Did you ever get a game and deduce that it was really terrible, and then later realize…oops…you were playing it wrong? Well, I'm here to tell you that Bangai-O Spirits is really terrible…oh, wait, I was playing it wrong.

Read the review after the jump.

Bangai-O Spirits is really terrible. This potentially clever combat puzzle game from Treasure (yay, a new Treasure game!) is a Nintendo DS update of an old Dreamcast title in which a tiny anime robot equips different weapons to shoot his way through insanely busy swarms of missiles with his own insanely busy swarms of missiles. It's like bees fighting each other. Or multiplayer Missile Command played by the assassins from Wanted who can curve bullets to hit other bullets. But not to worry, the tricky bits are handled automatically. You just hope you've picked the right weapons (90% of the battle), hold down the fire button, and feel awesome. Fly around while you're doing it for maximum effect. And don't bother whipping out your stylus. You won't need it. This is strictly old-school, without any fancy pants touchscreening.

The tricky part is figuring out exactly how the weapons work (for a game this established, couldn't we get a better manual?). It takes a long slog through a series of tutorials and no small amount of follow-up practice to acquaint yourself with your robot's arsenal. At which point you're turned loose to solve these combat puzzles in whatever order you like. Many of the hundred or so levels are over within five seconds. A few of them are longer challenges. Some are marathons. You can make your own levels. And there's some kind of fancy voodoo that lets you install new levels by playing sounds into the DS' mic.

(If you're curious how the sound download works, be sure to check out this inadvertently hawt promotional video, featuring production values befitting a 70s porno movie and a, uh, strangely erotic and suggestive coupling between two women at about the 1:00 mark. Then some dude shows up. But don't worry, the whole thing finishes off with a dude-less threesome.)

...where was I?

Oh, right. Bangai-O Spirits is really terrible. And the last thing I needed was new content, because I couldn't make any headway with the levels that already come with it. The problem? Awful controls. I would try a level, fail, and then keep replaying it, only to repeatedly fail, over and over and over again. And pretty much instantly. Since many of the levels are over in just a few seconds, I seemed to be getting stuck in some sort of "stun lock" where I couldn't react fast enough to the sudden onslaught of attacks. I'd try to dodge and my sluggish little robot wouldn't get out of the way. How is a mortal man supposed to make any progress in this thing?

But then I noticed that the robot wasn't responding even when he wasn't getting hit. What's more, he was doing things when I wasn't even pressing buttons! Was there some kind of buffer in which I was accidentally queuing up commands in the few seconds before the level actually started? I made a point not to touch a single button and I was still getting weird results. Was my copy of Bangai-O Spirits glitched? I took the little cart out of my DS, blew on it, and reinserted it. Just like the days of yore, it seemed to work! For a little while.

But when I'd try to replay a failed level, the controls would get unresponsive and glitchy. Could this be a bad copy of the game? I was on the verge of looking for my receipt when I finally realized the real problem: I, Tom Chick, am an utter retard.

When you fail a level, you're presented with a dialogue that offers you the options "next" or "replay". "Next" takes you out to the level selection screen, where you can go to a different level, or re-select your weapons and start the same level again. But I didn't want to do that. I wanted to immediately replay the level I'd just failed. So I was pressing "replay".

What I finally figured out is that "replay" is used as a noun, not a verb. It was showing me a replay. It was replaying – non-interactively, natch – exactly what I had just done. And there I was mashing buttons and wondering why the game wouldn't go, like a kid without a quarter on a ride in front of the supermarket.

I'm sorry I ever doubted you, Bangai-O Spirits, and especially you, Treasure. Because now that I've come out on the other side of my noun/verb ambiguity –stupid words, confusing me – I'm digging this little game. The weapon options are interesting and varied, and it's really gratifying to see the screen fill up with so much action, frame rate be damned. I like the way it's divided into discrete and usually brief challenges, each with cute names. And figuring out the solution on a level is so satisfying, particularly when it starts out as a real head-scratcher. You wonder how you're supposed to make any progress on this one, and you try a few times, only to chip away at the solution as you see how the different weapons interact with the different parts of the world. And then, pow!, the solution happens in a spectacular stuttering fireworks show of explosions and missile trails. All this makes Bangai-O Spirits a perfect potato chip videogame: just one more and then just one more again and one more again. Stuck? Move on to another level! And then one more again.

Just don't forget to press "next" instead of "replay".