Ikaruga

The Good
It restored my faith in old school style games brought to the Nth degree on a 4th generation platform. I like shooters. I prefer shooters to RPG's. The parity concept of the attacking ships and bullets seems to add a puzzle like element to making your way through a level. You are forced into thinking and plotting because brute force and firepower alone will not win.

The Bad
A vertical scrolling shooter made for arcade style monitors has to compress itself on your TV to see everything in all it's glory. If you have a widescreen TV you find yourself playing this game that takes up a small vertical stripe in the middle of your set. This is making me think about the possibility of mounting a widescreen TV vertically because you can switch the view to horizontal but something seems to be wrong if you are actually watching it scroll sideways instead.

The Bottom Line
A vertical scrolling shooter. Level based missions with bosses. Your ship and all enemy objects have a parity of either white or black. You can change your parity at will. If you fire at an enemy that is the same parity as you it fires back when it is destroyed. But your shield will absorb enemy fire that is the same parity that you are currently set to. This absorbed energy can be release in a fury of homing missles that do excellent damage. If you destroy an enemy of the opposite polarity they do not fire back at you. The smaller ships are single polarity. The larger ships and bosses have elements of both white and black so you have to modify your attack accordingly. It is a tough learning curve. And just when you think you have it mastered it gets harder.