Guwange

At least, it will until you inevitably have to use up one of your infinite continues, at which point your score resets to zero. You have three lives per continue, though thankfully a single bullet won't take one of them away, instead gradually chipping away at your life meter. Despite the fact that the action rarely pauses for breath, you're never left in any doubt as to when you've been hit, each blow heralded by the sound of two swords clashing. A sound which occurs with increasing – and depressing – regularity by the time you hit Stages 5 and 6.

If Guwange is a fearsomely tough game, its difficulty curve is, for the most part, well-moderated. The first stage will lull many into a false sense of security, and clearing it within a single credit or even life on your first go is far from impossible. By Stage 4, you're contending with enemies above and below and repositioning your shikigami more frequently. But by that stage you're more confident with the nuances of the firing system and everything feels more natural. The final multi-form boss represents a pretty hefty spike, certain to destroy many a single-credit run and reduce even the most dexterous and patient of gamers to bitter tears – but advocates of this particular genre will be more than familiar with such tribulations.

Those masochists will no doubt relish the opportunity to make the game even harder, with Blue mode offering an even steeper challenge. A larger percentage of players will likely prefer the new Xbox 360 mode, which allows you to control the shikigami independently with the right analogue stick. This makes the game quite significantly easier, as the ludicrous scores at the top of that particular leaderboard demonstrate.

Though the graphics haven't been improved, there's plenty of creativity in the enemy design, not least in the boss battles. A cat/spider hybrid is disturbing enough, but it's easily topped by the crawling monster with the baby-doll head, which will likely be haunting my dreams for the next few nights. The now-mandatory 'smoothing' option smears the rough edges, removing some of the character from the sprites in the process, while the TATE display takes up barely a third of the screen, though there are options to change the wallpaper to a number of attractive 2D art designs, and those with the facility to turn their telly on its side can zoom and rotate the display to fit.

There are leaderboards for every mode, a training option (which curiously doesn't seem to offer any kind of assistance whatsoever), various transparency and RGB settings to tweak, and a set of Achievements so tough that it'll take even seasoned shooter fans some time to get the full 200 points.

Despite the wealth of options and the addition of infinite continues – which will no doubt lead some to complain that it can be completed in 20 minutes – Guwange makes few concessions to a modern audience, and as such, Cave has almost certainly restricted its game to a niche crowd. But that's an observation, not a criticism – and as the Xbox 360 suddenly receives an army of new, limb-flailing converts, it's heartening that the fans of one of gaming's most hardcore genres have something to give their thumbs an equally exhausting workout.