If hard = fun, then driving a car blindfolded = GOTY!
Graphics are based on shades of light and dark or rather black, white, blue and red. There are several enemy models, but the background is a scrolling picture that repeats itself.
The music is a mixture of dramatic and high-tempo beats that increases as you run through each of the five levels. FIVE LEVELS? That's right, there's only five, but each level requires patience.
Gameplay involves dodging or absorbing bullets, swapping colors, releasing the supergun and dodging environmental obstacles.
If you are black, white bullets kill you. If you are white, black bullets kill you. If you are white, you can eat white bullets. If you are black, eat black bullets. That's the cardinal rule of this game. Swap colors with the A button.
As you absorb bullets, your super meter grows. Press R and depending how high it is, you'll get a super homing shot, the equivalent of "bombs" in other shooters.
Some levels will use boxes, others will have closing walls that you must escape through. If you don't learn fast, you may have to spend countless times memorizing the timing and locations of these hazards.
Then come the bosses, which you will have to memorize, because the game simply flings them at you. You do "learn" in this game, but it's not a training sort of learn. It's the learn that you get when you first see something and then it shoots black stuff. Turn black okay. Then it shoots white specs, so you die. Then you try again, get past that, then a black laser comes back again. You die. And that's how learning is done with Ikaruga.
Multiplayer can be fun if you are matched witha person of similar skill as you. But if your partner is less than competant, they may just be an anchor that drains your shared lives.
I bought this game because of so-called good ratings. What I found was a simple game that punishes you for not knowing what you never knew in the level in the first place. Then throw in a multiplayer that makes you reexperience that punishment you had when you first started playing and I've had it. That's not to mention the five levels that are made longer because of this "surprise" method of learning.