Eric Bratcher reports:
''Castle of Shikigami is one of those games that we really wish we saw more of these days. It's a vertical "bullet hell" 2D shooter, which basically means there are more pink death blobs in the in-game sky than there are paparazzi hanging out at Britney Spears' neighborhood McDonald's. It's challenging, it's colorful, the controls are blessedly simple (no motion-waggling required), its dialogue is wonderfully campy and wacky.
It's deeper than you first imagine, with ten playable characters - not ships, characters, because these folks don't need machines; they just fly around on their own spitting fireballs and laser beams. Each has different shot patterns and special attacks, and you choose two at a time, swapping between them at will. Also, two players can play cooperatively, a cool feature every shooter should have. If this were a downloadable title on WiiWare, Xbox Live Arcade, or PlayStation Network, it's a safe bet that we'd be telling you to go fire up your console and start it downloading right now.''
