & Imperishable Night when I played them way back when. shmups are really good at creating this kind of paradoxical enforcement and lessening of failure anxiety--good performance lessens the feeling that you're gonna lose and builds confidence in your competency, but also said good performance moves you up the linear curve of higher stakes, to where your prior good performance might not cut it anymore, which actually just reinforces the initial anxiety, and so on and so on. new breed trapper imposter syndrome not the fake bullshit for corporate eaters they talk about in litmags. anyway i really like this one because it kind of lets you set the variables for that anxiety game--do you want to be anxious about keeping up a high standard for an indefinite period of time, do you want to be anxious about keeping pace with an ever-evolving environment, do you want to be anxious about the precarious, 'zig when you shoulda zagged' nature of timing your next big move, etc. then the internal slip n slide of affect plays out from there depending on how you've set the board up. idk just really fun stuff at the end of the day.

Reviewed on Sep 03, 2022


2 Comments


1 year ago

"new breed trapper imposter syndrome not the fake bullshit for corporate eaters they talk about in litmags."

Got in one, also I dream of being able toss out lines like this so casually extremely good shit.

1 year ago

ayo thank you slizzy!!! i've def been embracing that casual side as of late, got its pros and cons but sometimes it unlocks some useful sayings lmao