A Neverending Boss Battle Guide

The Enemy-

Sloth's ship is HUGE, and is loaded down with weapons. It doesn't move from its position, but is constantly turning to try and face you, and for good reason. When it faces you, it can fire small yellow energy blasts, as well as a powerful beam, that can destroy you in one hit (or so I'm told, I've never been hit with the beam because I'm not stupid enough to stick around, and if you follow this guide, you won't have to worry about it anyway). If it's not facing you, all you have to worry about are the small blue blasts, which randomly spit out of the ship and can easily be dodged. The only other thing would be the seeker-bombs, which follow you and try to hit you. Luckily, they explode in three seconds, and will usually destroy themselves before reaching you if you stay far enough back.

Your Ship-

As mentioned above, your ship is a small little fighter, which only fires one kind of weapon, from its front. You can move it in any direction, however, and if you're fast enough you can avoid Sloth's weapons. You get three lives with this thing, and five hits with each one, which can last you a long time if you play your cards right.

Powerups-

There are a few powerups in this game, which randomly float around the screen. Some are better than others, but if you follow my strategy, you shouldn't move out of your position to grab them. Unless they come close, it's usually not worth it.

Warper- This one is actually pretty bad. It warps you to a random spot when you get it, which can really mess you up. Avoid this if you can.

Shield: Blocks hits, obviously. It doesn't last very long, and unless you're timing it, it can disappear at very bad times, so don't get stupid and run at bullets when you get the shield.

Speed Boost: ...Again, obvious. This can be useful for avoiding bullets, but it can also be hazardous as you aren't used to going that fast, and you can run into enemy fire.

Rebounder: It makes your bullets bounce off walls until they hit something. Since normally it isn't hard to miss Sloth, this isn't really needed. However, it also doubles your firing rate, which can rack up the points, just be sure not to bounce to many off walls, because you can only have a certain amount of bullets on-screen at once.

Faster Bullets: Same as rebounder, except without the bouncing effect. Extremely useful for gathering more points faster. Despite the temptation, though, you shouldn't leave your spot to go after it, as in most cases, by the time you get back into position, you could have gotten as many points with normal fire.

Split bullets: It splits your bullets in two. This is pretty useless, for me anyway, because I can normally only get one to hit, as they're so far apart.

The Controls:

Pretty obvious, and you can find this on the front screen. However, if you're to lazy to read this guide AND play the game, read this.

Spacebar: It shoots. You pretty much should be holding this down at all times.

Arrows: Moves your ship. Not much to say, really...

Z and C: They strafe you left and right.

The Strategy:

This is how I always play the game, and it's worked for me well enough to get a trophy, so...

What you do at the start of the game is immediately circle around and position yourself behind Sloth's ship, far enough away to avoid missiles and shots, then start strafing. Remember how I said Sloth's ship always tries to turn around towards you? Well, if you strafe left and right repeatedly behind his ship, then it will continue changing directions to face you, and as long as you keep moving up and down, it will never be able to face you. Then shoot away, dodging blue bullets and missiles whenever they pose trouble. Each shot is worth five points, so you're likely thinking that it will take a while to get a high score.... Well, you're completely right. It will take a LONG time, so you really need patience. However, as long as Sloth's ship isn't facing you, the game isn't much of a challenge... just time consuming. It's usually around two thousand points to get on the scoreboard, and at five points a shot... that's four hundred shots. Yeah. To actually get a trophy, you should aim for around eight or nine thousand points, which is... a lot of shots. But no, seriously, that's around 1600 shots, four eight thousand points, but usually you want to get more than that, especially if you want something better than bronze. (Don't look at me, I only had silver for about an hour before I was kicked down to bronze. =P)

Extra Tips and things I didn't have anywhere else to put:

If you're trying for a trophy, then do it at the beginning of the month, especially if the best you can do is eight thousand or so; otherwise it's a lot harder.

Sometimes the blue bullets stick. That is, they hang there in midair and don't move. If this happens, try not to move over them too much. Sometimes they just disappear, and sometimes they can unstick, and if you're on top of it, it counts as a shot. Yeah, annoying.

Stay far enough away. I mentioned this earlier, but you have to be sure to stay away from the ship; it makes it much easier to dodge the blue bullets, and you're almost never hit by the homing missiles.

Practice makes perfect. Face it, you aren't going to be perfect at this game the first time. I certainly wasn't; it took a looonnnggg time for me to get a trophy, and you have to get used to the controls. Have patience, the first couple of games you should expect to not get that many points, and to die a lot. Just keep playing, you'll get better.

That's about it. Just follow the above guide, remember to strafe, and you'll be doing fine in no time. I hope you found this guide useful, and if you have any questions or comments, feel free to contact me, I love random neomails.