Cast your mind back some four decades and you’ll find a gaming scene that was pretty much in its infancy, trying to discover direction, leaping this way and that, attempting new things in hope of stumbling upon success.
Yet success back in the 1980s was exactly what Atari and Jeff Minter knew; champions of their cause, lighting up the lives of newbie gamers in search of a fresh hit.
But not everything flourished and it was a fairly common occurrence to see games fall by the wayside, dropped through lack of funding or enthusiasm.
So fast forward to the modern day and things seem to be repeating themselves. Atari are back, gathering up acclaim for their Recharged series of games, as they’ve dragged old classics kicking and screaming into the 21st century. And with Akka Arrh, Jeff Minter is back too.
Akka Arrh is sold as a lost 1980’s prototype of a game, one that failed to make any dent on the industry back in the day, left to rot in a cabinet, alone for years. It’s a game that the legendary Jeff Minter has reworked for a modern audience, with all the style and swazz you would expect of something from an industry icon. Don’t get us wrong – this still screams 1980s, but it also works in an era of uber detail.
It’s these kind of games in which Atari are seeming to thrive with, and whilst this is far removed from the brilliance of their Recharged angle, it’s still one that is worth a try – if only as you hope that you get on with it.
It puts you in control of the titular Akka Arrh, the star cannon which is the focus of the show, combined with the Sentinel; the fixed turret that twirls in the centre of your screen. You’ll want to use this to take down anything that moves, as opponents and foes come in swathes, attempting to smash the Sentinel to smithereens, looking to steal life pods as they go.
You’ll need to fight back, but you’ll also need to be savvy in how you do it: dropping bombs, building combos, earning bullets and hunting highscores and smatterings of success. It’s fairly simple to start with too, and a great little tutorial happily holds your hand through the earlier moments of the game. Yet as mechanics are wheeled out, and the likes of playfield symmetry are understood, those training wheels are fast removed, leaving you to go it alone, hoping beyond hope that you have enough about you to become at one with the game. And when that comes together, the flow of Akka Arrh is near second to none: fluid, fast, frantic, fun.
Firing off a single bomb should be your initial strategic call, as you look to destroy an enemy, seeing their shockwave rippling out to take down others. From then, utilisation of earned bullets comes to the fore, letting you take down a wider variety of enemy or giving the chance to man a range of highly powered power ups. And when you then combine those multiple waves and various shot types with some psychedelic neon visuals and pounding beats, you would think that Akka Arrh had thrust you back to the 1980s.
Yet this is a gaming experience that is so mad, so unlike any other, that at times you’ll find yourself dealing with death, destruction and frustration as those initial tactics fail. For us, that has been when Akka Arrh moves a tad too far away from what makes it great, as you forgo that combo building and score collecting for an anything goes attitude, blasting out bombs and firing cannons without a care in the world, hoping that you can hang on enough to make it through a stage. It’s something that you cannot get away from, no matter how hard you try.
It’s obvious that a combination of these gameplay ideas is what was planned for Akka Arrh, but, for us at least, the proper joy comes from the slightly slower moments, those that let us try and think of the best plan of action, working the playfields as best we can. Akka Arrh wants to continually take those plans and burn them to the ground, all as the intensity rises.
There’s more to Akka Arrh then just twirling your turret though and whilst the majority of the game deals with a mix of bomb dropping and cannon shooting, occasionally you’ll need to dive down from the playfield surface into the internal workings of the Sentinel, stopping opponents that have bypassed systems, before shooting back out once more. It’s here where the ‘lives’ element of Akka Arrh is held, but it feels like a weird added extra that isn’t really required; ideas dropped in for no real reason.
A couple of game modes are in place in Akka Arrh, but navigation of the menu system is a weird one; nearly as mad as the game itself. What you should know though is that no matter how much time you spend with Akka Arrh, you’re fairly unlikely to have played anything that runs with such a psychedelic feel. Without a word of a lie, Akka Arrh is a game that will pound your eyes and ears for minutes at a time, never giving up even when failure is met. Neon splashes are a constant during the shooting moments, as the screen crashes this way and that, overwhelming those senses. As mentioned, when at its best, it can feel almost zen-like, but too often it feels like a game that is just happy to chuck the kitchen sink your way, for good and bad.Â
The intensity can be extremely high and so it’s fairly essential then that anyone who is even the slightest bit prone to epilepsy heads straight into the settings to calm the colour scheme down. We’d even go as far to say that it is so hectic from the off that the default should be that of the subdued rather than the dynamic. It’s how we’ve preferred to play, but on the flip, it does take away from a fairly unique Akka Arrh selling point.
It’s equally nuts in terms of the audio too. You’ll discover the usual sounds that you’d associate with any shooter of this type; explosions of fire as things play out. Yet Minter and Akka Arrh want to deliver fun too, with a host of the weird and wonderful, sampled in from elsewhere. It’s an element of the game that really does work, pretty much at all times, sometimes nothing short of brilliantly.
At the end of the day, this is a game that plays on high-scoring and replayability, as Akka Arrh goes about delivering some superbly intense gaming moments. But that intensity can fast becoming overpowering, as colour, sound and utter madness merge as one. There’s no debating that Akka Arrh is a gaming experience worth taking in, yet perhaps more as an intrigue point. We’re not sure many will find it to be much of a long term proposition.Â
Akka Arrh is on the Xbox Store
