Ketsui (Arcade) - Guest Post

Another guest post by Nintondo Man. Apparently it's the first in an ongoing series!

It even has a banner!

Hello and welcome to the inaugural review in Nintondo Man's Shmupquest series !! In this series I'll be playing games from Nintondo Man's new favorite genre, the shoot 'em up, or "shmup" as the kids call them. 
I'm also really bad at them so I thought it would make sense to start with one of the harder ones, "Ketsui: Kizuna Jigoku Tachi (ケツイ~絆地獄たち~)", by CAVE.

You have a choice of two different helicopters + pilots, slow and wide shot or fast and narrow shot. Contrary to my usual style I chose the former this time, the "Tiger Schwert" as piloted by the two anime blokes in the pic.

Every time you blow up a dude with the regular shot in this game they spit out a chip with a number on it, higher if you're closer to the dude when he blows up. This starts a short countdown, during which you can shoot other dudes with your laser from any distance and they spit out chips with the same value. This reminds me of my favorite game of all time, Texas Hold 'Em poker, where you get more chips for being risky, but are in more danger of losing a life.

Theme of the game is basically absurd military hardware shooting brightly colored bullets at you.

Holding laser will lock onto an enemy and focus the main fire onto it regardless of where you're positioned. I assume this has significant strategical value if you aren't an idiot like me, Nintondo Man.

I'm bad at video games and it's a good thing I typically play them alone or my family and friends would've disowned me for it by now.

If this word means what it usually means, it should be a warning to you that this credit/review is almost over and you should start thinking about something else to read very soon.

This guy doesn't even look that bad! Maybe I'll even get to the second stage this time.

Oh.

Nintondo Man wasn't lying to you when he said he was bad at shmups. Perhaps he will be less terrible for his next chapter in the Shmupquest, which will be published before Duke Nukem Forever.