Bullet Hell

Are bullet hell shmups primarily about memorization or is there a skill you learn? If you get to good at one, can you beat others without painstakingly memorizing where to stand?

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youtu.be/8ZDINmWooJU?t=64
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>If you get to good at one, can you beat others without painstakingly memorizing where to stand?
Yes, you eventually become used to dodging shit tons of bullets

Bullet Hell games definitely feel like one of those games where you can get 'in the zone' and just see everything coming and reflexively move precisely where you need to, even without consciously knowing the patterns

Bit of both. There's a lot of similar patterns and mechanics between different games in the genre. Then you have to figure out what to do for the boss. Your skill level determines how much of that is trial and error or reflexive.

Please play and create content for my dead game, Fraxy. (;﹏;)

To expand a bit with a simple example. Let's define tracer shots as projectiles that an enemy shoots at where you were when they were fired. The strategy then is to shift to the side to avoid them.
So, suppose a boss shoots a volley of tracer shots down the middle over a couple seconds. You start moving right along the screen slightly. The last few shots are now staggered a bit to the right.
Then the boss starts shooting a beam across the screen in a clockwise direction.
You moved to the right, now you're closer to the origin of the beam and have to move past any straggling shots of the tracer shots previously fired.
A good shmup would make sure you can tightly dodge those straggling projectiles, that's where skill could supplement strategy. Though if you would of moved to left in the first place, that entire problem would of been avoided.

Memorization is one way to acquire skills. Anyway, it's a dynamic mix of memorizing specific situations and transferable skills of which there are many. Bullet pattern reading is a big one that can carry you very far. You generally learn what kind of types of attacks enemies use, learn how to simplify them in your mind, how to filter out needless information and better predict trajectories. Dodging is another skill that generally improves over time, albeit slowly. Attack misdirection techniques such as bullet streaming, tap dodging and whatever that jerky quick movement is called are where this is the most noticable. There are also many mechanics practically all games share, such as proximity based damage/point blanking of some kind. Panic bombing is also something a lot of games have. The stage designs tend to have trends in them that you get the hang of after repeated play too, though this is far less obvious.

Also to answer this more directly, yes it gets much easier the more you play. I can easily clear games that would have taken me close to a hundred hours when I was starting out. Actually another thing I forgot to mention is the various general skills when practicing. Just knowing how to practice efficiently will cut the amount of time you need to git gud significantly, and I'm not just talking about using savestates/stage select either.

Bullet hell is essential kusoge. Look at Touhou - the games themselves are so bad, the majority of people shitting themselves over Touhou characters (which are already bland as fuck) never played the games. This is a literal low IQ magnet genre.

Bullet hells are absolute trash
Just a shitton of bullets forming pretty patterns, neglecting all and any kind of proper game design

Only autists like 'em

>it's niche so it's shit!
oh nu-Sup Forums...

Imperishable Night is the greatest danmaku of all time

>pretty patterns
Not all bullet hell games are Touhou.

>niche

Well, obviously, as they're made for the autistic idiots. Enjoy your brain damage, scum.

I would say it's more about pattern recognition than straight up memorizing the whole game, and improving your reflexes through practice as it means nothing if you know exactly how the game plays out, if you can't play it.

Define "proper game design". Or is that synonymous with levels because you're too much of a brainlet to understand the thought and effort that goes into designing good bullet patterns and encounters?

Are there pattern-less bullet hell games?

the incel rote memorisation

the chad flow state real time evade

IQ is the dick size equivalent for retards with a big superiority complex

It depends, on higher level there are often revenge bullets, streaming bullets and other mechanics that are triggered by the player and not the stage, so the overall patter can be different.

Memorizing most of the patterns that can't be manipulated by the player is necessary tho else your not even playing Hard anytime soon.

>t. 70 IQ subhuman

Touhou has a lot of rng but he meant that non Touhou bullet hells arent obsessed with making their patterns pretty and are all about how they function rather than how they look

Let's not go too far offtopic, but this is a common bit of misinformation. IQ matters. It isn't the only thing that matters because there are high-IQ losers, but it does.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_quotient#Social_correlations

kill yourself shitskin

You can't measure intelligence because you can't really define it
If someone is good at logic but shit at chemistry, would you call that person stupid?
If someone is shit at math but an amazing programmer, is he not intelligent?

>You can't measure intelligence because you can't really define it
This whole debate doesn't matter here. You do not need to agree that IQ measures intelligence to see what outcomes it predicts. You can go by the statistics alone.
>If someone is good at logic but shit at chemistry, would you call that person stupid?
These things normally correlate. You should really read that Wikipedia page I linked to and the related pages like the one on "g".

It's not a perfect predictor of success in all fields, it's a modifier.

>shit at math but an amazing programmer
This person does not exist. You have to understand a certain mathematical logic to be good at programming

Math is not just logic

>Are bullet hell shmups primarily about memorization or is there a skill you learn?
Memorization is definitely a part of it, but if you're not good at dodging and reading bullets no amount of memorization will save you.

0/10

Yeah, okay? Are you trying for a strawman because I never said math is just logic?

>all shmups are touhou
wew

You can't give a person a meaningless number and tell him "sorry dude, this is all you'll ever amount to, no need to put effort, you will never be better than a 90"

That's more reasonable, I still think people should use this as some sort of "dick size" equivalent for brains

Alright, for any Touhou players (how many of you are left), which is the one boss you can call actual bullshit.

Benben and Yatsuhashi

>"sorry dude, this is all you'll ever amount to, no need to put effort, you will never be better than a 90"
And who said this? The outcomes it predicts are on average.

Kanako

Mai and Satono

Nobody but faggot neets whose IQ is the only thing going for them says this. You can compensate for a low IQ with hard work just as you can compensate for a lack of any other kind of innate ability. At least if you're not literally retarded that is.

You can't raise your IQ

Wow, you really sound like you have low IQ

I hate those dumb shoeheads with a passion

You literally can, just not g

t. low IQ nigger

No need to be mad. Is not your fault

>definitely feel like one of those games where you can get 'in the zone'
>tfw I'm like that when playing osu!mania

>tfw I'm like that when playing osu!mania
Why not play a good rhythm game?

Low IQ subhuman retard

Tell me a good rhythm game that I can play with only 4 keys and with a fast-response UI (which excludes stepmania) then.

>with a fast-response UI (which excludes stepmania)
What the fuck are you talking about?
Osu is clunky and slow as fuck

>open gaem
>click the big pink button
>type song I want to play
>enter
>slow as fuck

>open game
>enter
>scroll to the song you want to play
>enter
>slow as fuck

Looks like you don't play SM.

Looks like you don't, because neither game is significantly faster or slower than the other
But if you want to keep playing the objectively shittier game with worse scoring and infinitely fewer songs to play because "wahhh the UI is different," I guess it's not worth my energy to try and help you

Reminder that Osu's source got revealed and we learned it takes screenshots of your desktop and sends them to their servers

>Reminder that Osu's source got revealed and we learned it takes screenshots of your desktop and sends them to their servers
For what purpose?

Mostly 2hu games do this, and they are trash. There are plenty of awesome bullet hell games though from devs like Raizing, CAVE, Taito, G.rev, etc.

No idea, but it's right there in the source code. It's probably some retarded attempt at anti-cheat

I gotta say, 2hu certainly did a number on how people view shmups today. Not all of them are retarded bullet hells.
If you want to play actually fun stg games, I suggest these store.steampowered.com/sub/39160/

to laugh at all the hentai you keep on your desktop

I'm sorry but not everyone has the genetics to get a ketsui 2ALL, nmnb lunatic Subterranean Animism, or garegga letter score.

I know you are probably some millennial who got handed participation trophies since you were shitting yourself so you think "everyone can be a winner!" but it's simply not the case in a highly difficult genre like fighting games, RTS, or shoot em ups.

Why can jaimers (best western shoot em up player who tops all the steam leaderboards in 100 hours for every game) be a god despite playing on a fucking pad through a converter and people that have been on the shmups.system11 forums for 10 FUCKING YEARS can't even 1cc dodonpachi or a touhou game on hard?

It's genetics. Just like height, dick size, intelligence. Skill at videogames, especially at difficult genres, is 90% genetics. Fucking get over it subhuman.

dumbest post i have read all day

Sell me on them

There's two main categories: Curtain Shooter & Frantic Shooter

To date, DoDonPachi DaiOuJou is still considered the best balance between the two, so look up footage of that if you wanna see the differences in how they work. (It even has the courtesy to color code the bullets by which type they are)

Curtain is exactly what the internet will tell you bullet hells are: Just memorizing the patterns and learning to squeeze through them. 2hoo games are pretty much ZUN lifting patterns from other shmups and making them full-curtain, so yeah, they and that series get hate.
Frantic is mostly about knowing where the next bunch of shots are going to come from next, rather than knowing the pattern. It's still memorizing, just different. You're either trying to mitigate the bullets or draw them in a certain direction that'll make dodging way easier than it wotherwise would be.

>garegga letter score
what does this actually mean

Why is DoDonPachi DaiOuJou so perfect?
youtube.com/watch?v=-anGJC6__9I

10 million or more, the game can't display over 9,999,999 million so it replaces the digit a letter.

But all 3 of those games are bullet hell

>hentai on your desktop
Why?

>tfw shmups were on their way out the door and Cave thought it'd be the last they'd ever make
>It ended up saving the whole genre, being its greatest commercial success, and the standard against which all others are judged

iq doesnt matter.

aboriginans have lived for 1000s of years without computers, rockets, or white people. dont need them.

i tried to post some porn webms for you but for some reason the upload failed, so i apologize.

>there are people who think poohoo = bullet hell
please play a fucking cave game at the VERY least

I was never really into shmups, but these games were my gateway and made me appreciate the genre a lot more. These are some of the best doujin stg's out there
All 3 games are different, but retain tight focus on core aspects.
The first one is basically taito's rayforce on steroids, featuring plane/depth based combat.
Second one has a revolutionary core gameplay element where you can deflect enemy's projectiles back at them while still retaining challenge.
Third one mixes up long rage shooting with close range melee attacks without being broken.
The visuals are crisp and they've got amazing synth music.
Just see for yourself.
youtube.com/watch?v=mpOr5VZQTSk
youtu.be/8ZDINmWooJU?t=64
youtu.be/CfcjBAZ6e7o?t=20
I'm certainly no expert but they can't compare to the likes of touhou or dondonpachi

Other people already gave good answers but I'd add that probably the biggest reason most people suck at shmups and think they're an ultra-skill genre is because their existing skill from other games doesn't translate over. You were a retard playing your first platformer or shooter or fighter as a kid but presumably you grew up playing a lot of games and the time you put into the games transfers over to other games. A lot of people jump into touhou as their first shmup and game over on stage 2 because the genre is different than what they're used to and they're basically starting from 0 again. Like others said, if you put a ton of time into a couple shmups, you quickly catxg the similarities in others you play

It sucks when this happens and I become conscious of it after a while and then it stops and I need to manually do everything again.

Youre certainly no expert, stop making dismissive blanket statements about genres you don't know much about. Just because games feature bullet cancelling or shield systems doesn't mean they're not bullet hell. I mean hell, Giga Wing already did the whole bullet reflection thing way before Reflex and you'd be crazy not to call it a bullet hell. Even Cave, the pioneers of the style, have many games with emphasized cancelling mechanics like Guwange, Esprade, Espgaluda, Progear and others.

Definitely true. Shmups are pretty much the majority of games I play these days. You get up on par and on the way to 1CCing very quickly.

Mystia

>bullet deflecting
>revolutionary

KAMUI alone is worth it.
It achieved the then-impossible dream of being a successful japanese indie shmup on windows.
It's also one of the best to have a bullet cancelling mechanic, about a decade before it became the cool thing to do.

Reflex is a remake of an older game the devs made, only rewritten to fit in the same continuity of KAMUI. The game went into dev hell foreverrrrrr, and you can really tell where it hit that wall. But the reflecting bullets thing is a fun mechanic.

ALLTYNEX 2nd has the same story: remake rewritten to make a trilogy, this time with a mechanic of using melee (that can swat down a lot of bullets, homing lasers, and a fuckhueg laser (that cancels bullets). Scoring system is like Ketsui, only in reverse. Kill popcorn to build up a combo, than use melee/fuckhueg laser on big enemies to get a big multiplier. Weakest in the trilogy, but has a couple of the best tracks.

>Scoring system is like Ketsui, only in reverse. Kill popcorn to build up a combo, than use melee/fuckhueg laser on big enemies to get a big multiplier.
Nigga wat. Not only is it completely lacking in the point blanking element but also Ketsui has you building up your counter on popcorns with regular shot and cashing in on high value enemies with lock on too

>Not only is it completely lacking in the point blanking element
>Melee isn't point blanking

user...

Right, but my point is that it's not like Ketsui where you have to point blank everything to build up your counter and cash in. AS is just point blanking to cash in, and even that only sometimes.

And that's why ultra instinct is the best transformation

user he said "reverse"

I know what he said, and I'm saying that Ketsui is build up counter with point blanking -> cash in with point blanking, while AS is build up multiplier from a distance -> cash in with point blanking (sometimes). Not exactly the reverse system.

Great difficulty curve
Good scoring system that rewards intelligent routing
Good patterns and memorable bosses

don't forget the awesome atmosphere and soundtrack
>stage 5 is an arrange of stage 1, all the DDP bosses as midbosses
it's so good

I don't really get the hate memorization always gets here. Pretty much all learning involves some sort of memorization and repetition of routines.

It's just one of countless rationalizations shitters will use to dismiss games which are too difficult for them and demand more practice than their ADD-ridden quitter personalities can handle. If it wasn't this, it would be something else.

Yeah, you learn how close to a bullet you can go to, most games give you a point bonus for "skimming" a bullet

Touhou =/= "most games"

This
People like to make excuses when they're bad at something

Touhou isn't the only series that does that.
Don't be retarded.

I didn't say it was, don't be retarded.
Outside of Touhou it's not commonplace at all, saying "most games" have grazing shows an immense lack of awarness of the genre outside of Touhou and Touhou wannabes.

It's funny how people here want to play challenging games but don't seem to want to make the effort to learn to play them, so they only stick to genres which they're already good at. This is understandable because often the learning process involves a lot of unfun time, but this isn't because of the game's design but because learning completely new things is pretty boring at the beginning.

>Touhou wannabes
Are there any worth note?

Exceed 3rd if only for the awesome music. Exceed 2nd is really fun too but it's not a Touhou wannabe, more of a fast paced Ikaruga with little girls.

>Exceed 3rd
The character designs are pretty lewd. Is it an h-game in disguise?