Deathsmiles is a horizontal, side-scrolling, bullet hell SHMUP. It features young girls in Gothic Lolita outfits fighting against monsters to stop Jitterbug from opening a portal. Jitterbug believes it to be a gate to the real world, while the girls think it will lead to something much worse. Thus why they are trying to stop him. Honestly, the story is more fluff than substance.

There are four main characters in the 1.1, Arcade and XBox 360 versions or five in the Mega Black Label (MBL) Version where Sakura is now a playable character. Difficulty ranges from level 1 to 3, or 999 in MBL Each play through features seven to nine stages to play through, each with their own boss. At the end of the game players are also presented with two choices for each character to determine how their story ends.

The controls of this game are very solid, which you expect when you hundreds, if not thousands of bullets coming at you on screen at once. You have separate buttons for firing left or right, which allows you better focus on character movement. You can switch between rapid fire shots by repeatedly tapping on the fire button or holding the button down to let out a stronger attack. When holding down the button, movement speed is also decreased. Familiar(s) help you out in battle with extra firepower and move around opposite of the player's movement.

The typical enemies you face all have various styles of attacking. Easier monsters shoot single bullets, while some of the tougher ones will fire a barrage of bullets at once, or even larger projectiles. The Boss battles are even crazier. Some bosses cubes they attack you with, some pumpkins, and some even release huge apples with faces on them at you. The best boss battle in my opinion has to be Mary the Bull, which is a huge bull head taking up almost half the screen.

Most of the enemies will also drop items, which you accumulate to your item count, which maxes out at 1000. Once your item count reaches a certain limit, you can activate Power mode, which gives you and your familiar(s) more attack power until the counter runs out. This mode also lets you collect extra items that help boost your overall score. Each player starts out with three life points and each life point is awarded with three bombs. Once your life points are depleted, the game sends you to a continue screen, which thankfully is infinite. This helps make the game extremely accessible to players of all skill levels.

This game looks great, with gorgeous backdrops. XBox 360 mode even features redone graphics for the console release. The soundtrack to the game is superb, and really sets a wonderful tone for the game. I found myself listening to the accompanying soundtrack CD even when I wasn't playing the game. As for actual voices, there really isn't a lot of spoken dialog in the game. Full voice was added as DLC to the Japanese market, so maybe we will see that in the future.

This has been one of the most fun games I have played this year. With each play through only taking around thirty minutes, it is a great "pick up and play" game. Some may be wary about spending $50 (MSRP) on this game, but that shouldn't stop anyone from picking this game up. Import prices can cost one up to and over $100. This game not only comes with a faceplate and soundtrack to help justify the game's price, but the infinite replay value in this title alone makes it worth it.

Deathsmiles was developed by Cave Co. and published in North America by Aksys Games on June 29^th for the XBox 360. A copy of the game was purchased and we received no considerations from Aksys Games. I played through the game with an official Hori Deathsmiles IIX arcade stick (pictured below), and I would highly recommend using an arcade stick if you have one. The difference a stick makes is huge.