Akai Katana Shin Switch XCI Free Download GAMESPACK.NET

Akai Katana Shin Switch XCI Free Download GAMESPACK.NET For those of us that love them, “bullet hell” shooters are not at all hellish experiences. We take pride in agile bullet dodging, find satisfaction in heavy artillery, and delight in the hulking monstrosities that aim to kill us. Developer Cave is top gun of the genre, having delivered classics like Donpachi, Deathsmiles, and Espgaluda over the past two decades. We expect greatness from these guys, which is why their latest effort, Akai Katana, disappoints despite being enjoyable. Nearly 20 years after Donpachi, Akai Katana doesn’t give us much new to do or admire. Think Gradius or R-type but with a lot more stuff on your screen, and you’ve got the basic idea of what Akai Katana is. Your task is to survive seven stages, end the boss at the conclusion of each, and — if you’re a real shooter player — secure that high score. Anyone can eventually see the credits roll if they just continue enough times, but only the lonely can do it while minimizing their loss of life and maximizing their leaderboard position. I’ve played a bunch of Akai Katana, and I enjoy it, but I’m still not exactly sure how it all works. The game struggles to explain its intricate mechanics to the player, even with a tutorial video (Pro Tip: Hit “B” at the title screen).TOP/BEST ADULT VIDEO GAMES IN UNITED STATES OF AMERICA (USA)

Akai Katana Shin Switch XCI Free Download GAMESPACK.NET

What I’ve gleaned is that there are two modes of fire that draw two different types of resources from enemies. One type can be spent to summon a phantom to fight for you, and when you deactivate the phantom the other type is spent to send giant swords — the titular Blood Katanas — flying across the screen causing massive damage and earning massive point bonuses for you. So there is a rhythm, a cadence to the gameplay. Fill one meter, switch to the other fire mode, fill another meter, summon phantom, unleash hell, repeat. Oh, and you have to dodge bullets all the while. It’s an amusing affair that grows on you the more you play. But it’s not quite enough to land Akai Katana in the upper echelon of 2D shooters. Ikaruga is cleverer. Sine Mora is more beautiful. The chunky vehicles remind me of Donpachi, but Akai Katana doesn’t have a strong visual identity of its own. Enemy designs lack personality and too many opportunities for dazzling eye candy are missed. There’s nothing quite like a good old-fashioned shoot-’em-up to get your pulse racing and your thumbs twitching. And if there’s one company that knows a thing or two about hurling a barrage of beautifully crafted bullets at you, it’s Cave.

Training Specify a stage and adjust your unit’s condition to carry out individual training.

Akai Katana Shin (known simply as Akai Katana in the UK) is the latest in the studio’s line of psychedelic, 2D arcade shooters to make its way to the Xbox 360, bringing with it an impressive array of gloriously over-the-top visuals, expertly crafted stages, and a lot of depth that make chasing high scores an absolute blast. That’s fortunate, because there’s certainly not much of a story to keep you entertained. You play as a rebellious pilot dedicated to blowing up your former masters. The who and why are buried in the manual; all you’re given is a choice between three different rebels, each with their own craft and special power. The craft they pilot are modelled after World War II-era planes, but despite their apparent age, they have the uncanny ability to fire waves of laser bullets and unleash devastating energy attacks. Those bullets are put to good use throughout all six of Akai Katana Shin’s stages, where you pilot your fighter across great-looking retro 2D backdrops set across land, sea, and air, and blow the living crap out of a range of tanks, planes, and turrets. Of course, they don’t go down without a fight.OBAKEIDORO! Switch NSP

Akai Katana Shin Switch XCI Free Download GAMESPACK.NET

There are streams of bullets to negotiate, some of which create mazelike patterns for you to navigate your way through, while others home in on you, requiring you to weave your way through the tightest of spaces to survive. Akai Katana Shin is challenging but also satisfying to play. There’s a great feeling of accomplishment when you make your way through one of the intricately designed 2D bullet mazes unscathed. The slightest twitch of your thumb can take you from a dangerous situation to a high-scoring one. If a bullet does hit you, all is not lost. You have three lives with which to make it through to the end of a stage, as well as three smart bombs that destroy all the bullets onscreen and deal damage to enemies. You also have the option to use a special support character called a phantom, whom you can call upon to dish out some mega-damage. What exactly you can do with the phantom depends on what mode you’re in. In Origin mode (a straight port of the arcade original), your phantom can deflect bullets, but only for as long as you have energy, which you collect from destroyed enemies. If you ration out your special ability, an extra layer of strategy is added to the action, making it more than just a test of your reflexes.

Score Attack: See how far you can go with only one life. No continues or restarts allowed.

That’s just the tip of the iceberg in Akai Katana Shin. Load up Slash mode and a whole heap of new features adds a huge amount of depth. Here, your ship has two modes, attack and defence, which are activated by holding down the attack button or by pressing it repeatedly. This affects which pickups you receive, as well as the speed of your ship. In attack mode, you gather energy and move more slowly, and in defence mode, you gather steel and move faster. Gather enough steel, and you can launch it at enemies in Phantom mode. Time it just right and move in close enough, and you can net a huge score bonus, which is represented by hundreds of spinning golden coins that fill the screen in a frenzy of sparkles. When playing as your phantom, you also have the option of collecting Katana Shins that are dropped by enemies when you shoot them in defence mode. Once you’ve gathered enough, you can unleash them upon unsuspecting enemies for a gratuitous, neon-blast of an attack that nets you an even bigger score bonus. You’re encouraged to strategize and plan out where flipping back and forth between defence and attack modes, and between the phantom and your fighter, nets you the highest scores.Skullgirls 2nd Encore

Akai Katana Shin Switch XCI Free Download GAMESPACK.NET

It’s an addictive and entertaining experience that keeps you wanting just one more go until you get it spot-on. It’s enough to make you forget that Akai Katana Shin is otherwise a very short game; with just six stages and a handful of bosses to battle, you can whiz through it in under an hour. I spent $80 on a double-pack of Cave’s Muchi Muchi Pork and Pink Sweets when I visited Tokyo last fall. Some people might think I’m crazy for paying that much on what could easily be a $5 downloadable game. But if you’ve been bitten by the shmup bug then you know who CAVE is and why such a purchase isn’t only acceptable but absolutely necessary as a fan. There are some things money can’t buy, however, such as a way to play a region locked game on an American Xbox 360. This was the case with the overseas release of Akai Katana. Okay, so I could have just bought a Japanese 360 but even I have my limits. Good thing I didn’t because the game has finally reached the West and Rising Star Games has given it the most polished packaging to ever grace a CAVE release. Akai Katana deserves it too, because it is among the developer’s best. Unlike other gaming sites, I’m not going to spend three paragraphs explaining danmaku, CAVE’s history, or Akai Katana’s asinine plot which is confined to press releases and a brief intro/outro.

Make good use of Soul-shift to turn the tide in your favor and earn a higher score.

So go visit Wikipedia and come back if you must. Okay, now let’s talk about what matters: mechanics and presentation. More than any CAVE game before it, playing Akai Katana for the first time versus playing it with full understanding of its systems are radically different experiences. On its surface, AK is deceptively simple and familiar to a CAVE fan. You dodge a ridiculous amount of colorful bullets, rapid fire for quick maneuverability and weapon spread, hold down fire for a more powerful direct attack, use bombs when necessary, and enter a spirit form that alters the battlefield. It’s very easy to reduce the game to being Deathsmiles meets Espgaluda, until you get neck deep in the scoring system. AK is a game all about scoring, but it’s so well designed that even players striving for a one credit playthrough will be using many of the same strategies for survival. There are two precious resources in AK’s arcade mode and Climax mode (a rebalanced, uprezzed 16:9 version for 360): energy and gold. Energy is acquired from defeating enemies or by hovering your option — you know, the little gunner floating around your ship — over an enemy.

There are subtle ways to quickly and greatly acquire energy, which is vital because it fills your spirit meter. Gold, the key to getting a high score, is acquired by defeating enemies in your spirit form. As an aggressive shmup player, AK is a game designed for me. When you enter spirit form, you are invincible as long as you don’t fire your weapon. Enemy ammunition simply bounces around you until they pile into a sea of 200+ pink, blue, and red bullets. In order to clear the debris, you need to destroy nearby enemies that spawned them in spirit form. This creates an unbelievably tense feedback loop of racing into the heat of activity while being in the eye of a bullet whirlwind. It’s exhilarating. Text isn’t the ideal form to convey these concepts nor the nuances to mastering the game. I highly advise taking a look at Rising Star’s tutorial videos to get a better grasp of the game (also available in the game’s menus). Once you understand what’s going on under the hood of AK, you’ll enter spirit form without thinking about it and rack up high scores you didn’t think possible upon your first attempt. It’s an enormous amount of fun, but if you approach the game without an understanding of its systems you’ll be out in the cold.

Akai Katana Shin Switch XCI Free Download GAMESPACK.NET

To make things even crazier, there is a drastic reinterpretation of the game within Slash mode. Along with some minor changes to balance, this mode overhauls your spirit form and greatly increases the amount of energy and gold available. Instead of bouncing bullets around your ship, you are always vulnerable in Slash. The trade-off is that you have new super powerful ways to attack. By defeating enemies with rapid fire shots, you gain steel orbs (exclusive to this mode). These fill up a meter around your ship. When you enter spirit form, you can send these orbs across the screen for a devastating attack. In addition to this, you can also gain giant katanas by defeating enemies in spirit form. When you cancel out of spirit form, these will go flying across the screen giving you giant gold medals you need to race to collect. It’s absolutely insane when you pull it off. This is the mode I spent the most time with because the constant tension-and-release of these abilities adds so much to the game. While AK is one of my favorite Cave games mechanically, it falters in its presentation. After suffering backlash from Deathsmiles II’s jump to polygonal graphics, Cave went back to their signature sprite work with this release (originally distributed to arcades in 2010).Crossing Souls Switch NSP

ADD ONS/PATCHES AND DLC’S: Akai Katana Shin Switch XCI