Super XYX

This one's actually pretty fun. Ship control is a little loose, but that's the only thing that stands out as problematic. If you want a colorful shmup, *Super XYX* is a good choice.

I've been leaning very hard into shmups these last couple months, and this might be the most addictive one I've played lately. Easy recommend. Having said that, after spending a lot of time playing it these last couple weeks, I've become hyper-aware of a handful of issues that have really compounded my frustration and keep this game out of reach of the masterpiece echelon. -Menus in general - When you hold the D-pad up or down, menus respond as though you're repeatedly pressing that direction. I feel like this must be in breach of a cardinal rule of menu design. It'd be one thing if there was a slight pause before it went into auto-scrolling, like when you use the arrow keys to navigate a computer menu, but as it stands, it causes me to highlight the wrong thing a lot, because if, say, I tap down for slightly too long, it registers as though I pressed it twice. No bueno. -The pause button doesn't unpause - Again, I feel like this must be something they explicitly tell you not to do in UI 101. You press Start to pause, which brings up a settings menu. To unpause, you have either to scroll down past THIRTEEN items and select "Return to Game" with a button that isn't Start, or scroll UP from the top, past the perilously adjacent "Quit to Title" option. Accidentally choose that instead of "Return to Game" and you lose all your progress, no chance to cancel. This might not sound like a likely occurrence, but it happened to me tonight during what was my best run to date. I have yet to replicate the quality of that run. Also, the likelihood of this mishap is compounded by the previously mentioned D-pad issue. ARGH. -"Practice" mode only lets you practice stages you have already beaten. - Surely this is something they explicitly tell you not to do in Practice 101. If I'm trying to clear the game and I'm stuck on the stage 6 boss, I have to play through stages 1-6 before I can even start to learn that boss. It is stupid that so many games used to work like this, but even stupider when your game HAS a stage select. I have strong opinions about this. Impeding learning is my least favorite approach to difficulty. Making the game's challenges challenging is my favorite approach. Which brings me to my next point… -At least a couple of the bosses can be completely trivialized by just camping in specific spots where they can't hit you but you can't hit them. It's not even like there are certain phases of the fight where you can do this, it's the whole fight. Tbh I don't mind there occasionally being something easy in these games because I suck, but it does raise the question, "What's the point of the boss fight?" And it makes me resent having to go through these time-waster bosses to get to the boss I'm actually stuck on. -Inscrutable unlocks - Once in a while you'll unlock a new feature with a cryptic name like "GZR START," with no explanation provided. You can just google the cryptic things, but it's just a little thing that brings down the presentation. (I think GZR START makes it so you get kicked back to a checkpoint when you die instead of respawning in place? I don't know what "GZR" stands for.) -Can't pause at the start of the stage - There's a weird little grace period at the start of each stage where you can't pause the game. Maybe it's just me, but that's always where I WANT to pause the game, and it's caused me to die at least a few times. Just another little annoyance on the pile. All right, that's enough griping. To this game's credit, despite all these little annoyances, I keep coming back. The action feels great, it's a visual stunner, and it's really good at making you feel like you're gonna get it if you just stick with it.