If youtube doesn't lie this a Gradius knockoff with a bigger screen. Why anyone would be interested in a recreation of the Gradius formula years after the decade that brought us Deathsmiles, Batrider, Mars Matrix, and Dodonpachi DaiOujou is beyond me. Noitu Love 2 actually looks like a really fun game, and I'd be happy to try it.
Deathsmiles is an average horizontal shooter with lolita goths. Armed Police Batrider is fun, but ultimately standard in its mechanics. Mars Matrix is very unique and interestesting, but built upon the framework laid by Giga Wing. DDPDOJ is nowhere near as good as DDP or DDPDFK.
Really, this just comes across as ridiculous Japan worship.
Given that every game you listed is on par with Hydorah in terms of originality, I'd go ahead and say that your point there is null. I'm not saying they aren't good shmups (I like them!) but criticizing Hydorah for not innovating enough when only one of the games you listed was "innovative" is baffling.
See, I'm actually a nice guy. I don't hate "indie games." I hate "indie games that look and play like ass."
Hydorah, Limbo, Castle Crashers, and other games you proceed to list in this thread neither look nor play like ass. Each game has very tightly-polished controls, and visual style is open to interpretation. I generally define an "ass-looking game" as one with muddy textures or inconsistent art style, and none of these games listed below fall into that category.
Doujin simply means something fan-made and self-published, and like "indie" it's a vague term, tells you nothing about the actual game, and is often simply used as an in-word among fans and developers. (Case in point: mizuumi.net, a site which claims to specialize in doujin fighters, actually has wikis for Guilty Gear and BlazBlue, and hosts an active forum and wiki for Arcana Heart 3. Many of the players here consider themselves "doujin" or "poverty" gamers despite playing Arcana or BB. This is because "doujin" is about as useless a term as "indie," but at least -- sick burn alert -- the games tend to be fun.)
Eat a dick. People have a subjective opinion of what is fun. Just because you happen to enjoy playing shmups and fighters that look and play very similar to one another doesn't mean everybody does.
If I handed Melty Blood to the average person, they'd be confused and bewildered by the thoroughly weeaboo nature of the game. If I handed them Limbo or Super Meat Boy, they'd get right into it. Different games have different niches. I wouldn't presume to compare BioShock to Civilization.
That being said, I do love Arcana Heart and Melty Blood.
Doujin games are often associated with animu bitches because a lot of doujin games are fangames with characters from animes, visual novels (there's another phrase I'd love to erase from the collective vocabulary), etc... But this is not necessarily the case -- Trouble Witches, Touhou, and Vanguard Princess feature animu bitches who never before appeared in an anime. WHOOOA
Blah blah blah who cares
As to whether I play "indie" games, that's up to your definition. If your definition, like Paul's, is ever-expanding to suit the needs of argument, my second favorite game series of all time is "indie" -- Melty Blood. Altogether, my enthusiasm for the game has cost me enough money to buy a car, a few years of my life, and several points off my GPA when I graduated from college.
This is quite possibly the saddest thing I've read in this thread so far.
If your definition simply means "games approved by TIGS," then the answer is again yes, but I'm not a huge fan. (How did you guess???) Spelunky was not entertaining, Limbo was less than not entertaining (I would say that this game qualified as absolute trash), Passage was worse than trash, some exceedingly dull (but really quite beautiful, my friends assured me) game about fishing in order to cross a lake to meet your girlfriend or w/e, a dull and exceedingly annoying game called I Made a Game with Zombies In It (this game, though "better" than Passage, ranks far above it on my hate list), Castle Crashers, which I found as boring as Dynasty Warriors but far more irritating and not as pretty, Angband (great fucking game), N (fucking garbage ninja game, zzzz), Splosion Man (fucking garbage ninja game zzz), Alien Hominid (Metal Slug, Dolphin Blue, and Pong were better), Cave Story (which, although I live my life primarily for the sake of Icy-sama, I found to be pretty fun), I am a big fan of David Sirlin's "independent" (if you write out the word all the time the hilarity of its usage becomes more clear) card game Yomi (which has a computer version and is hence a video game, lol), and really I'm tired of writing this and I doubt you have read this far.
Fuck ooooooooooooooff. I like how you presume to make TIGS this indie cabal, list off a bunch of excellently designed games, and replace them with Japanese ones. I appreciate that you are participating in this thread, but could you please offer more than just idiotic pandering to your rage boner god? It's sickening.
Central theories on games? What central theories? He has none. Please elucidate what about Icycalm is so particularly revolutionary or requires refutation. Most of his statements (buried underneath piles of bullshit) tend to be non-controversial, such as "sequels are not necessarily bad" and "games are meant to entertain."
PS: If you really liked games, you would understand them, and maybe offer criticism instead of stupid baseless claims of WHICH GAMES ARE BETTER. Christ, it's like reading a post from GameFAQs.
Icycalm has no central theory on games more than anybody else does. He's an empty shell who calls himself a critic and wraps himself in the veneer of vitriol. Out of any critic to follow obsessively, you sure picked the worst one.
The engine will always effect the possible scope of a game (not necessarily the actual scope). Since this is figured in the original post this thread reflects (hahaha!) on, the scope of Doom, its very design, would've been impossible with the Wolfenstein engine. That doesn't mean every game with the Doom engine will share that game's scope -- I'm sure Jason Rohrer could take the very same engine and craft a very moving "walking forward simulator."
This is not to say that it is impossible to make a great game with one of these pre-made engines; one guy used the 2d Fighter Maker engine to make the very fun and refined Vanguard Princess. However, I struggle to see how a developer using this pre-built engine could make a game as deep and nuanced as BlazBlue, Melty Blood, or Guilty.
Japan called, they said their dick is too raw from your rampant sucking.
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