Nex Machina

[spatular]

So this is a twin stick shooter by the resogun people, there are 6 worlds/levels with maybe 15 or so stages each, and a boss stage. there a humans to save, and combo, by collecting/saving the next one before a countdown expires  -for better score. there's loads of hidden humans/levels/scoring things to find - too many for me - but my memory is crap so i never remember where all that stuff is. you can roll out of the way/through stuff, and special weapons to choose from, my favorite is the rocket launcher, but it seems like the smart bomb is supposed to be the best (they have a small delay before you can use them again), they are all pretty good apart from the sword. there are powerups too, most important is the shield, so you can take a hit, then you need to get more points to gain another powerup/shield - if you've already got all the other powerups then the next one you get will be shield - otherwise they're random i think. you get a powerup each time this bar fills in - i guess by scoring/killing stuff.

 

it's brilliant, but annoying at the same time. for me it's much better than some of their other twin stick games that have upgrading/loot/ammo/reloading - none of that stupid stuff here, this is more a proper arcade game. the annoying stuff comes from lack of visibility, of all sorts of stuff - where is the edge of the playing area? - can't see stuff because of explosions - hit boxes seems quite big, or there's a delay from pressing roll/dodge to becoming invincible. basically that stuff leads to deaths where it doesn't seem fair which leads to annoyance, also when you die after a respawn you get back into the action really quick and can die again instantly before you've worked out where you are, so sometimes one annoying death can turn into 4 and yeah annoying. but it's also great fun and i keep going back to it to get a better score so it's obviously doing something right. also when you continue you lose all powerups, so depending on what stage you're on it can be extremely hard to make any progress - other shmups do this a lot better, you've already lost your score so what does it matter - have a max-power power up. oh they are possibly working on a mode with better visibility.

 

there's a few different modes - arcade mode where you play all the levels in order - with different difficulty modes. there's some challenges on a smaller set of stages where enemies are faster etc. with gold/silver/bronze medals. and there's a mode where you can do one world at a time. i've sort of 1cc'd the middle difficulty arcade mode (see spoiler) and am trying to do the difficulty level up, but the 3rd and 4th bosses take up loads of lives, not got past the 4th boss yet.

 

Spoiler

there is a tlb (true last boss!) that appears after you finish all 6 levels on the medium difficulty (the lower difficulty ends after 5 levels), i can't beat it so far - but the game gave me the 1cc trophy.

 

scoring i'm not too sure about, seems to be just, collect everything, get all secret stages and combo all humans - which is more than i can cope with at the moment. to combo the humans i think you need to know some stages where stuff spawns so you can kill it quick enough so your combo doesn't run out before the stage ends, but some stages it doesn't seem as tight on timing.

 

anyone else playing this?

[spatular]

woooo! just unlocked master mode, which has suicide bullets so plays really differently, barely made it past the first level.

[Maf]

Just fired this up and played it through on Experienced difficulty. I’ve really loved most of this studios output but I think this is definitely the best game they made. It’s the most visually intense, got a lot of going on with secrets and bonus objectives, it’s still simple in how you play but I think there’s real strategy required for some of these bosses and zones as opposed to a Super Stardust or Resogun which definitely has tactics, but they’re all very reflexive. There were areas of this game where it’s more than just survival, there’s actual routing involved and working out the efficiency on how to save humans, nab power ups, take down the deadlier bad guys and most important: Not die.

 

The game is furious right of the bat and I love it. I somehow managed to stay above 75 credits which not bad for a first go, but mostly got my butt kicked by boss number 3 who wasn’t that hard, really, I just couldn’t execute on it. And then there was boss 5 which is no fucking joke.

 

For reference, everything pink will kill you and moves exceedingly fast 

 

Spoiler

 

And the the more I died in rapid succession the more I lost my upgrades so in the end I beat it with the pea shooter and the rocket launcher only. 

 

One thing I don’t like is the special weapon power ups are kind of lame. Top tier has to be the rocket launcher and the laser, power shot and sword being acceptable, but the smart bomb and detonator one are bullshit and I was mad when I accidentally picked them up. 

 

Even though I played through it once I don’t even feel like I scratched the surface. Lots of secrets to find, still has mechanics that I’m not sure how they work exactly, and obviously could do much better with some practice. 

 

Definitely my type of video game game and I liked it a lot. Now to lie down and breath. Woosah.