Shmups

The first time I heard "Bullet Heaven" I thought it was silly. This is because some people refer to all shmups as "bullet hell" as if they the same thing. Not that long ago, when I was trying to wrap my head around shmups, I would ignore some games because I saw them labelled as "bullet hell" and decided that I wasn't ready for that yet.

I disagree with the author. It looks like a community of people that enjoy these games pushed for this tag. Gaming nomenclatural cannot be controlled, just like with music (if I say to someone that I like metal, and they respond with "oh I love Metallica" I don't give them a lecture). Bullet Heaven is going to stick, and now I associate it with games like VS, and it won't erase Survivors-like from the list of common gaming neologisms.

(Now, if the author wanted to write something that would get engagement and really start something, he should have suggested that Metroidvania games be renamed to Zeldavania games!)

I disagree with the author. Bullet Heaven is simply the opposite of Bullet Hell because the bullets come from the player instead of the arena. One of the points the author's argument stands on is that "fans of one aren't necessarily fans of the other" and that 'bullet hell games don't resemble bullet heaven games', as if the similarity in the name implies some similarity in genre, which is obviously not the case.