[1cc] Hellfire (Arcade, 1P set) - 1-ALL - 1,037,430 pts
1.6 هزار بار بازدید -
3 سال پیش
-
Hellfire (ヘルファイヤー) is an horizontally-scrolling
Hellfire (ヘルファイヤー) is an horizontally-scrolling shooting game made by Toaplan in 1989, a year during which they made a ton of games for some reason. It was their first horizontal STG and they struggled to develop it according to an interview ( http://shmuplations.com/toaplan-chron... ), due to the lack of experience with horizontals and its different approach to stage design compared to verticals. I think they did a fine job designing terrain obstacles for the game, although it's not my favorite game of theirs.
The game is uncommon for its weapon switching mechanic: you only have two buttons, one for the shot and another one to switch to the next weapon. You get 4 different weapons: one shoots forward, the other one backward, the other one up and down, the last one in all 4 diagonals. Apart from the last one which is useful as a jack of all trades, they're all pretty situational, and the level design revolves around this: some parts are impossible if you don't use the intended weapon. Ideally you want to remember to switch to a given weapon before enemies appear in order to kill them before they start shooting. It's a pretty interesting aspect because they really put some effort into the level design, many areas are clearly made for some specific weapons and nothing else. The game feels a bit unique thanks to that.
The biggest problem about that mechanic is that you have 4 weapons, and can only cycle through weapons in a given order: that process is very prone to mistakes. Making such a mistake (tapping 3 times instead of 2 and getting the wrong weapon for example) can lead to disasters, because as said before the weapons are very situational and you sometimes don't have time to react and switch again, especially when you also have to dodge enemy shots. In a game like Garegga for example, the weapon formation only affects your options and your main shot is unchanged and will keep hitting stuff, but here you're really in trouble because you won't hit anything if you don't have the correct weapon. I've seen this discussion several times on STG places and the common opinion is that maybe it would have been better with 2 buttons to switch (one forward, one backward), or only have 3 weapons, or have 1 button for each weapon, but what's done is done. You really need to get used to it, but once you have the correct mindset it's actually fine. Perfectly memorizing everything greatly helps.
Another quirk of the weapon switching is that if you shoot while pressing the weapon changing button, it will switch the weapon. Because of that you want to refrain from shooting when switching weapons, unless this is really part of your plan. Because of this, I avoid switching weapons as much as possible, and that's why I rely on the diagonal shot so much when maybe a combination of two different shots would have been better. This also makes correcting mistakes much harder because you can't really shoot while trying to switch to the correct weapon, but at the same time you may be overwhelmed by enemies and need to kill them.
Another dangerous thing is the big gaps between your shots, and there's simply no way to avoid that. At max power you can only have 2 sets of shots on screen, and unless you're closer to the border of the screen this will always leave big empty spaces where the enemies can fit. You can try to tap slowly to have more regular shots (or use a slower autofire setting), but in some situations you'll still have to be careful (columns section in stage 5, lake in stage 4). This is less of an issue on the Megadrive version.
Finally, another "weird" thing about the game is how everything feels so big and how little space you have to navigate. You can barely dodge in this game, that's why you really want to speedkill everything.
Once you get used to the weapon switching and have memorized the game, it's very fun to optimize your run by killing everything effortlessly and finding the best shot for every situation (which is not always that obvious).
The game loops infinitely. I have practiced loop 2 and it's not that different, but it also adds a few enemies (mainly in the first 2 stages), which is actually pretty nice because you deal with stages differently. I only trained for loop 2 which is why you see me wait for nothing in some places out of habit: that's because there are enemies there on loop 2. The bullet speed is not very different in the second loop but enemies are more agressive. I originally wanted to get a 2-ALL but some very hard recoveries are off-putting at the moment (other solution would be not to die, but no-missing a whole loop is still pretty hard and most hard checkpoints are obviously tied to hard parts at full power). Maybe I will try to come back, but other games call me and 2-ALL became low priority.
0:08 - 1-1
5:52 - 1-2
10:50 - 1-3
16:08 - 1-4
21:37 - 1-5
27:19 - 1-6
33:00 - Second Loop and Game Over
The game is uncommon for its weapon switching mechanic: you only have two buttons, one for the shot and another one to switch to the next weapon. You get 4 different weapons: one shoots forward, the other one backward, the other one up and down, the last one in all 4 diagonals. Apart from the last one which is useful as a jack of all trades, they're all pretty situational, and the level design revolves around this: some parts are impossible if you don't use the intended weapon. Ideally you want to remember to switch to a given weapon before enemies appear in order to kill them before they start shooting. It's a pretty interesting aspect because they really put some effort into the level design, many areas are clearly made for some specific weapons and nothing else. The game feels a bit unique thanks to that.
The biggest problem about that mechanic is that you have 4 weapons, and can only cycle through weapons in a given order: that process is very prone to mistakes. Making such a mistake (tapping 3 times instead of 2 and getting the wrong weapon for example) can lead to disasters, because as said before the weapons are very situational and you sometimes don't have time to react and switch again, especially when you also have to dodge enemy shots. In a game like Garegga for example, the weapon formation only affects your options and your main shot is unchanged and will keep hitting stuff, but here you're really in trouble because you won't hit anything if you don't have the correct weapon. I've seen this discussion several times on STG places and the common opinion is that maybe it would have been better with 2 buttons to switch (one forward, one backward), or only have 3 weapons, or have 1 button for each weapon, but what's done is done. You really need to get used to it, but once you have the correct mindset it's actually fine. Perfectly memorizing everything greatly helps.
Another quirk of the weapon switching is that if you shoot while pressing the weapon changing button, it will switch the weapon. Because of that you want to refrain from shooting when switching weapons, unless this is really part of your plan. Because of this, I avoid switching weapons as much as possible, and that's why I rely on the diagonal shot so much when maybe a combination of two different shots would have been better. This also makes correcting mistakes much harder because you can't really shoot while trying to switch to the correct weapon, but at the same time you may be overwhelmed by enemies and need to kill them.
Another dangerous thing is the big gaps between your shots, and there's simply no way to avoid that. At max power you can only have 2 sets of shots on screen, and unless you're closer to the border of the screen this will always leave big empty spaces where the enemies can fit. You can try to tap slowly to have more regular shots (or use a slower autofire setting), but in some situations you'll still have to be careful (columns section in stage 5, lake in stage 4). This is less of an issue on the Megadrive version.
Finally, another "weird" thing about the game is how everything feels so big and how little space you have to navigate. You can barely dodge in this game, that's why you really want to speedkill everything.
Once you get used to the weapon switching and have memorized the game, it's very fun to optimize your run by killing everything effortlessly and finding the best shot for every situation (which is not always that obvious).
The game loops infinitely. I have practiced loop 2 and it's not that different, but it also adds a few enemies (mainly in the first 2 stages), which is actually pretty nice because you deal with stages differently. I only trained for loop 2 which is why you see me wait for nothing in some places out of habit: that's because there are enemies there on loop 2. The bullet speed is not very different in the second loop but enemies are more agressive. I originally wanted to get a 2-ALL but some very hard recoveries are off-putting at the moment (other solution would be not to die, but no-missing a whole loop is still pretty hard and most hard checkpoints are obviously tied to hard parts at full power). Maybe I will try to come back, but other games call me and 2-ALL became low priority.
0:08 - 1-1
5:52 - 1-2
10:50 - 1-3
16:08 - 1-4
21:37 - 1-5
27:19 - 1-6
33:00 - Second Loop and Game Over
3 سال پیش
در تاریخ 1400/09/05 منتشر شده
است.
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