LIVE ARCADE REVIEW
Ikaruga
By Shaun Hatton - June 24th, 2008
Ikaruga is one hyper vertical shooter that’s definitely not for the faint of heart or slow of thumbs. Available now over the Xbox LIVE Arcade, Ikaruga puts you in the pilot’s seat of a futuristic space fighter that can switch polarities at will to absorb different kinds of projectiles.
I’m a huge shooter fan, going back to the days of Galaga, and Ikaruga is a little bit of gaming bliss. The game scrolls vertically through beautifully rendered 3D environments (though the movement is on a 2D plane) and sends a hail of bullets and enemies at you at any given time.
The thing that sets Ikaruga apart from other shooters is the polarity element. There are essentially two polarities of projectiles: white/blue and black/red. Your ship can also switch between these two polarities with the touch of a button, and you can absorb projectiles whose colours correspond to your ship’s current polarity. In short, when you’re white, you can absorb the white bullets. And when you’re black, you can absorb the black ones.
Sounds simple enough but there are so many bullets and enemies on screen that the game sometimes looks like Do Don Pachi (only much tamer, given that you can fly through projectiles of your polarity). Be prepared to ice up your thumbs if you’ll be playing this for an extended period of time. If you’re a fan of old-school shooters, Ikaruga is for you.
Then again, you probably already knew that.
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One response so far:This is one game I was definately looking forward to. I actually was fortunate enough to own this for my GameCube at one time, but sadly it seems to have grown legs and walked off.
I’ll be buying this soon enough. I heart shooters too much to let this gem pass by.