Looking for excuses to spend more time with my Seimitsu-modded FSTE, I decided to pick back up some Kenta Cho(u) games.

I’ve mainly been playing Parsec47, as well as its antithesis rRootage. Whereas rRootage is boss-oriented and about careful slow movements, Parsec47 is about waves of enemies and zipping around like a Scout on five cans of Bonk!, especially in Extreme difficulty where everything–bullets, point items, and you–move around at very high speeds. I do like that you rack up craploads of points in P47 rather fast; compare to NOIZ2SA where it takes longer to accumulate items and it’s all too easy to slingshot items through the top of the screen, forcing me to build back up my multiplier.

Survival in P47 seems to be about, in addition to finding gaps in patterns, moving sideways as well as resisting the urge to pick up that cluster of point items in order to tap-dodge through a wave. Unfortunately, my brain, being the piece of shit that it is, likes to do what is the least sensible tactic in any given game situation, whether it be prioritizing score over survival, trying to melee Pyros in Team Fortress 2, and barging into a goal zone defended by 6 players by myself in S4.

Back to rRootage. I’ve mainly been playing IKA, GW, and PSY modes, and am currently stranded on the eighth tier of stages on each of these modes. In the past I almost exclusively played PSY mode because I liked the graze shield mechanic (except when the shield meter builds up during mercy invincivility causing me to waste it), but I’ve also warmed up to IKA and GW modes. GW’s reflect attack, like that of Giga Wing and Mars Matrix, turns dense bullet clouds into opportunities to take several thousand HP off the boss; as a balance, the main shot is weaker. IKA mode, like Ikaruga, is an exercise in tuning one’s eyes to distinguish what bullets are currently absorbable and what bullets mean instant explody death. Thankfully, unlike Ikaruga, I don’t have to chain enemies to get an optimal score.

Which reminds me: Radiant Silvergun, like its spiritual successor, has that annoying “shoot 3 enemies of the same color” chaining mechanic. So why do I want RSG so much?