Galshell: Blood Red Skies (PC)

I hope this post isn't too clouded by nostalgia, since this (along with Warning Forever and Dan Da DAN!) was actually one of the first few doujin shooters I played when I got my first PC years and years ago. Obviously, the main draw of the game is the amazing Gigeresque visuals, though the detailed sprites have a payoff in that there isn't much animation to go with them. Though what there is is used effectively, with enemies and bullets pulsating and wiggling like gross infectious parasites. Even the two player craft have their

own unwholesome little twitches.
Ufortunately, as you can tell from the screenshots accompanying this post, there's a weird problem I've had while playing Galshell on my current PC: all the explosions and enemy bullets are surrounded by ugly black squares. Though it doesn't effect the game itself, it is very ugly, and a shame considering it gets in the way of the great sprites. A little extra bonus is that all the game's graphics and sounds are just regular files in the game's directory to be enjoyed at your leisure.
The game itself is a lot of fun to play too, of course. There's no fancy scoring system like you'd expect from a modern shooting game, though there is a fairly novel power-up and extend system.
The player gains experience points for every one of their bullets that hits an enemy, and killed enemies drop

blobby red throbbing items, which also give experience when collected. Upon levelling up, the player's weapon is upgraded and they get an extra life. Even when your weapon's fully upgraded, you can continue levlling up to keep gaining extra lives.
Along with the three regular difficulty levels you'd expect (easy, normal and hard), there's also an extra mode, which ramps the difficulty up to crazy levels, but also gives the player experience at a much higher rate.
Galshell is a great game, and definitely worth playing, and if anyone can solve the  black box problem, please tell me!

ChainDive (PS2)

Firstly, I'll apologise for the quality of the screenshots accompanying this post. PS2 screenshots never turn out perfectly, but the shots of this game are even worse than usual.
Anyway, ChainDive centres around a simple concept: your character has a lasso that can be used to swing

from the green dots littered around each stage. There are also enemies, who are defeated by first being frozen by your double-bladed weapon, and then smashed, by attaching the lasso to the frozen enemy and smashing into them.
The genius of the game is that it uses these small ingedients to make every stage different to the last. The first stage seems like a stage from any other mid-00s action game, with the added gimmick of the lasso: you travel from left to right defeating enemies on the way to the end of the stage. But the stages that follow are all totally different. A stage with no floor that has the player swinging from rooftop to rooftop, a stage with an incredibly high tower that must be climbed while fending off attacks, a stage exploring a cave to fin switches, and so on.
All these stages are a ton of fun to play, and the variety ensures that the game doesn't outstay its welcome. The big problem with the game in general though, is the difficulty level. Although the extreme difficulty does
result in a huge feeling of relief and satisfaction, it is still incredibly frustrating until the "trick" of each stage clicks in your head. And there are times when the game seems incredibly unfair, when you're desperately trying to find a dot to hook onto or when you fall into the abyss at the bottom of some stages with seemingly no way back up.
I still definitely recommend ChainDive to curious players, despite all that.