Mass Effect 3. Knowing the ending's gonna suck is really taking away from the emotional impact of several scenes.
Hah, I've got Alan Wake on my gaming slate too. I'll be working on that once I'm done with ME3.
And I've never seen Otomedius Excellent over here, but when I do, Kokoro'll be the only reason I get it.
She's a difficult character to play as, though, in a Gradius-like Shmup, for a few reasons:
1. She only gets one Option: the Trigon. You can control where it shoots by moving Kokoro. Moving forward or down makes it rotate around you counter clockwise and moving back or up makes it rotate clockwise... but that means you have to move to aim, in a game with bullet hell coming at you, not being able to aim where you'd like to shoot increases difficulty. You can power up the Trigon but it's near the back of the Weapon LineUp, so you're better off grabbing the whip and the force field before attempting to power it up. Too bad though, as the Trigon is Kokoro's best offense. Lv1 Trigon just shoots bullets. Lv2 Trigon shoots little holy-looking stars, and Lv3 Trigon shoots Twin Lasers in both the direction it faces and its opposite direction.
2. She gets a Beam Whip style magenta-colored Laser that you can continuously fire, but it's really weak so it's no good against many bosses. It's better for the stages.
3. You get to choose between the Boomerang Cross as a LASER, or an Axe as a Double. The Cross leaves you wide open though, as you can only shoot one at a time unless you shoot it off screen. If you don't, you have to wait for it to return and leave the screen before shooting another one. Having the Axe is way better, as it arcs up in a parabola similar to the Castlevania version, plus it's super-strong and goes through enemies... but you cannot have the Whip and the Axe, so you have to wait for the Axe to leave the screen before you shoot another one (like the Cross). Unless you have a powered-up Trigon Option, you've got to pray to not get attacked by anything while reloading.
Her bonus is that you get the Trigon's "Lightning Sword" as a special move, which is strong and goes through enemies, like a disruptor.
The "Lightning Sword" comes from the old arcade Konami title "Lightning Fighters" ("Trigon"in Japan). In that game, it was called the "Particle Beam".