Takotan (Playstation 4)

Horizontal
Checkpoints OFF/ON
2 Difficulty levels
8 Stages
Ship speed fixed
- - - - - - -
Developed by Joseph Calabro
Published by Red Art Games in 2021

Dear fellow shmuppers, especially those who are fond of everything Parodius or Gradius, beware. This game is a trap. Down to the game's name, on the outside everything about it screams Takosuke the Octopus, a major character in the long-running comedic franchise created by Konami. I actually wonder how the devs could actually pull off a stunt like this, but considering the Konami of today couldn't care less about its IPs it's no wonder such aberrations are allowed to exist. Suffice it to say that apart from the visual similarities there is absolutely nothing here that serves as a throwback to Parodius or poor Takosuke.

Takotan hit the gaming scene in several platforms at around the same time, and considering it was even released for the long dead PS Vita my guess is that it was actually developed from the ground up for this particular system. All other versions then probably followed. Also released as Octonaut in some other platforms, it's a simplistic widescreen cute'em up where the main character is a golden octopus on a mission to save planet Earth from an alien invasion. The opening animation hints at the fact that Takotan/Octonaut is actually a kaiju, much like similar humongous creatures such as Godzilla or Mothra.

Given its relatively friendly visuals, it's astonishing how little fun you can have with this game. You shoot with button × and activate the last collected weapon with button □, while also having the ability to dodge by quickly retreating to the background with button ○. A new stage always starts with 1.000 points of health/shield, allowing players to take lots — and I mean lots — of damage before dying. The game practically doesn't want you to die, but if by any chance you happen to bite the dust Takotan will be respawned at the start of the level or the start of the boss fight.

Release trailer for Takotan on the Playstation 4
(courtesy of YouTube user and publisher RED ART GAMES)

On top of granting a huge amount of shield energy, Takotan also gives you health refills every now and then in between weapon items. Unfortunately, of all 12 weapons available only the 3-way shot (scatter) is actually useful. All other weapons are either stupidly cumbersome or just underpowered to the point you can't even destroy a single turret, and with no power-ups in sight it's just foolish to relinquish 3-way. Not even the "invincible" item is worth a damn since it prohibits you from shooting while denying any damaging power whatsoever. Finally, as if dying wasn't such a hard thing to do, you can also run into extra lives to prolong the agony.

But hey! Do you feel the need to lose even less health? Just turn Assist to ON at the start screen and off you go!

Anyway, the remainder of the items that appear from destroyed waves and enemies are crystals, which as they get hit increase in value from 100 to 500 while shifting colors from green to yellow, red, pink, pinkier and then back to green. Naturally, crystals are one of the main sources of extra points. The other scoring device consists of destroying enemies in succession to make the score multiplier increase up to a maximum of ×10. The problem with this mechanic is that most of the time it's impossible to sustain the maximum multiplier simply because the game has too many empty sections. Some stages are pretty much just obstacle fields devised to make use of the background dodging maneuver.

In a nutshell, the gameplay in Takotan is a catastrophe of wrong choices all over. It severely lacks any sense of balance in weapons, stage design or scoring. What was supposed to be simple and easygoing is just incredibly boring, with zero potential for a minimum sense of drive or excitement. When will devs realize that cute design and decently drawn sprites for bosses aren't enough to make a game? Let alone one that blatantly steals and dillutes ideas without any sort of expansion whatsoever? Sorry, but the background dodging thing doesn't cut it.

The boss from stage 5 (The Outpost)

The irregular duration of levels is also a noteworthy aspect of why the game seems a real chore to play. The 4th stage, titled "the stars", seems to take forever to complete, and depending on which weapon you have boss fights might drag even more than they normally do. On the other side of the torture spectrum, a special mode called Panic gives you only a 1-hit shield and instant death afterwards, in a harder setting of sorts that's nigh impossible due to the idiotic way weapons are implemented. Finally, in Custom mode you can adjust everything you want about the gameplay, such as fixing weapons, eliminating weapon choices, selecting stages, etc.

In trying to get more information to share with you fine readers I ended up beating the game one more time, as you can see from the leaderboard table below. If you want to do the same, i.e. have your name immortalized in this mighty colorful screen, be warned you'll have to endure the game to the end since it's impossible to input your initials unless you do so. Oh yes, just like in any other hobby suffering is sometimes inescapable. The good news is that life goes on and there are lots of games around the corner waiting to provide much more fun than things of this sorry caliber.