REVIEW / Akka Arrh (PS5)

At one stage Atari arcade cabinets formed the backbone of gaming. These were games created with crushing difficult and sometimes obscure mechanics but always managed to find ways to delight the player. They also were very good at inciting the feeling of “just one more run” when you saw your name hit the leaderboard. Akka Arrh, the title we’ll be looking at today, is a renewal of a game that never was. This is a game based on a classic version that was never released, and developer Jeff Minter and Llamasoft were determined to make sure it saw the light of day. The question remains, was it worth it?

On the surface, Akka Arrh exudes the simplicity of the arcade era and does it with flair. It makes great use of subtle effects that continue to bombard the screen with delightful colors. It fulfills the aesthetic while upgrading it with wild screen-wide effects and tons of layered animation and particles and this is something that definitely creates a spectacle. As with everything there is a downside to this, though, and the beautiful graphics are the reason as to just how overwhelming it can be to play. Enemies will sneak up on you while you are distracted. Powerups and bonuses will fly across the screen and a dozen different things will call for your attention at once creating a cacophony of chaos. Akka Arrh fumbles a bit in execution at times, but the longer you play, the more you find a rhythm.

When watching gameplay, it is easy to be enchanted by the visuals, but when you first begin, you may feel misled. The opening sections of Akka Arrh feel very slow and mildly underwhelming. An aspect that is touted highly in-game is that the main enemies explode on death, which can lead to other explosions, which can mean sometimes all you need to do is make one well-placed shot. This aspect sounded incredibly alluring to me, but in practice, the pacing of the enemies always felt either very fast or very slow. There were many cases where I placed my shot too well, and so I just sat and watched for over twenty seconds as everything was taken care of for me. I was not playing the game, the game’s mechanics played it for me and these moments of sitting and watching everything explode felt hollow, simply because I was not doing anything. It quickly became boring in these opening stages and I was close to uninstalling.

Just as I was close to never playing it again, I gave Akka Arrh one more chance to be sure I was doing the right thing. I started on level eight and really tried to focus. This time around, I started learning to pick out the best targets. I began getting power-ups and wild effects, and I also started getting better at conserving my shots. It was this run where something clicked and I started having fun. As I fell into step with the level’s choreography I noticed a satisfying escalation of intensity, with a soundtrack that became more engrossing. As a big fan of Tetris Effect, I noticed that Akka Arrh was using audio to its advantage in similar ways, and the game slowly re-earned my trust.

I continued my way through the stages filled with more wild abstractions of enemies. I also noticed that each level featured a different sequence, but the dance felt the same. At least the dance was starting to feel fun.

Akka Arrh is a game pulled out of a different time. A time when ambiguity was rampant and every round felt like you were two seconds away from losing a quarter. Akka Arrh manages to resurrect that energy, for better or worse, and in a moderately pleasing fashion. If you ever found yourself in front of a single arcade cabinet and determined to make it through to the end, this might just be the perfect game for you.