Ikaruga

The Good
Ikaruga's graphics are decent. The gameplay is amazingly simple and complex at the same time. Essentially this game is your vertical shooter (think Space Invaders, R-Type, etc) with a twist. There are two "polarities" as the game calls them, black and white. If you shoot an enemy with the opposite polarity of your shield you deal double damage to them, however if you shoot an enemy of the same polarity of your shield you deal normal damage and the enemy releases bullets that same polarity upon dieing. Collecting bullets of the same polarity as your shield fills up your special gauge which can be used to unleash devastating attacks. Collecting even one bullet of the opposite polarity of your shield...well, it kills you. The controls are simple: Control Stick to move, B to fire, A to switch between polarities, and R to unleash your special.

The Bad
"This game is tough." That comment right there is quite possibly the largest understatement ever. I have never, in my 10+ years of hardcore gaming, experienced a game which can touch the difficulty of this game. While this provides for good replay value, it also provides for large headaches and an assortment of four-letter words that would certainly not make your mother proud of you.

The Bottom Line
Ikaruga is the answer to the cries of Top Down Shooter fans who are experiencing the waining selection of their favorite genre. The game is simple and complex at the same time which makes it accessible for amateurs and veterans alike. The difficulty of Ikaruga is extreme which gives the game great replay value but a lot of frustration as well. All-in-all this is a very well designed game, and fans of the genre will not be let down.

The Good
Treasure has a reputation for making good games, but they really outdid themselves with this one. Gameplay is pure simplicity: You control a spaceship. You can move, and you can shoot. There are no fancy-ass power-ups. Ikaruga doesn't need them. The only weapon enhancements are your homing lasers, which you charge up by absorbing enemy shots... but only with the right color bullets. That's right, in Ikaruga you TRY to get shot, which is counterintuitive to every other shooter out there. You can change your ship from black to white at the press of a button, and then you can safely absorb enemy fire of the same color, plus you do double damage to enemies of the opposite color. It definitely takes a little practice to get used to, especially when you've got enemies and bullets of both colors raining down on you.

But Ikaruga moves even further beyond the ordinary shooter with its chain strategy: Shooting 3 enemies of the same color in a row gives you a chain bonus. The more groups of 3 you can destroy without breaking the chain, the faster your score increases. This is really challenging and requires loads of practice. But what's great about Ikaruga is you can play it any way you want. You don't have to try for high-scoring chain combos. If you want to just hold down the fire button and blast away, you can. Or if you're really up for a challenge, you can try the "Dot-Eater" technique, where you asorb enemy shots but don't fire any of your own. Think about that: You're playing a shooter, but you're not shooting!

The waves in Ikaruga unfold at a very tight pace. If you don't shoot all the enemies down fast enough, the survivors will flee and the next batch will arrive. If you destroy everything so fast that there would normally be a delay before the next group of enemies, you get bonus enemies to fill the time. Everything is flawlessly choreographed, and enemies are carefully dispatched in creative groups of 3 so that anybody can get decent chain combos with a little practice, but only the very best players will get them all and achieve the highest "S++" rank.

**The Bad**
If you're easily frustrated by dying, you probably won't like Ikaruga. Even on the easiest difficulty setting this is one insanely hard game. You will die more times than you can count before you start getting good at it. It's quite short, with only 5 stages (though they remain challenging for a very long time). It was designed for a vertical monitor, the exact opposite of every gamer's TV set, so there's a lot of black on either side of the playfield. Also it's semi-rare. The Dreamcast release was confined to Japan, and the U.S. GameCube release is out of print now, and getting difficult to find.

**The Bottom Line**
If you can appreciate the sheer beauty of a fast-paced, exquisitely designed game, and enjoy when a game defies every established convention of its genre, you owe it to yourself to play this one. Ikaruga is worth the time and patience it takes to master it. For shooter fans, nothing finer exists.

The Good
It restored my faith in old school style games brought to the Nth degree on a 4th generation platform. I like shooters. I prefer shooters to RPG's. The parity concept of the attacking ships and bullets seems to add a puzzle like element to making your way through a level. You are forced into thinking and plotting because brute force and firepower alone will not win.

The Bad
A vertical scrolling shooter made for arcade style monitors has to compress itself on your TV to see everything in all it's glory. If you have a widescreen TV you find yourself playing this game that takes up a small vertical stripe in the middle of your set. This is making me think about the possibility of mounting a widescreen TV vertically because you can switch the view to horizontal but something seems to be wrong if you are actually watching it scroll sideways instead.

The Bottom Line
A vertical scrolling shooter. Level based missions with bosses. Your ship and all enemy objects have a parity of either white or black. You can change your parity at will. If you fire at an enemy that is the same parity as you it fires back when it is destroyed. But your shield will absorb enemy fire that is the same parity that you are currently set to. This absorbed energy can be release in a fury of homing missles that do excellent damage. If you destroy an enemy of the opposite polarity they do not fire back at you. The smaller ships are single polarity. The larger ships and bosses have elements of both white and black so you have to modify your attack accordingly. It is a tough learning curve. And just when you think you have it mastered it gets harder.