Dodonpachi resurrection
The maximum bonus, which you get for collecting more bombs than you need, is still vital to getting the big scores, while the bees that offered significant bonuses in previous games have been toned down.
The other scoring mechanics are all still there. With chains being potentially so much larger, this means Dodonpachi Resurrection was the highest-scoring Cave shooter at the time it came out, with scores into the tens of billions achievable after a little practice, and top players hitting well above the hundred-billion mark. As with previous titles, the value of each enemy you’ve killed in the chain is added together, and that value is then added to your score each time you kill an enemy. This makes maintaining chains while dodging in and out of the waves of bullets a lot more forgiving, and means players will easily be able to chain into the hundreds without trying too hard.Ĭhaining is, of course, still key to scoring. Instead, the hit counter starts to decrease, and only when it reduces to zero does the chain end.
In DaiOuJou and earlier, if the chain meter emptied, the chain would immediately end. The chaining mechanic is also revamped in DDPR. The consequences are still pretty devastating if you play for score, as bombing ends your all-important chain, however, it means that each life can be worth up to six or seven hits. In the standard 1.5 version of Dodonpachi Resurrection, getting hit causes you to launch a bomb from your bomb stock, rather than killing you. The biggest mechanic, and by far the most controversial, that allows this is the automatic bombing. In comparison, DDPR feels a little under-done, but it might just be the more accessible of the two games thanks to mechanics that mean even inexperienced players will be able to get relatively far. That honour belongs to its predecessor, Dodonpachi DaiOuJou, which stands as one of the finest shooting games ever created, and certainly the best ever example of a bullet hell game. If I have to be honest, Dodonpachi Resurrection has never been my favourite Dodonpachi title. Those were solid, if a little buggy, ports built upon the Xbox 360 releases of both games, and so it is again here, with all the features of the Japanese Xbox 360 version of DDPR bundled in (and, thankfully, no modes are extra DLC this time around). This is Degica’s third port of a Cave title to PC, following up last year’s Mushihimesama and the release of Deathsmiles earlier this year. Their crowning achievement is the Dodonpachi series, and it’s great to finally get one of these games onto our PCs. Their efforts over the years to keep a genre often seen as outdated relevant and innovative have been admirable, and the results have been some of the finest bullet hell shooters ever created. I’ve long been a huge fan of Cave’s very specific vision of the bullet hell shooter.