Ikaruga

Ikaruga is, what I believe to be, the best shoot em up game of all time. The polarity system is unique and the difficulty rewarding, but where the game really shines is when you get into scoring. Trying to look for every possible chain just to make that number go up is an experience like no other, and it's only then when you will understand the sheer depth of how precisely designed this game really is. A 10/10 perfect game.

I really suck at this game. Seriously I can only beat it reliably on easy. Pretty fun though. This is actually a port of the legendary Dreamcast/NAOMI game which I've played and I can happily confirm that it's accurate as I sucked equally as much on the original. What about the actual game though? This is basically a vertically scrolling shoot em up with a gimmick. You can change your guy's color to either black or white with a button. The enemies are also either black or white as are their bullets. You can absorb bullets of the same color and deal more damage to enemies of the opposite color. Absorbing bullets fills your bomb meter. This is the only way to use bombs as there are absolutely no pick ups in the game. If you are used to shooters, this completely rewires your brain as now only half the bullets on screen damage you but you also need to always pay attention to your color. The game has three modes: regular arcade mode that goes from stage 1 to 5, a mode where you can play any stage you want and a mode where your bullets are limited and you have to absorb enemy bullets to fill your stock. The game is fairly short and you can beat all five stages in around half an hour (give or take a few minutes depending on how you'll do at the bosses). There is a two player with local play support where you have two guys at the same time. The game fully supports both gamepad and keyboard controls. The graphics hold up great with huge mechanical... stuff in the background rendered in real time along with a ton of enemies on screen. I always believed that the Dreamcast is the earliest console where you can just straight up port a game to PC and it will look great with just a bump to resolution. The game's art direction is excellent as well. It's very late 90s early 2000s Japanese scifi so if you're into stuff like Rahxephon, Zone of the Enders and Evangelion you're gonna love this. The music is heroic MIDI orchestra stuff. Kinda reminds me of Soul Calibur strangely enough. If that sounds cool the game includes concept art and a sound test menu to listen to the soundtrack.

Hero will never give up, never hide, never be defeated, never accept evil.