Akka Arrh

As a long-time fan of the Tempest franchise, you better believe that I’m excited every time LlamaSoft releases a new game. And when you tell me that their upcoming title is a reimagining of a 1982 arcade game that was never released, I say sign me up sight unseen. And that’s what happened with Akka Arrh, a fun (and sometimes baffling) shoot ‘em up that has been resuscitated 41-years after Atari unfairly decided to take it off life support. Without watching any of the trailers and barely playing the original, I jumped into this new version of the game with the hopes that it would be the year’s first must-own shooter. What I got was something a lot more complicated. Trust me, we have a lot to talk about in this review of Akka Arrh.

If you took my advice and bought the incredible compilation Atari 50: The Anniversary Celebration, then you may have run into Akka Arrh when going through the company’s extensive history of arcade games. Wedged between Quantum and Black Widow, we’re told that this weirdly-titled shooter was developed by Dave Ralstan and Mike Hally in 1982, but ultimately went unreleased after the test market deemed the game to be too difficult.

It's easy to understand where those unsuspecting gamers in the test market were coming from when you play this new version of Akka Arrh. No matter where you come down on this remake, one thing is painfully clear – this is not a straight-forward shoot ‘em up. I fully sympathize with those gamers from fourty-some-odd-years-ago, because I spent an embarrassing amount of time trying to wrap my head around what at first looks like a relatively simple action game. Let me tell you, this shooter is not as simple as it looks.

The first thing you need to know is that Akka Arrh is the strange mash-up of Missile Command and a tower defense game. You play a single turret that sits in the middle of the stage and can spin around in 360 degrees, allowing us to kill the enemies that are attacking from all sides. The turret is equipped with two different weapons – bombs and regular bullets. The trick is that you’ll need to kill enemies with the bombs in order to use your gun, as each enemy you kill gives you one bullet to use. With limited bullets at your disposal, you’ll have to think carefully about how you use both the bombs and the regular gun, as it’s extremely easy to get into a situation where you run out of ammo and are completely vulnerable to attacks.

This is where the game becomes a lot more complicated. When an enemy rushes the turret in the middle, it will usually fly down to a lower layer and try to destroy the 16 pods floating around the stage. These pods represent the player’s life. When a bad guy goes down to this lower layer, you’ll need to follow them down there and kill them before they get your pods. Of course, when you’re down in that lower layer, you’ll be completely ignoring the action happening above, which has a real tendency to get out of hand in unpredictable ways. The object is to find a balance between the two layers, all while racking up high scores with impressive combos.

The scoring system is easily one of the coolest new aspects of this Akka Arrh remake. When you drop a bomb, it will create a ripple effect that will kill other enemies in its wake. What’s cool is that each enemy will expand the reach of that bomb, creating new ripples that will hopefully keep the combo going for minutes at a time. You can always drop another bomb to get the ripples moving again, but that will reset the combo back to one. The good news is that firing the gun will not reset the combo, but again, you’re limited on how many bullets you can shoot.

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This somewhat complicated dynamic leads to the game’s greatest asset – a wide range of incredible enemies that you’ll need to learn and memorize. There’s a strategy element to Akka Arrh’s action, since you’ll need to prioritize what enemies you target (and when). You may want to bomb those easy enemies first to build up the gun ammo and then focus on the faster aliens that will seemingly come out of nowhere. Some enemies can only be destroyed using the gun bullets, while others will launch counter-measures the moment they are shot down. Similarly, the various types of aliens will attack the pods in different ways, with some staying down below for as long as they can, while others will stay above and try to suck them up. I really appreciated how each stage was good about introducing a new enemy or obstacle. There’s a lot mot variety here than you get in most classic shoot ‘em ups.

When I lay it all out like that, Akka Arrh makes sense. Sure, it’s a little more complicated than a typical old school shooter, what with the different layers and the way the ammo works, but a seasoned developer like LlamaSoft should have no problem teaching new players what to do. Right? Unfortunately, that’s not the case. Perhaps I’m a little slow, but it took me more than a few tries before I started to get a hang of what was expected of me. Part of the problem is that the instructions aren’t as clear as they probably could have been. It’s also annoying that they obnoxiously flash the information on screen in different colors while you’re in the middle of a fight. If ever there was a game that needed a full card explaining the rules, this is the game.

Gradually, over the course of many games, I began to wrap my head around the different ammo types and all of the aliens. But even as it all started to seep into my thick head, I still had so many questions. I’m not going to lie; I spent quite a while not really enjoying Akka Arrh. I was frustrated that I couldn’t freely move around the field and was annoyed that a strategy that worked in one stage wouldn’t work in the next. Even the power-ups left me cold, as it’s not always clear what they are supposed to do. I found that I kept wanting to play it one way, when it was clear that the game wanted to be played in a completely different way.

And then something clicked. I started prioritizing enemies and learning their attacks. I got better at predicting the cheap hits and creating massive combos that rejuvenated my pods. Long story short, I started to have fun. And, despite being incredibly challenging at times, I kept having fun as I puzzled my way through levels that came in all shapes and sizes.

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That’s not to say that I fully embraced all of the strange design decisions. I still have a big problem with the way the two layers are handled, since it’s often incredibly hard to see what’s going on below the main stage. I wish there was a better alert or way of dealing with the threat on the pod level. I also wish the game was a bit clearer when it came to how to play and what the different power-ups do. So much of the game left me scratching my head, and not always in a good way.

Like most LlamaSoft games, I would describe the visual style as chaotic. There are enemies, bullets, particles, power-ups and even words flying everywhere. This is one of the big reasons why it’s sometimes difficult to see what’s going on underneath the surface. While it can be a bit much at times, I like the way this game looks. It perfectly rides that line between looking like an old school arcade game and using the modern hardware to create levels and effects that would have been impossible back in 1982. The soundtrack is also great, though it’s a bit more laidback than I expected. This is a good looking and sounding package, assuming that absolute chaos is your thing.

It may have taken a while, but I ultimately came to like Akka Arrh. It’s not my favorite LlamaSoft game and is probably a bit more complicated than it needs to be, but I like a lot of the ideas at play here. This is a shooter that requires a lot more strategy and forethought than we normally get, and I appreciate the game’s ambitions, even if they don’t always come together. This is a fun and worthwhile game, though it may take some time to warm up to its many quirks.