Aggrochat Archives - Page 97 of 103 - Tales of the Aggronaut

Dragon Commander: Divinity

July 6, 2014 by Belghast

A Cursed Bread Maker

Last night we recorded our thirteenth episode of AggroChat. In various cultures the number thirteen can be either a positive or a negative, and going into the show I was not quite certain how that would shake out. Apparently for us however, thirteen is a very unlucky number. Last week Ash, Kodra and Tam were off hanging out together, and one of the activities was to build Kodra a brand new machine. All of this time we thought his intermittent problems were related to running on six year old hardware. Apparently whatever demons infested his previous machine have jumped ship and are now residing in the new one. We had trouble keeping him online and when he was online he seemed to have issues broadcasting.

All of that aside I think we had a pretty good show last night. We talked about a hole bunch of topics including Tomb Raider and the fact that I maybe just maybe finally enjoy narrative gaming experiences. We also talk quite about about Thomas Was Alone and how that game manages to get the player emotionally attached to a red colored rectangle. We also talk about Rob Pardo leaving Blizzard and the potential effects, as well as the idea that no one person is really that responsible for anything in a game. Additionally we talk about the Divinity series of games, and how the publisher seems to be able to stick to just one genre. We did pure madness this time, due to some confusion on my part we ended up with five guests.

Dragon Commander: Divinity

As has been the case so many times… I added a game to my wish list in part as a way of tracking to see if it goes on sale… and then another friend comes along and griefs me by adding it to the pile of unplayed games. I say grief in the nicest possible sense of the word, because Ashgar has supported this thing I call Steampowered Sunday so many times in the past with an interesting game that he would like to see me play. This time around he ended up purchasing a four game pack and decided he would not play Dragon Commander for some time. As always I am extremely thankful of his generosity, and the fact that it pretty much determined what game I would be playing this week. I am still pretty new to the Divinity setting, but so far I have to say I love the universe that it is set in. I am glad that I played my way through Divinity II this week, otherwise I would have been completely clueless playing this title.

At face value this game is a rather pretty 4X title, and were it only for that the game would be forgettable. The game is extremely confused as at times it is a Civilization clone, other times an RTS like Starcraft, and other times yet a flight simulator. What makes the difference however is the narrative of the game and the lore of the franchise backing it up. As a result the game takes you on this deep quest to win the hearts and minds of a kingdom and at the same time defend it from your mad half dragon brothers and sisters. The game itself is set before the events of Divine Divinity, Beyond Divinity and Divinity II: Ego Draconis. As such you play out the events of your quest alongside Maxos the wizard that is spoken of in Divinity II in an attempt to liberate the world.

You’re Going to Need Friends

The storyline centers around your command carrier the raven, a ship that holds many dark secrets… not the least of which is the fact that the ship itself is a bound demon. In order to power the infernal machine, Maxos has bound Corvus the Raven demon in a special chamber that eventually you can enter. The rest of your ship is made up of ambassadors from each of the races of the games setting, as well as a number of gifted generals that you can call upon to guide your troops in battle. At various points these ambassadors will want to meet with you, an the above picture shows a three way discussion happening between the generals Edmund and Catherine and the Dwarven ambassador Falstaff Silvervein.

On board your ship you have representatives of the Dwarves, Lizards, Elves, Undead and Imps… and each time you do something that benefits one faction you inevitably piss off two others. Like so many of these games it quickly becomes a juggling game to try and keep most of them happy in the process. Making the advisors of the various races happy seems to earn you cards that you can play that can turn the tide of a battle. These give you surprise troops, or a tactical advantage or even there is a card called “Genocide” that lowers the population of an area before attacking it. I’ve not actually used this one, but had the enemy play it on me multiple times and it can be rather devastating.

Taking Territory

Through the bridge of your ship you have access to the map view of your territory. From here you can assign one building per area be it a War Forge that allows you to build units, or one of many other buildings that gather some form of resource in a turn by turn basis. From here you try and gain a foothold against your siblings that you are locked in a land war to control as much of the Rivellon heartland as you can. Combat is resolved in one of three ways. You can pay one of your generals to lead your forces for you, giving you some tactical advantage in the process. You can let your army lead itself, which seems to only be advisable if you have an extremely superior tactical advantage, or you can take up the banner and lead your forces yourself. The limitation is that you can personally lead only one battle per turn, and similarly you can only have a single general lead your forces per turn as well. This means that you want to limit combat to as few volleys as you can per turn.

When you choose to lead your own forces the game changes yet again. This time around you are presented a real-time strategy playing field where you conquer resources on the map and use them to churn out more troops to eventually overwhelm your opponent. The interesting thing about this mode is that I tend to leave it in reserve for battles where I do not have a very obvious superior tactical advantage. There have been fights that I came into the conflict with a single unit, but through the RTS game play get the best of my opponent and push forward with a victory. If this were not enough, you also have the ability to quite literally manifest yourself on the battlefield and take your dragon form to attack the enemy.

When the map starts there is a counter in the center of the HUD counting down how long before you can take flight and join the fight as a dragon. When you do, you become a nearly unstoppable killing machine with a series of dragon powers that either hurt enemies or help your fighters. From the air you can wreak havoc on enemy buildings, or hover over your troops and heal them from above. To make things feel even cooler… you are a Dragon with a freaking jetpack. Personally as enjoyable as this mode is… I tend to try and RTS my way through combat as much as possible without taking to the skies. There are moments where you think that this game is ultimately four different games that they built, but couldn’t really decide on which one to finish. However each of these elements is integrated so well into the whole that it just feels natural.

Embracing Controversy

There are some really odd events that play out on board of your ship, and a number of conflicts that you will be called to resolve. Early on you are chosen to pick from one of four princesses paraded before you, and I opted to go for the one that seemed the “sweetest” which oddly enough… was the undead princess Ophelia. Moments after tying the knot she confides in you that she is wracked by a debilitating disease that will eventually eat her bones from the marrow outwards. There is no known cure, and her father the Undead Advisor forbids her to research any of the options as such things are considered to be heretical. However with your permission and the protection of your ship… there are a number of increasingly twisted things that you can do to resolve the issue. All of them with some pretty severe moral implications as you are tested to find out just how far you would go to save your bride.

Similarly you have to deal with all manner of moral and ethical decisions as you engage with your crew. Some will attempt to bribe you to look the other way as various things happen. There is one specific event where an undead artist is revealed to have been a lesbian, and after her death the undead have taken to the streets trying to purge all of her art as heretical. Do you step in and preserve her works, or do you let the course of undead society go unimpeded. Similarly there is a general who is by nature a very misandrist character. She comes to you telling you that she and the other female general are not making near as much as their male counterparts. Do you do the right thing and increase their pay, while at the same time angering all the males on your ship? The game does not shy away from presenting issues pulled from our own times, including the ratification of gay marriage. All of which gives the setting and lore that much more of a living feel.

Sum of All Parts

If you were to take apart all of the different games that make up Dragon Commander, you would end up with a passable but uninspired civilization clone, a passable but uninspired starcraft clone, a political intrigue and romance sim, and a dragon flight combat game. None of the parts is really that amazing on its own, but when combined together with the woven narrative of trying to save your kingdom from the hands of your insane siblings the game becomes extremely compelling. This is a truly ambitious title, and it is carried out with such charm that you tend to overlook the rough spots here and there. The hardest part honestly is the fact that the tutorial could use a bit of refinement. It took me a couple of games before I felt like I was getting the hang of it enough to survive for long. If you like Age of Wonders and Starcraft and have ever wanted to fly a dragon with jetpacks, I highly suggest you check this one out the next time it goes on sale over on steam. It has definitely managed to eat the better part of two days for me, and as soon as I finish with this post I plan on going back to the game and playing some more.

#DragonCommander #SteampoweredSunday #AggroChat

Three Hours Well Spent

July 2, 2014 by Belghast

Kidneys Safe, Vita Obtained

I have a running joke with my friend Rae, that each time I go off to meet someone to make a purchase from Craigslist that I am more than likely going to end up in a ditch somewhere missing a kidney. What can I say… I have a dark sense of humor. Regardless of this eventual fate, I am extremely cheap by nature, or more so I cannot stand paying more for something than I actually have to. As a result there are a handful of things I search Craigslist for a few times a week, one of them is the Playstation Vita. For a long while I have known that sooner or later I would get one, but seeing as I have a pretty lousy track record for playing handheld games… I most certainly did not want to pay much for it. Essentially handheld gaming is awesome if you travel a lot… whereas I actually actively avoid travel. If I am at home, I am more than likely going to be on my PC or one of my consoles rather than milling about on a handheld. That said I am still very much enthralled by handheld gaming, and the since I have a PS3 and a PS4… the Vita remote play functionality even as limited as it might be… seemed intriguing.

So the other day when I found a Vita that had been posted for a few days for $100 that came with two games… both of them something I would play, I honestly thought it was too good to be true. However over the course of a series of text messages I gleaned two things. Firstly that I suspected the person that was selling the unit was female, and that they did in fact seem legitimate. This is my own personal bias at work, but generally I consider women far more trustworthy than men, and potentially less likely to steal my kidney. I could not meet up that day so we scheduled a meeting for yesterday after work. Basically I did not want to mention it on the blog, because I really didn’t want to jinx it. There was a comedy of errors however when it came to actually meeting up. The person lived in a town roughly thirty minutes away from the southern most point of the Tulsa Metro. Since I prefer to meet at QuikTrip for safety sake, and that town did not have one… we decided to meet at one in Glenpool, thinking I had been there multiple times and it would be in the path she had to travel anyways.

Wrong QuikTrip

The only problem is that apparently Glenpool is big enough to actually have two QuikTrips… both of which are apparently across the street from a McDonalds. I must have looked insane walking around the QuikTrip parking lot looking for a pink and grey Chevy cruze. Like I was confused enough at one point that I even googled what a Chevy Cruze looked like on my phone, because I thought maybe I was not remembering which model was which. Once we realized we were at two separate locations she came to me because I had zero clue where she was. Everything checked out, the Vita is pretty awesome and only has a few scratches here and there on the case. It came with the vita unit, 4 gb memory card, charge cable, car charger, soft sided case, rubberized skin for the unit, Injustice Ultimate Edition game and The Walking Dead game. The owner had wiped it back to factory settings so all I had to do when I got home was set the unit up and I was streaming Resogun from my PS4 in a matter of moments.

The main reason why I knew sooner or later that I would get a Vita is that I have been a member of Playstation Plus for awhile. One of the awesome things about Playstation Plus is it is blanket subscription and does not care at all if you actually own the piece of hardware it is giving away games for. So since the moment I started subscribing I have been picking up every Vita game offered through the web storefront. As a result I now have a library of 35 good titles ready to download to my Vita. The only thing I need to pick up really is a bigger memory card, because quite frankly 4 gb will not hold much of anything. All in all this makes for another wildly successful Craigslist purchase. One of the things I am going to have to test out soon is the ability to play across the internet from my PS4 sitting at home. I’ve heard mixed reviews about it, but just the fact that something like that could possibly exist seems awesome. Also if you are on PSN and we are not already friends… look up “Belghast Sternblade”.

Three Hours Well Spent

I have seen the Realm Maintenance podcast a few times before, but never actually sat down to listen to it. I tend to listen to podcasts when I can during the day because it makes the work day go a little faster. Yesterday Godmother of Alternative Chat had linked this weeks episode, which is a special 100th episode that included her. The podcast was rather daunting, in that it was a 3 hour retrospective of a bunch of wow podcasters being interviewed and the results knitted together into a narrative. While it took me literally all of the day to get through it, listening in bursts here and there… I have to say it was three hours well spent. Listening to the collective pet peeves, advice and challenges of all of these extremely successful and popular podcasts was rather inspiring. I would not really put myself or the work we do with Aggrochat in the same league as any of these people, but it was awesome to hear that they had struggled with some of the same issues I had.

One of the most interesting takeaways from the whole show is that for the most part, all of the podcasters list radio and more often than not NPR as being an important influence. I guess to some extent that makes sense, because what is a podcast if not an online radio show. If I am in my car I am pretty much always listening to NPR, and I know personally I wanted to do a podcast out of a sense of awe of everything that radio can be. I’m a huge fan of This American Life and have even gone and seen Ira Glass in person, when he did a lecture here in town. One of the tougher questions the various guests were asked… was who their favorite podcast is. Most of them gave extremely diplomatic answers, but I have to say for me at least there are two podcasts that I pretty much drop everything I am doing to listen to when they are posted. The first of these is Alternative Chat, because Godmother somehow takes the production value of This American Life, and condenses it into a fifteen minute bite sized chunk. It is very easy to listen to because I know, no matter what else I have going on, that I will receive this fifteen minute vignette of awesome.

The other podcast that I listen to as soon as it is posted is that of the Battle Bards. There are two things that make this experience awesome. The first is the chemistry that has evolved between Sypster, MMOGC and Syl. Their tastes in music and games have this weird way of fluttering back and forth between complimenting each other and diverging at the same time. So on a specific topic you might get two of the three to agree, but I have never really seen all three agree on something at exactly the same moment. This chemistry aside, I love the focus of the podcast because I too am extremely passionate about video game music. While I might not know the whys and hows like they do… or even know the composers by name… when I am not listening to podcasts at work, I am listening to soundtracks. Video game music has always stirred my imagination in ways that nothing else quite can. It is this warm blanket of nostalgia that I wrap myself in regularly, and it is always awesome to listen to the Bards as they dissect various tracks that I know and love.

Overly Cerebral Morning

As is the case with so many mornings, I sat down to write with a vague idea of some of the things I might talk about. However as a whole this morning shaped up to be far more cerebral than normal. I wish I had pictures to at least accompany some of my giant walls of text, but alas you are going to have to settle for a really cool shot from Divinity II last night. When I got home from my adventure I piddled around with my vita for a bit, logged into Wildstar to claim another boom box and then after our walk settled into Divinity again for the rest of the night. I find it so odd that I have fallen so in love with a game that is over six years old at this point. Everything about the game still feels fresh and new to me, and I am loving exploring this world. All my of my friends are busy and enthralled with Divinity: Original Sin… but at this point I don’t even want to look at that game until I “finish” this one.

I have a feeling that “finishing” Divinity II is going to be a lot like “finishing” Skyrim. That there will always be something left unfinished and begging for me to wander around and finish at a later time. The only thing that makes me question this, is that already the game has made some significant changes that caused me to lose access to a number of quests. The world keeps getting stranger, and I am not really sure how I feel about the chief antagonist. He keeps showing up to taunt me, and then instead of actually attacking me… sends an army of fodder at me claiming it will “finish me off”. While I am sure I cannot take him down yet… I am level 30 and wondering how long this game actually runs. I am only in the second “area” so far, but not sure just how many more there are. I know of at least one more that is connected to the area I am in currently, but at this point I have put almost twenty hours into the game and feel no closer a finish than I did at the very beginning. I love when a game feels like it could go on forever like that.

Divinity II: Directors Cut

June 29, 2014 by Belghast

Old Time Rock and Roll

Something interesting happened this weekend, I was hit with a critical case of nostalgia. This all started while playing Wasteland 2 the other night, and seems to be continuing on today as I search for more games to give me that classic PC role-playing game experience. I said yesterday that I was in a bit of an existential funk, and that seems to continue. While I like the concept of playing Wildstar and Elder Scrolls Online… for whatever reason right now they are just too fast paced for my current mood. Essentially I am needing games that are a bit more prodding and deliberate, and preferably without other players bothering me. I am going through one of my retreating phases, and I right now I just want to be lost in my own little world.

Divinity II: Directors Cut

I’ve had this game in my steam inventory for quite some time, but for one reason or another I never actually fired it up. I had heard really good things about the Divinity series and the other night my friends Tam and Ashgar were off playing the brand new Divinity: Original Sin. So when I cranked this game up I was expecting a Baldur’s Gate esc game along the lines of the original Divinity and Original Sin. What it is instead however is something more akin to Knights of the Old Republic. The control scheme is a behind the back pseudo action combat setup that still somehow manages to feel old school at the same time. The controls are a bit prodding at times, but this is not exactly a high action game that allows you to dodge out of combat here and there to avoid enemies. Instead there are minor flourishes that you can do here and there to improve your success, but for the most part it is stand up fighting.

The character creator is adequate, as I was able to create something that I liked, however there really are not a lot of options. Essentially you can be blonde or brown haired, and with a few different facial and hair choices for each color. This allowed me to create something I liked enough to make me happy, but there really is not a lot of configuration available. Thankfully in Divinity: Original Sin the newest game they seem to have fixed all of this and given players a bajillion different options. I would say the customization is “passible” if only because it allows me to give my character long hair and a beard, which is “close enough” to the Belghast appearance. The limited appearances makes me really glad the game is not Asian inspired, because I am pretty sure I would not have been able to create any character that I could stand.

The game utilizes a silent protagonist with text dialog options for most of the interactions, and quite honestly I am happy with this. I always find it jarring when my character has a voice that is not my own. So if I am given the option of a well voiced character, or a silent one… I will almost always choose the silent one. These games are about me inhabiting the space of the character, and not about watching the lives of someone else. So in a game like Uncharted… I am watching a movie unfold in front of me that I am not a part of, this type of game however… it is all about the character being an extension of me. The dialog is charming at times, but nothing I would call spectacular. But then again I am not really playing this sort of thing for the dialog, I am playing it for the overall adventure.

The game is several years old at this point, but it still looks extremely good. This is no Skyrim mind you, but the world definitely looks believable and something I don’t mind spending a significant amount of time in. Occasionally there are some really nice vistas and lighting effects like this one that I find really nice looking. During some of my screenshots I was running on the default settings, but once I cranked everything up to max the game started to look extremely beautiful. The visualization options like the mini-map and where we are supposed to go for various quests is pretty much non-existent. The end result means you need to pay attention to the dialog and spend a good deal of time wandering around in order to figure out how exactly to complete each of the quests you are given by townsfolk.

I’ve not really played enough to get a good handle on how exactly character progression will work. However when you first start the game you are set up as a Dragon Slayer, and as part of the ritual that gives you the powers of a dragon… it also wipes your memories, giving you a clean construct for picking a brand new path for your character. You essentially have the choice of following the path of the melee warrior, the ranger or the mage. In the first town you can freely switch between them, but once you leave the village your choice is locked. There is thankfully a little testing ground that allows you to try each of the combat styles and see what fits you the best. I of course went with the melee warrior, but I feel like the ranger would probably be extremely fun as well. Mage on the other hand… felt odd because there was a significant cast timer on each of the attacks.

Admittedly so many times with these Steampowered Sunday games, I play it for a little bit but then never return to it. I don’t think that is going to be the case with Divinity II. This honestly seems like about the perfect game for my current mental state. It feels the right speed, and I can cocoon myself in this fantasy world and explore it without the need to feel like I am letting anyone down in the process. So while I have taken a break to knock out my morning blog post, as soon as I finish writing I am going to return to clearing the goblin camp I was working on when I paused the gameplay. Right now on the summer sale this game is only $8 for the directors cut, and so far I am loving it. If you are looking for an old school Knights of the Old Republic style adventure, then it might also be the game for you.

Enter the Waffles

Last night we had an odd recording of AggroChat as has happened before in the past, we had two of the original cast otherwise busy this week. I butchered the hell out of the explaination, but thankfully I was corrected. Essentially this week Tam and Ashgar are off to visit Kodra and to somehow have an intervention to replace his current machine, that we have not so lovingly referred to as a toaster. That said I feel like maybe that is a disservice to toasters everywhere, as they seem to be far more functional. As you’ve listened to our podcast in the past, when Kodra goes robot on us, it has nothing to do with his internet connection but is instead his machine freaking out. Here is hoping operation replace Kodras machine has been a success. In the meantime that left us down two people for the podcast and thankfully we had replacements all too happy to step in.

This is the first show to include Warenwolf, another one of our multi-year old chat group, also lovingly referred to as Waffles thanks to Mumble pronouncing his name oddly a few times. In addition to Waffles we are joined by Dallian once again who is the best fill-in guest ever, and pretty much is just now our regular “5th man”. We talk about the Steam Sale, Wasteland 2, Saints Row IV, Lego Minifigures Online, Wildstar, and Warlords of Draenor alpha among other things. We ran a bit short this week due to some technical difficulties causing chunks of the show to get edited out, but I hope you will all still enjoy the results. I believe next week we should be returning to our regular format.

#AggroChat #SteampoweredSunday #DivinityII

Crimzon CLover World Ignition

June 22, 2014 by Belghast

Technical Difficulties

Last night was probably the roughest time I have had editing the AggroChat podcast in the eleven episodes we have been running. Mostly this centers around us trying to change the way we record the show. Since its inception we have been recording it on the House Stalwart mumble server in a private and locked down channel. This worked pretty well and produced the first ten episodes without much issue. However on July 19th that server will be going away and as a guild we will be permanently switching to the Alliance of Awesome Teamspeak server. In theory Teamspeak does the same type of things that mumble does, so I thought we could simply record our channel without much issue. Turns out that was not quite the case.

Mostly we had a lot of issues with Kodra coming through either garbled or not at all when he was holding down his push to talk key. Apparently on his end it was me that was coming through like this. Oddly enough Ashgar and Rae didn’t seem to have any problems at all. It might be something we can fiddle with codec wise to make it work better, but honestly after the trouble I had with last nights podcast I am just of the opinion that we not try and record on teamspeak again. We have access to a more private mumble server, and I am guessing from now on we will just use that one instead. A lot of folks have suggested skype, but none of us are really skype users… so that would take its own trial and error to figure out how to really use it.

Last night we finished recording around 9:30 and I started editing by 10 pm. I did not actually finish editing the podcast until well after 12:30. The hard part was trying to glue together enough audio out of the garbled sections to make sense of what was being said. I’ve listened to most of it while I was editing and I think the end result works. However if you hear something that doesn’t quite make sense… it was probably me trying to make the of a corrupted segment of speech. While I don’t think the show was our weakest, it definitely made for some strained recording time since we kept having to redo segments that did not transmit. Hopefully what did make it through is enjoyable.

Fly That Geek Flag High

In this weeks episode we have the original cast reunited again. Ashgar is back from doing whatever it was that Ashgar was doing the week before, and Kodra is back from the awesome gaming convention Origins. As we had talked two weeks ago, Kodra gave us a run down of what exactly he did at Origins. This leads to a little discussion about something that is unfortunate in the gaming and geek communities… geek on geek shaming. Apparently Kodra catches some crap from the Magic the Gathering gamers for his choice of playing the My Little Pony card game. But hey we pretty much support all potential diversions here on AggroChat.

Additionally we talk about the Warlords of Draenor expansion and my experiences so far with the Alpha. We also talk at length about the Wildstar patch schedule and our hopes that they are actually able to maintain it. Join us for these topics along with a bunch of other ones that just get slipped in here and there was we go. Since neither Ash or Kodra were here to talk E3 2014, we do a bit of a callback there as well to talk about a few things that make people excited. Remember to let your geek flag fly high, but remember to respect everyone else’s choice of flag as well.

Crimzon Clover World Ignition

For the last couple of weeks I have been trying to get enough time to really give this game a proper playing. My friend Ashgar and I seem to be the only folks in our immediate circle of friends that really appreciate the “bullet hell” shooter. So when a new one comes out, he sometimes throws it on my game pile because he knows I will actually play it with him. The latest one of these is a random gifting of Crimzon Clover, and if you want to see a more logical and proper write-up about the game check out Ash’s blog. The other night when he was working on his indepth reviews of the game I took a break from Four Job Fiesta and Wildstar to play Crimzon Clover with him. I say play it with him… but mostly we just happened to be on voice chat at the same time while both of us are in game. It sadly does not support internet multiplayer gaming.

The game actually does a fair bit of bait and switch. When I booted it up and started playing the other night I originally thought it was going to be a “Shmup” and not really a “Bullet Hell” shooter. This however changes quickly as it somewhat eases you into the game play as you get used to the movement controls and various attacks. By the time you reach the first boss however things have escalated to the point where you are dodging the attacks like crazy. The game itself is extremely clean and the controls responsive. This is the sort of game where you just hold down the fire button at all times and spend the rest of your time looking for the only safe spot on the screen. I question in this genre why the fire isn’t just toggled on and left on, since there is never really a point at which you don’t want to be holding it down.

As is often the case with this type of game you end up with the choice between different ships. Type-I tends to be the most baseline and the easiest to control, whereas Type-II and Type-III give you a benefit in one area but make another area variable through the play session. I started off trying Type-II but quickly fell back on going with the tried and true “default option”. Ash actually managed to beat the game, but I only made it through boss number four before deciding my fingers were too sore to continue onwards. Apparently in order to truly beat the game, you have to make it through without hitting continue. If you do that you get a different ending and I believe a different boss encounter. This also seems to be a theme with a lot of these very serious games. I remember in the BlazBlue games there were “good” endings and “bad” endings depending on how you did in the earlier content leading up to the final encounter.

I have to say this game is a really good entry into the genre, and combined with Danmaku Unlimited 2 gives some seriously good options for Bullet Hell shooters on steam right now. I am happy that this genre is alive and well and did not die with the death of arcades. This specific title is interesting in that it is what they call a Doujin or essentially the Japanese version of an Independent PC game. This appears to be another thing that steam is doing right, in that it is giving these games a market in the united states. Recettear is another one of these Doujin games and it has been wildly popular and also likely would never have been seen here without steam. If you dig the Bullet Hell shooter genre, this is one of the more pristine examples I have seen in a long while. You should totally check it out because right now during the steam sale you can pick it up for only $7. This game is more than worth that money even if you only slightly like shooters.