Anyone else pick this up?  Against my better judgment, I'm playing on Normal mode, and the only reason I haven't dropped down to Easy is because Treasure has done away with lives and now lets you continue from the last checkpoint as much as you want (and they are very generous with the checkpoints).  I've made it to Stage 5 so far, and while the game is quite cool, it's really unbalanced.  You will spend 80% of your time fighting bosses.  The regular enemy portions of the stage take only a few minutes, and then you might spend the next 10-30 minutes fighting a series of bosses (time varies depending on how many times you have to retry).

You can really see that the game is designed not to be completed, but to be played for points (yes, I'm aware that this is a shmup).  If you don't get hit, your score multiplier goes up with every enemy defeated, and the only way to get a good ranking on the leaderboards is to complete an entire stage without dying since your score goes back to zero each time you die.

The story's not quite as batshit crazy as the first game's, but maybe that's just because the audio recording quality is better and I can actually understand the voice actors this time out.  Still, this is a VERY Japanese game, for better or for worse.  I'm a little surprised at how hard Nintendo is promoting it, but even with those marketing dollars, I'd be shocked if this breaks 100k in states.  As a $12 download, the first one was an easy sell.  As a $50 retail title with a very short campaign, this is another matter.   Good luck to them.

Hellooooo, selling point. There's a reason Shattered Soldier and Hard Corps are still my favorite Contras.

I ordered this online awhile back (free poster!), but apparently cheaped out on postage, so I don't expect it to arrive 'til week's end.

I can't wait for this. I am so excited. I bought the first one a while back trying to figure out what the big hub bub was about. It didn't really seem like a traditional Treasure game to start with but when I was done with it I fell in love.

A 6 hour game for $50 is a hard sell but hopefully the cult status will give it some lift. Unfortunately I pre-ordered at Gamestop so I need to wait until like...........Wednesday to get it because apparently Tuesday is the shipping date. *Sigh* Did anyone see the pre-order bonus for this one? Its 500 Wii points on a S&P themed card. So lame.

Beat the game on Easy tonight.  I had made it into Stage 6 on Normal, but it starts to get grueling around then, and I wasn't having much fun, so I turned it down to Easy and blew through it (there is a big difference between Easy and Normal).  On this level, you can appreciate all the thought that went into the enemy and level designs which is pretty nice since you don't have to worry about survival very much.  On the whole, it's a fun game, but it isn't worth $50, and although the controls work much better than in the first game, I kinda miss the whole WTF element of the first one's rapid fire, completely nonsensical story.

Really looking forward to this one; surprised by how aggressive they are in actually promoting this title; I've actually seen TV ads for this! TV ADS! Who in blazes makes TV ads for video games anymore, aside from maybe EA?

Probably going to wait awhile on this one, though, at least until Winter; besides, I have a bunch of trade-ins, but none of the stores in my area are actually carrying the game...except for the ones that don't accept trade-ins.