Ikaruga is a top-down shooter. Ikaruga is hard. Ikaruga is a masterpiece.
This game takes top-down shooter game play and adds a simple mechanic that turns the genre on its head. As you fly your ship against wave after wave of enemies, you will be able to change your ship's polarity. All enemies come in black or white. You can flip your ship's color between black and white. When your ship is white, you absorb white attacks; when it's black, you absorb black. Furthermore, you deal double damage against enemies of the opposite color. Sounds simple, right? Think again. While it may be a simple system, mastery will only come after hours of your time and hundreds of deaths. In later stages, it almost becomes more of a puzzle game then anything else.
There are only six missions, but they never get old, and you are constantly pushed to try for a higher score. A simple combo system adds a lot of strategy to how you down enemies. You will build up combos in sets of three; three white, or three black, in a row. You'll need to quickly analyze every set of enemies and figure out how to get the most points out of each group.
This is the definitive version of the game. You have all the features of the past versions here, at your disposal, along with a slew of new features, including online co-op play, leaderboards, and a feature to save replays of your games. The developers even went the extra mile and sharpened up the colors and models to look even better.
There are a few tiny issues that pop up with this game. There can be a small amount of lag in online matches, and while not very major, at high difficulties your split-second timing may be thrown off. There is still some graphical slow-down at times, mainly when one of the huge bosses is killed, and explodes, so it has no effect on game play.
With the recent announcement that the rest of this developer's catalog may not be seeing the light of digital download, you owe it to your self to check this game out. This is easily the best way to get in on the action, as copies of this game on other systems easily run fifty bucks or more. This has to be one of the best games available on the Live Arcade to date.
+ Deep challenging gameplay
+ Great additions: multiplayer, replays
- Punishing difficulty might not be for everyone
Grade = A
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