April 2020 Shmup Club - Steel Vampire

[Dingo]

While I failed miserably at playing Gaiares (a few failed runs and then Border Down showed up and stole my attention and dedication entirely), but this is an interesting one. I actually bought Steel Vampire right after it came out on steam and had high hopes but wasn't really feeling it for some reason or another and stopped playing after a few hours. Perhaps this would be a good opportunity to go back and see if I feel any different.

Between you having it here, and it appearing in Mark's top 25 list I feel like perhaps it deserves another look.

[zoydo]

@Dingo: i felt the same way. I bought it on a sale, played a few runs and thought it's nice, but wasn't hooked. Now that im digging more into the game i'm having lots of fun.

Here's my score update wih yesterdays runs.

Very Hard:
[img width=500 height=281]https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/49745170402_4b31125a16.jpg[/img]

Genocide Hard
[img width=500 height=281]https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/49745170387_f01f8d1384.jpg[/img]

Extra Genocide
[img width=500 height=281]https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/49745170377_a48a70a15f.jpg[/img]

[MetalFRO]

I started doing runs in Genocide Hard last night, and holy cats, it's difficult! I would say the difficulty is a fair step up from Very Hard, and if you're playing for survival, I recommend collecting the blue gems to down-rank. You can get all the way down to rank level 0, and it does help make it less punishing, but then naturally, your score tanks. I will need to find a balance in it. I've managed to make it to stage 3, but that was as far as I got. I still died in stage 1 a lot, and I can see this being a much larger challenge to tackle. It almost feels like this is the "real" game, and Very Hard is just the warm-up.

[zoydo]

That's hwat i thought too. Very Hard is like: "Grab a gun and wreck everything" and becomes easier the better yor weapons are. And Extra Genocide is like " let's see how far your best weapons can get you".
But Genocide Hard seems to be the actual game with default ships and no further options.

From what i understand, the blue gems are for upgrading your shield. In Genocide hard i try to play the first stage on "Even" rank, because your shield upgrades faster, as you get more blue gems. And progress is easier with more shield points of course. In stage 2 i start collecting more green items to lower my rank steady throughout the stage and try to stay on very low rank as far as i can get from stage 3 on.

[MetalFRO]

Yeah, the blue chips award points, but also will refresh your shield, if you take a hit. I don't know what the ratio is, but you need to collect a decent amount of them to restore a single shield segment, so that's where the point-blanking comes in, because you get more chips from doing that with the standard weapon, then either by firing from a distance, or using the focus attack with your sub-weapon. The gold chips will help refresh your VoBurn/bomb stock, though it seems like enemies tend to give far fewer gold chips than blue. Some popcorn enemies never give gold chips, from what I've seen, and the ratio of blue to gold is pretty large. If I manage to at least get a 1-ALL on Genocide Hard (let alone, multiple loops), I suspect the score will be pitiful, because I'll have to really manage my rank pretty closely, to keep things from getting too crazy.

[MetalFRO]

I managed to get to stage 6 in the 2nd loop of Extra Genocide in Steel Vampire. This game ramps up a fair bit in the 2nd loop, and even with purposeful rank management, to keep it low, it’s still pretty bananas. Anyone else still playing?

[img width=700 height=525]http://i.imgur.com/p4QG0Vo.jpg[/img]

[MetalFRO]

Here's my Stage 1 Score Attack attempts from a couple nights ago - it gets frenetic pretty fast, if you ramp up the rank right away, so you definitely have to strike a balance with that right off the bat.

[zoydo]

Here's my final Scores:

Very Hard:
[img width=500 height=281]https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/49840804626_2a2bf31b21.jpg[/img]

Genocide Hard:
[img width=500 height=281]https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/49840804586_b372db1b28.jpg[/img]

Extra Genocide:
[img width=500 height=281]https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/49840804571_93c6789a9e.jpg[/img]

Score Attack:
[img width=500 height=281]https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/49841104622_9972c96072.jpg[/img]
[img width=500 height=281]https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/49840804551_f9acbe3feb.jpg[/img]


Steel Vampire was a lot of fun. I bought it a while ago and checked it out for a few runs. I liked it but wasn't too overwhelmed.
But when i came back to it for April i learned how the game works and had a LOT of fun! I think i found one of my favourite ShmupClub games for 2020 already.
There's a lot going on on the screen, lots of explosions and screen shaking. Sometimes it seems that this game is not too much about dodging but a LOT more about shooting.
The left and right -scrolling of the screen is sometimes a bit frustrating as you run in bullets or enemies you couldn't see before because they were offscreen and things can get a bit fast and hectic. So you lose shield and rank and have to recover. But the easier modes/loops are very forgiving and let you recover fastly. If you lose the medal chain this is annoying anyway.

[MetalFRO]

Thanks for the final thoughts, zoydo, and great job with the scores! Anyone else have final thoughts?