Yotsuba aka Clover-TAC is the man behind doujin danmaku darling Crimzon Clover. This game is not just the result of five years of hard work. Yotsuba is phenomenal at shmups, has world records in Cave's ESP RA.DE, and worked as a tester on Arika's Playstation 2 port of Dodonpachi Daioujou. In short, he knows his stuff.
So, aspiring shmup developers, is all this really necessary? Do you have to be a 2D shooter God in order to make a good game in the genre? Not everyone has that level of dedication, I understand that. But if Artnumeris put forth even 1% the effort Yotsuba did, maybe C-RUSH wouldn't have turned out to be such a horrible pile of ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. I've read a number of reviews for this game. Most of them say they couldn't even get the game to run. I guess they lucked out. Playing C-RUSH will ruin a perfectly good day.
The first thing that set off my "uhoh this game is booty" alarm is the way the ship moves. When moving forward, the ship looks like its v-sync is screwed up and it glitches out as a result. This doesn't affect the game, but it looks really poor. What does affect the game is the hitches and pauses. The first achievement you'll get is for attaining an 8x multiplier. When I got the achievement the screen juddered for a half-second. I brushed it aside at first, because sometimes achievements can cause ever-so-slight hang-ups during the game. As it turns out, this happens everytime I hit that multiplier. Stuttering is a constant in this game.
BUT THAT'S NOT ALL!
The weapon-system makes no sense. The player-ship has two fire modes, single-fire or twin-cannons. All players are going to choose the mode that offers more fire-power. This game tries to force the single-fire on you, by lining certain enemies up in a particular way, or making exceptionally tight corridors. This really doesn't work. You know what also doesn't work? Giving the weapons some weird ammo system. You have to touch this strange gas to recharge your weapons, or else the fire-rate goes down. All this nonsense does is handicap the player.
BUT THAT'S NOT ALL!
Your ship has a shield of sorts. It recharges very quickly, but you won't survive more than two hits or a collision. From what little of this game I could stand, it isn't exactly clear how much damage a bullet does. Your shield has five blips, but a bullet can take 2 or 3 or 4? It doesn't make any sense. When your shield is drained, a high-pitched warning siren that is much louder than anything else in the game assaults you. I'm being completely serious here, don't play this game while wearing head-phones.
BUT THAT'S CERTAINLY NOT ALL!
The difficulty balance in this game is a complete mess. The beginning of stage 1 is snore-inducing, but then a mecha-scorpion shows up and throws more bullets on-screen than you'll see for the entirety of stage 2. Off-screen enemies will also continually fire at you, and there's nothing you can do about that. Even though the game gives you 9 lives and a shield of questionable effectiveness, you're probably going to lose it all to the mecha-scorpion. This guy is a mountain of ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. First off his attack pattern consists of a steady stream of lasers. He never lets up, and the waves of fire are more intense than anything prior to this fight. You're going to be completely unprepared for this fight, simply because you never got the mental training.
OH NO! THAT'S ABSOLUTELY NOT ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ ALL!
During this fight, you're moving backwards, and there are objects to run into such as walls. Hanging as far away from the boss as possible, isn't really a viable tactic. Furthermore, after you destroy the scorpion's claws and tail armor, he doubles up on the lasers. What was originally a really tight fit is now practically impossible. Luckily there's a safe spot if you hang out just under his tail...BUT...without any warning at all the scorpion will rush forward and smash you. There is absolutely no possible way for you to know the scorpion would do that, unless you designed the game. I'm going to guess that C-RUSH didn't have any testers, because anyone would know that such a sudden attack without any warning is awful game-design. The worst part is that just before the fight, a couple of hornets attack the player-ship by flying into it. They actually point out where they're going to go, so the player knows to get out of the way. Before I give too much credit, C-RUSH also doesn't warn the player about enemies approaching from behind.
Don't bother with this game, you'll regret it.
Sorry, but when I'm given the choice between writing a mean-spirited review or putting a keyboard through my monitor, I'll choose the review every time.
