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Nachimir

Luftrausers

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Anyone else playing this? It's pretty good: overpowered planes with melee attacks and combo based scoring. I've hit a few walls, but messing about with different plane combos kind of helps you not get too frustrated, and eventually you hit on something. Parts of it felt impossible at first, but now I notice myself taking bigger risks and thinking "I can loop through those bullets and get another attack in" etc.

At first it seems really difficult to keep your multiplier up, but then you learn attacking the small stuff will just diminish them until you've got nothing left to juggle. Eventually you learn ways of balancing your attacks between the smaller things and the bigger things to keep your multiplier up while taking down big enemies.

I hit a wall around 15,000 points, then tried the Brutal Rauser, which is an insane DPS machine:

Hover engine, armor body, cannon.

So far, it's the only plane with which I can take out battleships, aces, and the blimp in a single game.

Battleships:

Cruising along at a low altitude and stalling over gunboats to one-shot them gives you a massive multiplier really quickly by also taking out fighters behind. If you go a while without boat spawns, you can turn back and hurl a cannon shot into the following crowd to maintain your multiplier for a few more seconds. Battleships only take a little bit of looping back and forth, and generally the extra projectiles spreading from the bombs will take out small stuff and keep your combo up.

Aces:

Really dangerous, but kind of easy to take down once you know their patterns. When one's about to melee you, turn to face it and let a bomb rip; one hit kill with a lot of collateral damage. Waves of three aces seemed impossible until I got the hang of this. If there are battleships around below, fly up and don't worry so much about your combo.

Blimp:

Kind of like taking out a battleship but you can approach from more directions. Dodge through the missiles and lasers to get close enough to plant cannon shots on it, and it shouldn't take long. Also, it fell on me the first time I took it out, but once it's falling it thankfully doesn't do melee damage (Though I think it would be wonderful if it did).

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Yup, I've been doing a bit of RAUSING! (All caps all the time) Some good tips here, although I'm pretty hopeless with the cannon. 

And also I just really love the feel of the regular engine; when you stop accelerating and fall past bullets and enemies

and blast 'em from below, (ahem!) it is the best. This is a good video game! I am quite terrible at it but I did

eventually manage to take down the blimp which felt pretty rad. My high score is pitiful and I should be ashamed.

Man, that soundtrack. Holy shit. Yesss

 

Have you checked out Vlambeer's ongoing project, Nuclear Throne? According to Steam I've clocked in a good 20 hours so far,

which seems a little intense but it's probably correct. A satisfying and toothsome arcade-action-rougelikelike. Like. 

Cute character- and sound design (The character voices are fun) and more awesome music.

And Vlambeer continues to prove they are adept in the field of 'gamefeel' (MORE SCREENSHAKE)

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Think you should have a 40% off voucher for this on Steam if you own either Nuclear Throne or Hotline Miami, which is pretty sweet.

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I went on a mad 23,000 point tear with a laser/bomb/hover-rauser in the first hour of play and haven't even come close in the 3-4 since. 

 

Frustrating...

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I have a spare 40% voucher if any thumb wants it.

I'm playing on Vita* but am tempted to buy it on Steam too. One thing that consistently amazes me is how tense I become over the course of a game, which creeps up so slowly. My biggest streak so far is about 29,000, and I died a few thousand points after it ended. I've not played many games that require such constant rage and destruction to do well; it's remarkably tuned.

It also tends to have dramatic final split seconds when you very suddenly know you're going to die and can't do anything about it. Somehow, it manages that without being frustrating. There are rare circumstances where I just get boned, but the rest of the time it always feels like it's my fault.

Also: SMFT mode. Heh.

 

* nachimir on PSN too. For some reason I have friends who also play this on vita, but can't see scores from them.

 

Have you checked out Vlambeer's ongoing project, Nuclear Throne?

 

Yes, though I have more hours in Luftrausers now :)

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Every time i've seen the game, it's looked super evocative of the old Konami arcade game "Time Pilot", just with wacky physics.

I got that 40% off coupon too and was seriously considering buying it, but a glance at the steam forum seemed to suggest a lot of technical problems with the game.

Have any of you had troubles with it?

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I intend to write a longer reply when I get home but I couldn't resist.

Love Luftrausers. Fantastic game. I'm about to double dip, I already have the vita version but I want the steam one too. The technical issues on the steam version aren't game play, but more the fact that you can go in and edit everything. So the score tables are full of people who have cheated the shit out of the game.

I was kinda irritated when the thumbs commented on how they don't like the backlash that the game has received. I may have stopped listening though because I love the game so much.

I just got nuclear throne too. Only played 5 minutes before my girlfriend yelled at me "will you stop with the fucking clicking". They need to let you hold down the fire button on that game.

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Every time i've seen the game, it's looked super evocative of the old Konami arcade game "Time Pilot", just with wacky physics.

I got that 40% off coupon too and was seriously considering buying it, but a glance at the steam forum seemed to suggest a lot of technical problems with the game.

Have any of you had troubles with it?

 

I picked it up this weekend because of the 40% discount. I put probably 2 or 3 hours into it, and haven't encountered any technical problems.

 

It really is another example of Vlambeer being the best at designing twitchy arcade feeling games.

 

What are everyone's favorite ship configurations? Some of my best scores have been with the laser weapon, armor body, and hover engine.

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My best scores have been standard gun, bomb body and either standard engine or propeller engine. Simple but feels great.

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I like the armour body and the hover engine a lot. I tend to stick to the cannon because it makes keeping combos up fairly easy; if you;re worried about accuracy you can basically use it as melee on gunboats and aces; everything else is pretty easy to hit. The laser is great too though, raking a crowd of fighters or tracking something through a stall are both really satisfying.

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I can't get used to the hover engine. Really struggle with not getting hit.

The cannon is good too. It's my second choice! I love that there are challenges. If it was just high score chasing I would be bored with it fast.

Vlambeer really do deliver on their promise of an arcade experience. I missed out on that as a child. Born a little bit too late, as well as being in the wrong country for an arcade culture. Vlambeer games make me feel like I'm playing those classic arcade games. So incredibly tight. Their music is always great too. Luftrausers and Nuclear Throne have some of my favourite game music the year. I think it will be hard for them to be topped (until Hotline Miami 2 comes out of course).

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Can i not remap the gamepad controls or something? I absolutely hate "up" being bound as the thruster, but every time i try to adjust the controls, i end with the game just being completely screwed and having to go delete the key bind configuration file.

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The shoulder buttons also thrust on the vita, which works well. Is that not the case with default controller mapping on the PC? I guess you could use Joy2Key…

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I spent a few minutes messing around with the control when i first played and i'm pretty sure there was no shoulder button mapping for thrust on the default layout, but after messing around with the control input setting a couple times, i got it where i wanted it to be.

Anyways, Luftrausers is pretty cool.

I'm actually finding that having to run through all the little achievements is kind of annoying though, i think they distract from the score attack.

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That's what I love about it!

The achievements make me try out new things and discover different variants that I might actually be good with! Also I'm not great at score chasing. I get bored with that quickly.

I am struggling with some of the achievements or "tasks" if you will. Still a really fun game.

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I like score chasing though! I want to score chase without having having to focus on dumb side objectives that are tied into unlocks.

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Hmm, I didn't find them too annoying, though there are a few I've given up on (later bomb body missions, and I can't last long enough with the five-way gun to encounter a blimp).

 

The nuke body can get you a lot of them though; just wait until the thing you need to kill appears then get killed (Doesn't work on the blimp for some reason though).

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I was initially down on the side objectives, but I came around on them because when you're having a bad streak with trying to get a high score you can shift gears and focus on something else.

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Once you get a loadout you enjoy you can just go score chase! There's no need to focus on the tasks! Also on the steam version you can just unlock everything and forget about the tasks.

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My best fighter seems to be the "holy diver", which is the bomb body, the laser, and the propeller engine. (Love that there are names for every possible combo.)

Current high score of 25,000 thousand, consistently hitting 15,000.

I wish the camera was pulled out a little more, there's a lot happening beyond the edge of your screen. You often have to just kind of intuit what's going on, making blind shots at way too distant enemies, and i'm not sure i dig that.

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Yeah, the names are good. I always look forward to seeing what a new configuration is called.

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There's a few things that have me souring on Luftrausers.

I think the spawns are way too inconsistent for it to be a good score attack game. The normal fighters are essential for keeping a combo going, and if you can't keep that combo going, you may as well not play. The thing is, sometimes they just sort of vanish from the play area and the game decides to give you three battleships on the same spot, with the overlapping fire that entails, and surrounded on each side by two more battleships.

What? What?

I mean, and evidenced by the regenerating health, it's not really a game where you're expected to reliably weave through fire, so your actions kind of have to be a little more broad and strategic, but the game isn't really allowing you to have enough information for that. I think the camera is zoomed in too close, you're constantly trying to shoot at and respond to things beyond the edge of your screen.

All this has done is made me want to play Geometry Wars.

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