Game Stooge

REVIEW: Ikaruga (Xbox 360)

• Scribbled on May 10th, 2008 by Jonathon Howard
• Filed in Action, Microsoft Xbox 360, Retro, Reviews, Xbox Live Arcade

If you didn’t get it the first time, you won’t the 335th either…

I was excited for the release of this game. I’d sold my copy for the Gamecube and then almost immediately regretted it after seeing the prices it was catching on eBay. Those same prices are what kept me from buying another copy to try and beat it again.

My memories of frustration have slowly been wiped out by the march of time. That was a couple of years ago, and I had long ago relinquished any idea of playing Ikaruga again. Then it appeared on the upcoming release list for Xbox Live Arcade, and for just ten dollars too! The low price point and my inability to remember its balls-to-the-wall difficulty made a purchase inevitable. I downloaded it the morning it came out and then went to work, looking forward to playing a shooter for which I somehow had created fond memories.

Playing the game again brought all those repressed memories back to the surface. I don’t know how I could have forgotten that Ikaruga is a game by Treasure, a company known for it unforgiving and difficult gameplay. If you aren’t a pro at shmups (shoot-em-ups) or a glutton for punishment, then there isn’t any real reason to pick up Ikaruga. If you’re a fan of very demanding shooters though go for it, it’s only ten dollars. Let me fill you in on what you’ll be getting into.

Ikaruga is a vertical shooter with beautiful 3D graphics in which you have to destroy every ship that happens to fly across the screen. Well, that describes every shooter, which leads us to the Ikaruga’s main claim to fame: polarity.

Every enemy in the game is either white or black. White baddies shoot white bullets and black baddies shoot black bullets. Your ship though is able to flip between the two colors, when you’re white you absorb white bullets, and the same for black bullets when you’re black.

I know what you are thinking now, “You can absorb the bullets? This game must be easy!” Wrong! There are multiple, almost endless occasions when the screen is going to be covered in white and black bullets, requiring you to weave between them, while switching polarity. Every bullet you absorbed would help charge up your special weapon which shoots out 12 shots across the screen. In order to rack up points – you need to for bragging rights and winning extra lives – you need to string combos of killing baddies of the same color.

I can’t really get back into the game even for the Achievement points. If I was younger, and didn’t have a professional life, a girlfriend, and a social life, I might be able to sit in front of the computer for hours at a time memorizing enemy movement and bullet patterns, but I don’t have that kinda of time anymore. It’ll stay on my hard drive, but I don’t know if I’ll ever see the end of this game. Sometimes difficulty isn’t an asset but a detriment. I like Ikaruga but, no, nothing should be this frustrating, I play to have fun not throw my controller at the television.