Bug Princess 2 Twos-Day
I dream of pink bullets.
For anyone who isn’t familiar with them, shmups (shoot ’em ups) are one of the most bizarre genre of video games. They primarily consist of a ship going up against endless waves of enemies who vomit destructive orbs of energy at you like it was going out of style. Most people commonly call these games ‘bullet hell’ shooters, for the number of enemy projectiles you have to avoid at a time. And shmups are in a really strange position in the gaming world right now. With the exception of fighting games they’re the only real hold out of old arcade sensibilities in the modern world; you start the game, try to get a high score, and when you fail you start over to try and get a higher score. Unlike fighting games, shmups aren’t directly competitive so they’re even more of an anachronism in the modern day.
But don’t tell that to Cave Co, maker of arguably the best shmups in the world. In the past few years Cave has given iOS their overwhelming support, bringing ports of most of their best games to the iOS devices.
And I couldn’t be happier.
Bug Princess 2 is the first Cave shmup I picked up for my iPhone, and I can’t begin to recommend it enough. You don’t have to be a diehard shmup fan to enjoy playing any of Cave’s games. On the easiest difficulty levels they are perfectly manageable, as a new player you could easily make it to stage three before you encounter anything really challenging. But if you do play Bug Princess 2 and find yourself enjoying it, there’s a stunning amount of depth to the game. Five different modes, including boss attack and time attack, high scores, achievements, different scoring systems and combinations of ships, you could spend hundreds of hours on this game a lone mastering all of its different systems.
It helps that the game looks, sounds, and feels great on iOS. This obviously isn’t just a dumbed down port, but is as close to the arcade release as Cave could possibly make it for an iOS device. Notably, you can never turn your gun off. You just shoot, all the time forever, which isn’t necessarily bad, but is also just a limitation of the device.
Bug Princess 2 is also great as your Angry Birds substitute. It’s quick and easy to play, but offers incredible amounts of replay ability. If you’re tired of flinging birds at pigs (not that some of you ever will be) I would strongly recommend you take a look into Bug Princess 2. It also might help if I told you all the Cave games on iOS were currently on sale, wouldn’t it?
For a quick look of someone way better than you at this game, see below.
