What set this whole thing off was when I decided to sit down and watch various playthroughs of a chunk of the game, and the boss music. God, I don't know if Danny Elfman started it, but like every single short animation (usually in 3d, usually so the creators can play God Hand because they made it on a Siggraph dvd,) with a chase sequence has that rompy tune. It doesn't matter where I hear it, every time, something about it makes me go ballistic.
Actually, I'm beginning to really really agree with the axe thread I started with DDPF, upon watching the first couple of levels of DeathSmiles, enough that I'd ask it to be a full fledged Kop thread. Beyond the simple bonus icons you'd see with a bell in Twinbee or an extra speed/weapon icon at cap, something of the norm, why do Cave games jump on this?
Think about this for a second: if this had the same tired aesthetic of a space shooter with space colonies and long battleships and brownish mechs floating by from behind farting some bullet (from their booster!) behind them perhaps, would you complain that man this does look real glum!? Probably not because hey I'm playing a new twichy old style game in the here and now! I don't pay attention to those squees my ship makes or the nyaa enemies make when they explode... Well, then I'd hope your day job isn't to write up Excel spreadsheets because how could you see the game anyway?
I mean, look at their games, even a stage with a sprawling, kinda-undulating bitmap beetlepuppet, they do their absolute best to hide it behind stuff that shouldn't matter. 50%+ of the screen at any given time makes Star Ocean numbers the focus with searing cool streams of bullets the latter to keep you from the secret that there are Neo-Geo games that look and move better than this.
I work in the backroom of a department store unpacking crap mostly from Asia. As in, imitations of actual useful objects that would actually be useful if they weren't actually covered in lead paint. Vases, cups and plates, small trucks, rugged model helicopters, brass biplanes, all so proudly deflected with stickers of DISPLAY ONLY NOT A TOY NOT FOR CHILDREN! The best though is when we get those flat shaped copper Christmas tree impressions on a slab of wood. Except, it's May, and the Christmas tree was just quickly repainted in red white and blue because it's now a Patriotism tree! Common go with it!
This game opens with a brown town with some brown gourds and a huge hanging sign that says HALLOWEEN and then ogres fly around and purple flies off things. Sometimes the game does throw a bone and makes an ogre actually do something (remember when Order of Ecclesia just came out and I was ranting about that half-assed Super Contra homage?)
And then after all that, the game chucks campaign season signs on the hill, that oh here comes enemies! Don't actually look at them for what they are, just shoot so that they have a screen time of 5 pixels and 5 frames each. Oh it doesn't matter, you won't see them under the signs anyway. Then the screen almost fills with enemies but then it remembers it's a Cave game so then it promptly fills with Christmas balls.
And then it quickly shows what looks like a goth maid in a bubble bath followed by some deviant art.
I've never seen a game actively try to hide itself, I mean, it's completely shameless. While most everything in shooters that doesn't actually have a gun drawn on it does move like a gif, you can almost never see the gifs anyway in Cave games. I can see the understanding why, because the screen is already half covered by your river of color that will quickly do work to anything that isn't a boss, what's the point in bothering with fodder? What kills it for me is when you see these shit drakes make no effort to show awesome they could be! Could they roar a stream of bullets behind them? I mean there's a mess of them, there's a potential of interesting repetition there. Instead we get tons of enemies that drag and drop around like post-its who just summon columns of bullet spreads meters above them by merely thinking.
And then there was this zombie head stuck in the ground. The rage directed at the cloudy sepia is thick as Texas because the raging bull before him just ran melancholy like everything else until her face fell off. He began to scream carefree finally because his time was up. Just like in Cave fashion, we get another needless meter to cover more up. Well I guess it's there to show you you shouldn't use bombs because you're playing a Cave game play harder! I'd really love to think that he was more pissed because even then, the patterns of bullets appearing, like the numbers, were so completely detached from his face.
Cave has effectively made a niche business of selling us metagames. So delicious that now I know why they said all those years ago that the most hardcore of western fans should just go to Japan to play their games! Somewhere in making portions of their games cater to the kind of ballerina like Ben Shinobi, filling up the screen with colorful lies and bright dots that may not actually be lethal because the dot inside of the dot didn't quite connect to the dot inside of you as you bathe in lilac, it becomes harder to just play it how you wish. You know you're missing something, and that something is really the fly on the syrup or poo. And if you try to ignore it, what do you have left to stare at?
Cave should just do away with Black Label. If they wanted to make a real statement (which I wish they would,) they should make another mode, call it something like Nietzsche Libel. It's like Black Label, but the object is to keep flowing numbers on the screen at all times (ignoring needed loading time,) If the screen is not full of numbers for over one second, you break your combo. Then the game flashes 2 frames of a black screen saying slit your wrists, followed by rebooting itself.
Like a bet, they made the almost most pandering, Burton-aping, lifeless atmosphere (managed to do it out of space,) they could muster, set to something meant to be pulse pounding or Zen inducing. They did it because they knew it would sell. Then Aksys saw their bet and raised it a box. It's sad because every developer in Japan, doujin or douche, knows now without a doubt they can get away with what was hypothesized with Mushihimesama. Just look at Otomedius. (Though I'm sure ripping off Monster Hunter is more profitable.)
But I've never played a Cave Shooter. They probably play amazing, but they really play on the level of the idolm@ster (btw I cry when I masturbate).
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(Seriously that tree boss looks like an after effects parented puppet firing clipart. But just to be on level, I like watching superplays too, unless it's Chaos Field.)
