I was talking with someone recently about the state of game development and it caused me to go back and read one of the tongue and cheek articles on the GZ web site titled How to Be a Good Game Developer. This was originally published in January of 2000… hence the 10 years later comment.

It’s still just as painful a read today as it was back then due to how on the mark it is about much of the core games industry. Things are clearly getting better with the onset of Casual Gaming and other genres but I wonder in ten more years where we’ll be.

My favorite quote is still:

“When Moms and dads and kids and girls wise up to how cool assault solidiers, sports cars, grotesque space mutants and women with big boobs really are, then maybe they’ll buy more games; but until then, you’d better rely on the teenage guys for opinions or you’ll never sell anything.”

True… true… LOL  :p

I finally had a chance to do some exploration on the PlayStation Network downloads and in my quest to find new SHMUP action I purchased a promising looking title named Söldner-X.

Don’t let the slick graphics fool you. Play control is bland and the pick system for power-ups leaves much to be desired. Half the time if I did see a power-up mixed in among the dense and similarly colored background imagery I was never quite sure if I had actually picked it up as the collision seems to be the core of your ship and there is this delayed fade out on the icon that kept me constantly double checking to see if I needed to fly back to grab it.

It had all the feeling of the worst of crappy 90′s shareware. Yeah that bad.

The combat was pretty uninspired as well and I really felt like I had been scammed for my $10.

I’m going to have to say for my money, the best new SHMUP downloadables I have purchased of late have been Geometry Wars 2 on Xbox Live and Star Soldier R on WiiWare.