Any new shump with good graphics comparable to either Ether Vapor Remaster or Astrebreed?

http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/mushihimesama/mushihimesama.htm

The sequel is probably better known for that one final boss youtube video as well as the 360 version being region free and having the black label dlc available on the english xbla store.

I found the video you meant. Absolutely terrifying. Thanks for the info, this one doesn't look like my cup of tea. Hopefully it'll sell decently so that the other Cave games come to PC.

I've heard good things about Resogun (if you have a PS4): www.youtube.com/watch?v=XNIsKC1YDYo

If you're looking for something on Steam, maybe Revolver360? It's well-reviewed, but I haven't played it personally: store.steampowered.com/app/313400

well, bear in mind that that video is of the optional true last boss fight on the hardest difficulty (IIRC) The first page of that one article I linked to shows a comparison between the bullet density on different difficulty levels.

In general though I feel that bullet hell styled games are "easier" to get the hang of than older styled ones, since they were usually designed around being at max power all the time so if you died and got stripped naked and thrown back to the last checkpoint you were pretty much royally fucked and had very little chance of salvaging your run to the point where you might as well just start over after dying once. While bullet hell games are a lot more lenient with deaths (respawning you in place, with most of your powerups intact), tends to be more generous with bombs, and most of them typically don't throw a lot of cheap terrain related deaths at you. So they can be a bit easier to survive in, but there's also a lot of room for advanced players in playing for an optimal score (Cave used to rely on creating games with different arrange modes for expert gamers like the black label/death label or required different scoring strategies to sell ports as well as specialty arcade boards to their most hardcore fans).

(I say that but I'm still pretty terrible at shmups in general lol)

I still haven't played dances with chicken laserbeams or whatever it's called. mighty cluckin extreme force. cap chickengen and parmesean. humans must answer. yeah that's it.

yeah. I hear it's pretty hard though. in a bad way. even for a shmup. I'm gonna play it soon. I got it because of the projects that came out of gsc implosion it was the least high profile and I appreciated the humour angle.

My take on Humans Must Answer: It is a puzzle game that uses a shmup as the framework. Wasn't to my taste, personally.

I have noticed that bullet hell games like eXceed are surprisingly easy to play if you aren't going for a good score. I'm not great at shmups either, but I think you're right that things have changed quite a bit since the arcade days. I was honestly a bigger fan of that style than I am of the Cave-type games!

Every time I start to think that Cave games are difficult, I play a few credits of Gradius or R-Type, and get back to Cave as a happy man.

I haven't spent much time with Mushihimesama, haven't 1CC'd either. But Mushihimesama Futari I enjoy a lot. It is actually quite approachable, that TLB video is on the extreme side, and you won't be reaching that boss without being able to obliterate the game at the hardest difficult anyway.

On something completely different, have you played the other Exceed games, 2 and 3? I love both of them (and truly hate Exceed The First Game: Amateur Hour edition).

Eschatos is coming out on Steam tomorrow. No bleeding edge graphics, but everything is as flashy as it gets. Besides it is one of the bestest modern shooters for gameplay, and that soundtrack... If only Astebreed was half as much enjoyable...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZsuHfArwGbg

I played and hated the first game, and wasn't curious enough to go back for seconds, lol. Does it really improve that much?

Yes, A LOT.

Exceed 3 Black Package is a damn good Touhou style game and has a soundtrack that'll blow your mind. Curiously it also has a AAA anime voice cast if that's your thing; I am talking about people such as Chiwa Saitō, Nana Mizuki, Yukari Tamura, and I can't imagine how much money they had to spend just for that :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u801M2CBa88
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0X9oQsRw2Yg

Exceed 2nd is different, it has a bullet polarity system. It's like a pure shooter version of Ikaruga without the puzzle elements and nasty environmental hazards.

Thanks for the info. The third one does look like an improvement from those videos. I noticed the trademark eXceed slowdown, though--is that just the video, or is it typical?

Exceed's recorded videos are usually like that. During gameplay I get a consistent 60fps, and a brief 30fps on boss deaths which I believe is intentional.

There used to be problems with fps fluctuating between 50 and 70 way in the past (I own the original japanese release cd), but it disappeared with a random nvidia driver update and never happened again in years. It was nothing like the slowdown in the video, though.

Note that I always force vsync off, and cap framerate at 60 in the video driver settings, to reduce input lag.

I've never seen it on a list of well known shmups, but I've always wondered...

Would the Metal Slug series be considered a shoot-em-up game?

If you stretched the definition a bit, I think they would. Sin & Punishment is a shoot 'em up, and it's not that big of a stretch to include Gunstar Heroes as well.

Purists usually group them under "run and gun" games, but as far as I can see on Shmups Forum, shmup players often appreciate those games as well. And then there are those games that are really pushing the boundaries like FixEight, Out Zone, Gundhara...