Format: PSVR2
Genre: Arcade
Developer: Llamasoft
Publisher: Atari

Akka Arrh is all-in on vectors, right down to the fonts: bright green, red, yellow, and blue lines construct the player character, little flowers, flying spaceships, and all manner of other shapes. They blur and fuzz, and explode in showers of particle effects, or break apart, each line flying off like parts from a defective Boeing. But through all the chaos, the game is highly legible. It's cool to see the shapes flying onto or off the screen with the 3D depth perception PSVR2 brings.

The most important aural quality in a hectic arcade game such as this is whether the sound effects communicate to the player what's happening-- and in Akka Arrh, they do! The little "oh ohs!" let you know someone is in the "basement", while other voices indicate that combos have been initiated or broken, that certain enemies have entered the field, that powerups have been collected, and all manner of other game events. All the while there is this dynamic "space age" ambient music playing, which does a good job setting the mood.

The game has two playfields. The player character sits on the main one. The analog stick moves an aiming reticule. The character spins to face the reticule at all times. Tapping the attack button drops a bomb, which causes chain explosions when interacting with enemies, building up bullets. But most action is performed by holding the attack button, expending bullets to keep combo chains going. The player's health is in "the basement", and if an enemy sneaks down to that secondary playfield a tap on the "R2" button will bring the player there to deal with the threat.

Akka Arrh is a really cool concept: it's like a strange melding of the stage-based progression of "Rainbow Islands", mixed with the bullet hell and vector graphics of "Geometry Wars", with the power-up systems of a shmup. It's also a game with vague Freemason symbology and odd theological references: the character is a goat's head? A stage called "As above, so below?" The "Jesus and Mary bonus", and enemies called "Holy Boys"? All of the Jeff Minter goofiness aside, Akka Arrh is a fun game, and its unique "don't need to start over to set new high scores" system is one of a kind.