So, I am somewhat bored of writing film reviews and the like; considering it’s a holiday weekend in good ol’ America, it’s not surprising to feel like that. Let’s do something with more brevity, shall we? I figured, in an effort to combine the Theology Gaming website with Theology Gaming University, our Facebook group, we could ask what I’m going to call Weekly Questions. I ask a question, you answer in either the Disqus comments below or on the TGU wall.
My question this week pertains to my recent re-discovery of the shooter genre, whether you know it as “shmup”, “STG”, “shooting game”, or any other number of weird euphemisms. Just for example, I’ve been playing Akai Katana. It’s a CAVE bullet hell game, sure, but you’re invincible most of the time. It rewards really aggressive play with a push/pull between shield/not shield, with a little R-Type thrown in for good measure. I bought this game years ago, and honestly didn’t bother to play it until I returned to the genre. I suppose that betrays an eagerness for challenge of some kind, but I’m honestly enjoying the simplicity of this genre’s main goals: blow things up, score highly, and survive. Everything after its genesis mostly contains nuances of those same three elements, and it slowly iterated into the strange forms you see today.
And they are all so fun, so very fun! So, I ask: have you ever returned to a game years after you bought it, only to enjoy it substantially more than you ever thought possible?
