Ikaruga is one of those games that comes along, kicks incomprehensible amounts of ass, but nobody notices because everyone's too busy playing dog shit football games. I don't get it: they re-package the same shitty football games every year, update a few stats, call it a new game and millions of suckers keep buying them. What's the point? Why not just go outside and play real football instead? Or even better yet, get bent. Nobody likes football. Or Tekken for that matter. Man I can't stand Tekken. It's one of the dumbest, slowest, and relentlessly boring fighters I've ever had the misfortune of playing. Take this character for example:

Wow, great design assholes. Was Lampshade man already taken? I wouldn't even mind so much if the controls didn't feel like you were playing with boxing gloves on. Of course, you might as well play with gloves on because the combos never amount to anything more than tapping out pre-defined mashing patterns, some of which inflict over 60% damage so that the entire match lasts fewer than 15 seconds and you end up having to commit vehicular homicide on your way home to vent your anger.

Then as if one shitty Tekken game after another wasn't enough, the Sony version of Soul Calibur 2 includes "Heihachi," a 75 year old grandpa, as an extra character: BORING. The Xbox version gets Spawn with a badass axe, and the PS2 version gets a balding geriatric and a bottle of Centrum. For his special move, Heihachi sits in a rocking chair on a porch and passes out Werther's Originals.

So back to Ikaruga, the game's design is ingenious: the entire game can be played by alternating between black and white phases. It's impossible to complete the game without switching back and forth between colors. Clever design or subtle social commentary? The concept is deceivingly simple: when your ship is black you can absorb black shots and your attack becomes more powerful against white enemies, and vice versa.

I think it's high time they started making more games like Ikaruga. Game companies are turning gamers into pussies these days, which is probably why games like this don't flourish. That's one of the reasons I admire that nerd who played something like 1 billion consecutive games of Pacman a while back. It takes some guts, and a whole lot of stupidity to play Pacman for that long. What a loser.