First, it's important to make something clear right off the bat: I grew up playing these kinds of games in the great bygone arcades of decades past. My love of the video game medium began with the coin-ops of yore, and I can still get a thrill playing them in the accelerated environment games gestate in these days. However, that's at the heart of my problem with SF4KA: it's a little too classic.

See, while this game may seem almost too simple to play, lacking the fancy 3D graphics, frenetic pace, and overarching storyline told through cutscenes that most modern games today feature, therein lie its deceptively difficult mechanics. Where you might be used to fine-tuned movement, propulsion in SketchFighter is extremely loose. Pressing the thrust key pushes your ship forward, but releasing it makes your ship drift to a stop rather than immediately halting without inertia. In the frequently-cramped passageways of this game, this can have annoying effect, especially given that even touching a wall takes some life away.

Where you might be accustomed to precise weapon fire, your ship releases a hoseblast of energy that bathes the target. This might seem to be of benefit at first, but its tied to the turning speed of your ship. You'll find yourself often missing the target completely, trying to adjust by pressing the rotation buttons with as light a keypress as possible, only to overcompensate in the opposite direction with frustrating results.

See, the problem is that once upon a time, this sort of gameplay mechanic was so commonplace that you simply learned how to use it and adapted. However, games have slowly evolved over the decades, to the point that we now have created the sort of game controls that best let us navigate the game experience. In other words, as the genre matured, we weeded out bad mechanics and control schemes in favor of things that actually worked better. So, having to return to the old-school method of gameplay feels like a step backward in evolution.

Now, having said all that, there is consolation to be had in the knowledge that once you've finally acclimated yourself to the way SketchFighter wants you to play it, you'll feel a tremendous sense of satisfaction toward your in-game successes. So, what's this game actually all about?