A Must Have
This game was made by one of my favorite developers, Treasure. This company has made great shooters for quite a while now, and Ikaruga is no exception. This shooter has a little bit of twist fro regular shooters. It incorporated polarity into the game.
You have a ship, and you can flip it between its light side, and its dark side. You can customize the controls to your liking, so you can set this action to any button. Which is a nice touch. So back to the polarity. If you are the light side of your ship, you can "suck up" the ammo from enemy light ship. And vice versa with the dark side. If you shoot an enemy of the same color, or polarity, you cause normal damage. But if you shoot an enemy that is a different color than you, you cause extra damage. But if you do this, you take the chance of getting hit by his ammo. Its a tricky decision to use which side of your ship. So I think the best way to play is, shoot the enemy with the same color. When the enemy explodes, you can take in the enemys destruction, along with its ammo.
Buy taking in the same color enemys ammo, you fill a meter. And when this meter gets full, you can then shoot a homing missle. Which comes in handy throughout the game.
This game isnt the longest, but it has an interesting story, and it has a lot of replay value. It only has five levels, but there is three difficulty settings. And you might want to go through the game on each level like I did. I just got the game, so its a couple years old by now. But I guess at its release, its website had a score status. So you could post your scores on this website, and compare them to other players.
The graphics are also so great, just like all of Treasure's others games. I think they're better than a lot of people give it credit for. The level designs are outstanding. You'll see once you start the game up.
I'm going to give this game a higher score than gamespot did, but not quite a ten.