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Nex Machina Review

  • Developer: Housemarque

  • Publishers: Housemarque

  • Genres: Shooter, Indie, Arcade

  • Platforms: PS4, PC

  • Release date: 

    • June 20th, 2017

  • Playtime: Around 7 hours

  • Reviewed on PS4

Nex Machina is another great entry by Housemarque. Maybe you've heard about this studio before because of their excellent PS4 exclusive Resogun, a game that somehow manages to have absurd amounts of particles on the screen! Luckily, Nex Machina is more of the same, just with a different perspective.

Let me explain what I meant by "different perspective": while Resogun's perspective is more of a side-scroller, here we have a top-down view of the gameplay. The controls are still those of a twin-stick shooter, with access to some special weapons. These range from simple area of effect bombs which can kill multiple enemies at once to missiles which deal massive damage. The good part here is that these special weapons (power-ups) are unlimited, I mean, once you pick them after destroying specific items you can keep using those power-ups without worrying about how many you have left. Though, for balance's sake, there's a short cooldown between uses. Beyond these, for controls, you also have a dash ability which is extremely helpful to avoid enemy attacks as well to cover ground quickly.

Now that you know how you can control your character, let me tell you what exactly you'll be doing in the game. Instead of fighting consecutive waves of enemies in the same area throughout the entire level as in Resogun, here you'll be fighting your way through zones in each level. The number of zones per level varies but all levels have at least 15 zones, so don't think these are short. In each zone your objective is to fend off against 2-3 waves of enemies while looking for secrets such as access to secret zones or trying to pick up power-ups before moving to the next zone. Oh, and remember the humans (green small characters) from Resogun? Each zone has a couple of humans for you to rescue before they are killed by enemies, and some of these humans are hidden behind the destructible environments or require you to defeat the enemies of that zone in a certain order/ with specific timing. At the end of each level, you can expect a boss fight. These are well thought and designed, with each boss having multiple phases. This means slightly different attack patterns throughout the encounters, which in turn create interesting and challenging encounters. So, throughout the entire levels you need to stay alert for secrets in each zone, while at the same time trying to stay alive and kill your enemies. These circumstances create a frenetic pace for the game that fills you with adrenaline.

Below you can watch some gameplay I've recorded so you can get a taste of the game in action:

Now to talk about the different modes available. Unfortunately, there's not much variety here. There's the standard Arcade mode, which takes you through all the levels in the game, back to back, albeit with a caveat: depending on the difficulty setting you've chosen, some of the later levels will be won’t be used (each difficulty setting will add one more level to the arcade mode, starting with only 5 levels available in the easiest setting, making it 8 levels total with 4 different difficulty settings available). There's also an Online Arena mode where you're tasked with completing a specific level under a certain restriction to rack up points; a Single World where you can play one specific level of your choice and, lastly, a Local Co-Op which I haven't had the chance to try.

About the game presentation, the game looks stunning! Amidst all the chaos shown on your screen, thanks to a smart use of color, you can distinguish between what you have to dodge, what you have to collect/pick up, what you have to kill and where your character is. And, of course, the scenarios themselves look beautiful. Regarding the enemies, you can notice a pattern of sorts between "classes" of enemies but their appearance and attacks are different enough between levels to keep the challenge fresh.

 

For the sound, that's mind blowing. Beyond keeping you engaged throughout the gameplay, the sound effects are top-notch. The audio feedback is perfect, so you can very easily distinguish what sort of events are going on, either when you kill an enemy, when you find an hidden human or when you unlock a secret zone. To put it simply, everything has a specific sound-effect and all these are easily distinguishable so you can tell what's going on audibly without wasting time looking around the screen to see what happened.

Before my final thoughts, I'd like to point out two cool features in the game: first is the ability to watch a video recording of other's players on the leaderboards, both from PC and PS4 players; and second, the fact that you can personalize your character's appearance and bullets color using currency you earn from completing challenges in the Online Arena mode. This is a small feature but still a nice touch to add more personalization to your gameplay.

While Nex Machina falls short in the quantity side of things, it more than compensates with the gameplay. Its addicting and satisfying bullet-hell gameplay keeps you coming back to improve your Arcade runs so you rack up more points to beat your previous high-score. So, even if the diversity of game modes is limited, I still feel this game is absolutely worth it due to its excellent gameplay and presentation. Beyond this, I believe Nex Machina is a game that players will keep coming back to over time.

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