DoDonPachi Resurrection

God. What to say about Dodonpachi Resurrection. It’s the videogame equivalent of playing five finger fillet with your eyes closed, only instead of using a knife you have to do it with a chainsaw. Also you’re being forcefed sherbet and made at gunpoint to scream KAWAII at inopportune moments. Kawaii! ^-^

This shit’s hard people. Don’t be fooled by the cutesy characters and bright colours. Dodonpachi Resurrection is a full on Bullet Hell shooter, meaning you’ll be forced to dodge hundreds and hundreds of screen filling projectiles whilst you pew pew away and hope to god you don’t mess up because your thumb slipped.

Bullet hell shooters are simultaneously the worst and best thing ever. At their worst they’re impenetrable, annoying and dear God you wonder why anyone would try and get into them. At their best though they’re the best games ever. There’s nothing better than being in ‘the zone’ dodging projectiles like a boss, returning fire and seeing the giant boss wailing as you take off the last of its health. Then you point your finger pistols at the nearest person, but you realise no one is there because you’re alone. So alone.

Oh well. It’s sort of hard to write about a game like this in Maxim as people into their shoot em ups will have it already, but hey, we’ll do our best. Dodonpachi is basically great, and horribly addictive once it grabs you. The xbox has a whole heap of excellent games like this (like Ikaruga on the Live Arcade and Vampire Rage in the indie games section) and Dodonpachi’s can fly alongside them with pride, trigger finger hammering away.

Apparently the title means Colonel Bee, which is great because it means we can pretend the enemies are wasps, and as everyone knows wasps are the real threat to our security, not the reptilians. Also there’s a plot involving time travel but eh, we don’t have a scooby about any of it, because we were distracted by all the bright lights and screeching Japanese women. Nothing but screeching. Screech screech screech. Screeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeech [are you off the meds again? -Ed].

You can choose between 3 ships with different strengths and weaknesses, but it doesn’t matter as you’re going to die lots in this game. We’re talking Sean Bean in every film levels of mortality here. Only an extremely wired bastardisation of Gary Kasparov and Skynet could get through this shit unscathed, so if you’re quite happy to get blown up on the way to the finish line you’ll love this. Of course the real fun in these kinds of games comes from improving and getting used to bullet patterns. It’s like a maths/memory test mixed with the most excruciating anime ever. Actually that makes it sound terrible.

So why can’t we stop playing it?