A spicy space dodge’em up, Shuttlecock-H is the latest release by EastAsiaSoft to feature anime babes. Play well and be rewarded with naughty drawings of three stereotypical ladies.
Instead of shooting your way through throngs of enemies like any vertical or horizontal shooter, the player is instead tasked with dodging all incoming fire while needing to collect randomly spawning heart icons. Only using the analog stick to move and one button to dash, gameplay is much more difficult than you might expect.
With no ability to attack, the player needs to rely on quick reaction times to survive each level. It is one thing just trying to stay alive by avoiding all incoming fire, but the difficulty exponentially increases trying to collect moving heart icons that randomly appear on screen. Each stage has a possible 30 hearts to collect and you’ll need to snag them all if you want to see the most exposed drawings of the anime girls.
The odds are unfairly stacked against the player. Although the enemy attack patterns remain mostly consistent, the spawning of the heart icons are not. This means the player might have impossible odds of snagging hearts as they might spawn on or near bullet attack patterns. Adding another layer of difficulty, there might be multiple heart icons on screen at one time. If you take damage while these hearts are displayed, they all disappear upon taking a single hit. This means you’ll need to replay the entire stage if you want another chance at collecting them all. Hearts also disappear quickly so you’ll need to act fast and take constant risks if you want to grab all 30.
The only tool the player has is the boost option which also acts as a magnet. When activated, the player can temporarily increase speed while the heart icons are drawn toward the player. However, this boost meter drains very quickly and takes long time to auto rejuvenate. Play control is also a little touchy so snagging each of those precious heart icons without taking damage often requires perfection.
The single screened gameplay also has its challenges. It is great being able to see all the incoming fire at a glance, but the heaving anime lady on the side of the screen is distracting when trying to concentrate on the difficult gameplay. Further, the tiny sprites can be difficult to distinguish since the heart icons look almost identical to the harmful enemy bullets. Also, the Japanese exclamations that the anime girls shout is the same when you earn a combo as well as take damage so the audio cues can also be confusing.
Let’s be honest. Switch players are probably only going to download this game for the lewd anime babe drawings. Fans should know, however, that getting to the good stuff requires a high amount of skill along with trial-and-error patience. At least there is some variety in the stage design even though each level is composed of the same elements. Sometimes the player gets restricted to a moving boxing and bullets bounce around like pinballs, or laser beams cover vertical and horizontal swipes. Either way, everything is designed to kill you and kill you they will. Also, one of the songs in the soundtrack is also a blatant rip-off of Word-Up by Cameo, later covered by Korn.
There are no extra features like multiplayer, leaderboards, or options to toggle in the main menu so the goal of seeing the anime females wearing nothing is the reward. Unfortunately, fighting against the unfair, frustrating difficulty doesn’t yield a worthwhile payoff unless you are a diehard lewd anime lover.
SCORE: 5/10
Also Play: Plunderer’s Adventure
Don’t Forget About: the Pretty Girls games
Also Try: Swordship
By: Zachary Gasiorowski, Editor in Chief myGamer.com
Twitter: @ZackGaz
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