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Fellow gamers, I think I have to confess something. I have...a problem. See, it started all innocently
at the arcade, with my buddies, you know? We weren't causing any trouble, or so we thought.
I couldn't stop feeding the machine quarters. All those enemies, all those green triangles...I
began to mix it into my love of Steam games, especially with those awesome deals they keep
having. And suddenly, I was lost again, in a shmup coma. I just gotta have more cute
animation, more crisp level design, more challenge. One game in particular is the reason behind
this addiction that I have, and it is, are you ready for this? A SIDE SCROLLING SHMUP.
It's called Gundemonium Recollection, or RE:Gundemonium for short, developed by Platine Dispositif
and published by Rockin' Android. A true niche shooter for fans of cute anime characters
and hours of colorful, crisply designed gaming, Gundemonium Recollection is a remake of the
original Gundemonium, this time with more music, bullet patterns and characters. This
version of Recollection was released along with two other shmups, Hitogata Happa and
Gundeadligne. For the gamer new to the bullet hell genre, you've come to the right place.
This game is as challenging as Eryth Millfall and her male counterpart the Earl look like
they stepped out of Black Butler, and appropriately enough, they are a cute anime duo. You can
choose the weapon loadout with the Earl at first, the primary fire, mana attack, and
bomb attack all open to customization. Lasers, bullet patterns with a wide range, and the
ability to unleash a dragon against all enemies on the screen come to mind when describing
the ability of each weapon. Along with your primary attacks, you also are able to launch
a Demonic Shift, a new addition to the game, and what this does is help you get ungodly
scores and cleans up the screen later on in more intense missions. The first level, which
strangely enough reminds me a lot of Soul Eater, will open your eyes to the hand-drawn
graphics that are evident not only in the characters, but even as far as the bullet
casings flying out of your guns. But really, the game will test everything you ever knew
about shmups simply by throwing everything and the kitchen sink at you. Bullet patterns
will form walls around you as you attempt to destroy their source, and in this game,
the quicker the better. An exciting element to the shoot-em-up style of Gundemonium Recollection
is chaining, where you rack up a shooting combo in the hundreds of targets hit. The
faster you kill enemies, the more likely it will be to gain an Onslaught Bonus and on
the other side, you'll get rewarded for dodging your enemies shots if you build up a high
Friction rate, where you earn one point for each brush against death, along with a small
recovery of mana. Earn enough friction rate for a Friction Break, which will turn all
those nasty bullets into gems that will fill up your mana bar and raises your phase level,
which is basically the level of difficulty of the game. It's really the phase levels
that determine how crazy the action gets, since the better you do, the higher the bar
is raised for you, but a higher phase level will also allow you to rack up higher scores.
The highest your phase level gets is determined by the difficulty you set it, which starts
at the novice limit of 2 and works its way up to a fixed level of 11 on Demonic. The
soundtrack to this game is impeccable. No wonder so many bullet hell fans are so fixed
on the soundtracks alone, they add wonderfully to the atmosphere and are beautifully composed.
There's so much more I could say, but I'll end by saying Gundemonium Recollection is
not a game for the faint of heart, nor for those behind on their work schedules. It takes
a lot of concentration and patience to beat a game like this, and one thing's for sure,
I'll be blasting away with cute anime characters for a while if that's the case.