Ikaruga is designed for perfectionists and those confident with their skills. It's a difficult and demanding top-down shooter. It's not for everyone. But, with a little effort and confidence, it's genuinely fun.

Ikaruga is based on a simple, clever idea; the player can switch the color of the ship between black and white to absorb the enemy's fire. It then throws diabolical arrangements of black and white shots at the player. It takes a steady hand and hours upon hours of practice to even begin to become somewhat good at dealing with this.

If completing most GameCube games is a simple task for you, this game makes up for it much in the same way a mob leader will "pay you back" for spilling a tray of spaghetti on their new suit. It's not something you mess with without knowing what you're getting into. It's astoundingly difficult.

That's not all; in order to rack up the big points, enemies must be destroyed in groups of three according to color. Three black or white enemies in a row counts as a chain bonus -- the bonuses keep getting bigger until the max chain.

Like any good game, though, there's a great deal of fun and joy to be had. A favorite is being able to make friends exclaim profanities as you navigate shot patterns that would make a typical human brain go cross-eyed.

Another feature is the Net Ranking. Ikaruga is one of the first games to use this, after Soul Calibur II and Konami's line of Bemani titles. The game will generate a code when a player receives a score - this code, when submitted to the Ikaruga ranking site, will then place your score in the international ranking, as long as it's within the top 100. It's good for prizes, too, so go get 'em - show the world what you're made of.

It is true that the game is only 5 levels long; it takes about 25 minutes from start to finish. The real objective is to find and understand the hundreds of patterns in the game and achieve the highest possible score. It's for players that love practice, persistence, and dedication.

There are some fabulous unlocks that reward the player for difficult accomplishments or for every five hours of play time (whichever happens first). Game art is the first available, followed by a sound test. After that is a real treat: a new brain-bendingly difficult game mode called the "Prototype" game, in which the ship's supply of ammo needs to be refilled via shot absorption.

The graphics in Ikaruga are terrific, but not in a pushes-one-million-multi-texture-polygons kind of way; more in the artistic sense. Each giant boss and elaborate background is interesting to look at, as are the angles the camera takes over the largely-mechanical landscape. Swirls and patterns of shots are mesmerizing. There are no distracting errors, objects, or anything otherwise annoying or painful to look at. Everything fits together in a nice overall presentation.

The game is designed for "sideways" screen proportions. There are multiple setups available, which include shrinking the game screen down, cutting off the very top or bottom, or just playing sideways. Some people might get annoyed with trying to find the optimum one, and it's not necessarily fun, safe, or practical to turn a TV sideways. The default shows the whole screen with letterboxes on the sides, and that generally works very well for most people. As an aside, 'HINT' demos change with each screen setup, which is very annoying.

The orchestrated soundtrack is a nice touch and fits well with the game; it doesn't mess with a player's nerves when they need to be calm, and even hits dramatic peaks at certain points. The music seems to have been written to watch the in-game events as they happen. It's very cool. All of the sound effects are similarly well-suited. The computer voice is very difficult to understand though. After a while, it's possible to tune your ears to how it counts the chains, but anything else it says is pretty much impossible to comprehend.

The control is simple and precise, and precision is a must. There are eight digital directions, yet the control stick feels very comfortable and accurate. The three button functions are configurable -- they are placed by default so that a player can hit any combination of them at any time, which is also a necessity.

Ikaruga is awesome, but it's not for gaming weenies. You must be at least this tall to ride.