A game of Polarities... Some will loath its hardcore principals and dismiss the 2D visuals, others will embrace them.
Treasure has been known for it innovation, dedication to detail and the polarity of opinion driven up by their generally dogged refusal to make sequels to their games. Yet often heralded as the spiritual sequel to Radiant Silvergun, a game with a legendary status itself, Ikaruga is a sequel in one sense, but in a way is little like it. Not only does it seem to follow the rules and principal ideas of it forefather, but brings a couple of new ones along for the ride. Ikaruga is fundamentally a game of polarities in many ways, the most obvious being in terms of its gameplay, but also in the fact that its strongly draws upon the heritage of it ancestral linage. This ultimately means that it will alienate those not familiar with the rules of the old-style shooter. Yes the most predominate idea in this game is that of polarity. In Ikaruga, the player or players main defence is the ability to swap their ship between two opposites: white or black. The two color acting as a powerful protection agent against the energy attacks of same color enemies. In this game like absorbs like and opposites cause loss of life, a form of reversal on the laws of magnetism. While being hit with the same color as that of the ship current shade will result in no loss; being hit by the polar color or colliding with an enemy or other object will cause immediate loss of life. Those assuming that this means that they can stay one shade or the other and survive long into the games five levels without dying are in for a quick and rude awakening; the game constantly throws enough energy of both types around to quickly invalidate such simplistic tactics.
In fact the trick of simply surviving even on the easiest setting means constancy having to switch between the two polarities to the one that offers the best protection for the situation. As the screen fills with the two forms of energy crisscrossing across the screen like a clockwork torrent of destruction so to does this change have to become more and more frequent. Yet therein also one finds the rub, the polarity system disallows this quick swapping tactic of survivor in some ways because what is true for the players ship is also true for the enemies. The hulls and shields of the various enemy units in the game suffer much more by the hands of blasts from your cannon (whose fire is the same shade as the ships current) if said firepower is of the opposing color as their hull.
Scoring as high as possible has always been the main point (no pun intended) of the 2D shooters and points in Ikaruga are scored for the absorption of energy and abiding by the games chain system. Absorbing the energy gives another benefit, that of charging a homing weapon to take out multiple enemies, the game’s idea of a power-up system. This homing missile will lock on to the nearest enemies, luckily for the process of the chain system, said enemies tend to congregate together in the right numbers. The chain system works on the principals of like, with three of the same color making a chain, killing white ships times three in a row equals one chain, as does destroying three blacks in a row. The chain is operated by a multiplier, which each successive three doubling the value of the previous one, at least up to a point where the chain maxes out, when the bonus remains at the predefined high. Destroying an color out of sequence in any form reverts the chain to the default state of zero (like one white then one black, or two black then one white or any other combination that isn’t three), forcing the player to plan ahead to get the maximum number of chains that the level allow.
The easy, normal and harder difficulty levels each provide challenges well beyond what one would normally associate with their expected meanings. Easy lives up to its name here only after comparisons to the other two levels are drawn, mostly because it omits certain aspects that the others draw on: suicide bullets. With the difficulty set to the normal setting likewise colored ships to your firepower explode in a shower of energy, awaiting the player to suck this added bonus up; yet on hard every ship explodes regardless of color. Trigger-happy tendencies with this in mind are an easy way to get kill quickly, particularly when brands of both colors are flying towards your ship. As your ship takes a half-second to change polarity, bad planning of these oncoming projectiles (and they can be managed) means certain loss of a life. The other, slightly less important aspect to the three difficulties, is the amount of firepower that the enemies feel is necessary to throw at you.
The layout of Ikaruga’s levels, of which there are five, resemble less that of a typical shooter, but rather one that is also a hybrid of puzzle games. Careful positioning and learning of the mechanics prove much more useful than just twitch-based reactions, although that plays its part as well. Almost everything, bar certain homing projectiles, is staged and learn-able. And it is in repetition that the game revels in and which will hold the determined. Most players will never get that far, either out of impatience with the game dynamics or they own ineptitude they will either give up on the game completely, or be content to blast away at everything with little concern for the final score. Those who carry on in whatever fashion, whither playing the game as intended or in a trigger-happy way will (thanks to the unlocking of freeplay) get to see the ending; both party possibly complaining about the lack of levels, though for different reasons. Indeed the unique mixture of shooter and puzzle elements and style, unfortunately, also increases the niche of the game further.
Apart from the traditional fact that arcade shooters rarely have many levels, since the original idea is to make them intense, action filled money earners for the companies and arcades providing them; the five levels of Ikaruga seem to be an practical choice. Very few people would consider committing to memory much more than Treasure are asking its clientele to do; some may not even consider memorising that which is here in the first place.
Shooters are renowned and ignored for being the hardest of the hardcore genres of gaming, from one-hit kills to pixel perfect positioning to screen-size bosses that blanket the screen in hostile firepower. Ikaruga is twitch game-play at its most intense; it also requires the player to memorize enemy positions and how best to unitise that into one’s game strategy. Most will give up before the end, heading for the relative safety of more mainstream titles, those select few who remain, will discover the depth that this sort of gene can also bring and as the scores their accumulate higher and higher scores they will simply enjoy themselves with what essentially is gaming at its purist.
Yet the problems that will alienate others are valid, the game is tough, especially to the uninitiated; the back-to-basics approach that works so well to those who love the old way of things will, in turn. drive away those looking for the new. Although five levels may seem a small sum in today’s gaming epics, each one is a spectacular tour-de-force of design and substance, not a pixel is wasted on the generally hectic screens that the game bombards it players with.
Although the crisp graphics and wonderful ship design may well be a new standard for this genres type of visuals it can also be its downfall, with the pseudo-3D backgrounds making it hard to know where the background (in both scenery and enemies) ends and the foreground action begins. Explosions of the larger ships may (and frequently can) look impressive but they can also obscure the player’s own ship from view. Many of the visual effects are purely cosmetic and while they may be of the highest caliber, players will barely notice it and the genre has never been much of a spectator sport.
Ikaruga is a game that ultimately talks to the hardcore and dedicated shooter fan, most others will find the game too intense for their tastes. The casual gamer will likely dismiss the game for nothing more than it being 2D, a product of the old world. This is a shame, because if one looks beyond the simplistic viewpoint that this game is anachronistic, then one may discover a game that, while it may not be perfect, manages to pay homage to its past while doing its own little thing. Then of course you might not, but that is the ultimate thing about Ikaruga, it’s a thing that you’ll either come to love or loathe; indifference is an alien concept here, after all one cannot be both polarised and neutral.