Master Ikaruga on the 360 with user created replays

I spent sometime playing Ikaruga at Tokyo Game Show, but there wasn’t much to say about the hands on experience. Ikaruga is Ikaruga right? The tate mode is neat, but I don’t think many people are going to flip their HDTVs 90 degrees to make good use of it. The feature I most excited about is downloading replays over Xbox Live. I enjoyed watching he Ikaruga Appreciate DVD and I like watching power plays of shmups. I can’t wait to see what kinds of awesome strategies and score attacks people are going to upload when Ikaruga comes out this winter.

There is also a two player, online co-op mode too. It sounds like a good idea on paper, but I wonder how that is going to shape up when lag comes into play. Bullet hell, polarity switches and network slowdown don’t mix.