Super Hydorah

Inspired by shmups of the past like Gradius, Turrican, and R-Type, Super Hydorah presents a fantastic, authentically old-fashioned side-scrolling shmup mixed with some wonderful modern tweaks - not to mention some of my favourite level design I've ever seen in the genre. The story is kept light; we are the pilot of the Delta Lance, flying into battle to defend humanity against the Meroptian empire and their mysterious deity-general, Hydorah. Lots of worldbuilding happens in the design of the stages, however, and this is an area where the game shines very brightly indeed. Hydorah's influence - and their horrifying biomech experimentation - is felt across every world and biome, from bleak deserts to waterworlds where the waves shift in unpredictable and gravity-defying ways to catch out unwary pilots flying through. The basic shmup gameplay (you fly, you shoot) is buoyed up by an effective upgrade system and a robust arsenal of weapons unlocked as you progress through the game. Every primary and subweapon has their own upgrade path to track, so provided you can stay alive you're rewarded for sticking with the options you think are best, though sometimes you'll find you want to swap your loadout around in part for whatever's useful for the next stage but also because Hydorah's weapons are fun and playing around with them is a sheer joy.

I was worried if I'd gotten too old and my reaction speed was in the dirt already, but I found out from the reviews that the game apparently runs too slow or too fast (just like my case) for many people. Plus there is no documented fix (I tried setting my monitor to 60hz - didn't seem to work, at least at first). They really shouldn't be selling this game in the current state. This is why this review is negative. Thankfully, after fiddling around with my graphics card settings, I was able to get it to run at the right speed eventually and play through it. It's a pretty good game - great graphics, solid controls, cool bosses and everything else I was expecting from the dev (I am a fan of Cursed Castilla). The CRT shader/filter is really high quality and I really enjoyed playing with it on. I played through on the Rookie difficulty and then tried the Pilot difficulty too, but decided I didn't want to grind the final few levels. So you'll like the game if you like what you see in the trailer/screenshots, just beware of the game speed issue.

Been in a shmup mood lately and realized I never wrote a review for this gem. It's a solid shooter throughout, with a decent level of challenge--while still being fair enough for a novice to learn--and plenty of stuff to shoot, with a variety of weapons to choose from. And of course the music is excellent, as is tradition for the genre. Point of note, this was actually the first indie game I was ever introduced to, back when it was just a freeware title that my older brother brought home on a USB stick. I still remember the first time I actually completed that entire thing without dying, that was a damn milestone for me. This newer version of the game is still challenging (especially as there are more levels to play through) but I couldn't help but feel like it wasn't [i]as[/i] difficult, even without using the easy difficulty mode (which gives you a shield with every life, something you had to [i]earn[/i] in the freeware version). Maybe I'm just getting better at these games. :P Overall, definitely a worthwhile venture for enjoyers of shmup games.

It's a cool throwback to the old arcade times, but unfortunatelly not really fun to play. The graphics is nice, and the music is great. The problem is ship speed and firepower. You can't play this on react, because your ship is simply too slow. To make things worse levels are super tight and you will pretty often crash into the walls and loose precious shields. And since you only have 1 shield (or 3 on rookie) it gets old pretty fast. When you die you loose damage upgrades, so it gets harder on retries. YOU HAVE TO MEMORIZE ALL LEVELS AND ENEMY PLACEMENTS in order to perfectly plot your flight path. Otherwise you will die constantly due to that low ship manoeuvrability. I would recommend this game only to hardcore players, who like to suffer and are OK with memorizing everything. Playing this on react I managed to clear like 4 planets in 3 hours. After this one session I feel like after a whole day of work. So yea, it's not a relaxing game by any means. And you can't save when you want. You have to clear the level and then quit. Otherwise you will loose progress. It's not a bad game, but I fear it's way too annoying for most players. You simply can't play this for fun or to relax. It demands 120% from you at all time.

Esse jogo está estranho! Está rodando lento, não roda em 60 fps (meu PC não é uma batata), e o jogo fica sem as músicas de fundo depois de um tempo

Хардкорный горизонтальный шутемап. С одной стороны прикрасная графика и отточенный геймплей, с другой заточка уровней под конкретный набор оружия. Большая часть уровней короткая, однако есть и длинющие где куча боссов с несколькими фазами. сами уровни разнообразны не только за счёт своего визуала, но и из-за всяких "подлянок": то песчаная буря сносит истребитель, то пол и потолок начинаю смыкаться и т.д. В целом игра хорошая, но пару уровней своей затянутостью сильно подпортили впечатления.

It's good! The best part for me was routing the weapons to make the harder levels more manageable. Every stage is distinctive and the moment to moment level design is overall really good. The only critiques I have is that there's too much downtime with the story & some slow sections (like the boss rush checkpoint for example) and that it's trivially easy to savescum to obtain what should be the harder achievements.

Me ha agradado el juego no he terminado por completar todo el juego, pero lo que he visto me ha convencido mucho. Puedo recomendar el juego a quien tenga interés por él.

leider negativ, da Steuerung nicht empfindlich genug reagiert. Egal ob Tastatur, oder Controller.

Very creative and fun to play. It's not too hard, has more stages and boss fights than most shmup games. Did not encounter any bugs during play. Overall very nice experience and would recommend for shmup beginners.