rRootage's IKA mode is the game Ikaruga should have been.
Ikaruga's core mechanic could have been used to make a great shmup, but instead, we got a memorize-em-up with stage-long, game-long chaining (my face turns beet red) where the level designs are made entirely of bullshit and the only legitimate way to play is "watch a superplay video and replicate the motions exactly". It has remained popular enough to be consistently regarded as one of the greatest shmups of all time, despite not actually being fun.
rRootage's IKA mode, on the other hand, is fun. It's how Ikaruga should have approached the mechanic. For one, there's no chaining bullshit. Secondly, and equally as important, is the tuning of the game in such a way as to emphasize bullet absorption. Bullets are nice and slow, and come in multicolored waves, and your hitbox for absorbing them is nice and huge.
See that tiny little dot in the center of your ship, where the laser is emanating from? That's your hitbox. See that huge red circle around your ship? That's your bullet-absorption hitbox.
This is a huge difference.
It gives you the freedom to actually go around absorbing bullets (the game is based entirely around bosses, and each bullet absorbed is reflected back to the boss as damage). It gives the game the freedom to send huge multicolored bullet patterns at you, and it gives you the freedom to decide whether you want to take risks. Graze, flip, then graze some more.
I wish Ikaruga had been this way, and I wish someone would take this approach to the mechanic and make a full game out of it, because there's so much untapped potential that's been wasted on puzzle shit.
Freedom is fun. Memorizing superplay videos and getting spawnkilled is not.
