you can look at pundits in every area of the field, even academia, & feel there’s no real appreciation for mechanical design. not trying to sound condescending but when most of your students don’t know what “press R1/the right bumper” means, i think it’s worth pushing them out of their comfort zone

It's one of my favorite games of all time. I think part of what makes it special is that it's always comfortable to come back to. Sure, there's a reacclimation process but everything that was there is still there.

Buy Birdcage here. Do not sleep on it. If you live shmups, this is for you. If you don't, this game is the one that could get you into them. it's incredibly accessible as well as being deep. PLEASE drop a tenner on it. store.steampowered.com/app/2158550/...

It's actually worth practicing with, so I can see some players (including me) using it instead of their previous Custom control-schemes.

Modern Controls and Free Ejects+Free Jumps are both features I appreciate a lot. The new control scheme takes some getting used to, but I do think it's way better to use than the previous defaults.

Ultimate Assassin difficulty is definitely noticeable in terms of guard detection compared to the previous hard/Master Assassin, but not as crushingly difficult as I anticipated.

I think I'd comfortably basegame Permadeath + FullClear Replays with maxed-out Custom Sliders (200% all values).

Sequences/Mission Replay is a great addition. There are unlocks and tangible rewards for engaging with this feature and doing well; specifically finishing them with every condition in the same run.

Room for some interesting streams and videos because of this, so I'm glad.

I think we could all stand to engage with shmups just a little bit more...