Nano Breaker
Konami's hack-and-slasher tries hard, but can't overcome some basic flaws.
Published: February 22, 2005
There's a special part of me the dies inside every time I see a game that has fantastic potential and the underpinnings of an amazing game, only to see it completely ruined by some basic gameplay problems. Nano Breaker is just such a game, and it riles me to no end to see something that could have really livened up the genre reduced to a frustrating, overly-difficult mess.
Things start off promisingly enough: somewhere in the year 20somethingsomething, nanomachines have infiltrated every aspect of human life on an island specifically set up for nanomachine research. With the world's greatest scientific minds working unimpeded on nanotechnology research, massive gains are made in just a few years, but when the microscopic machines, millions of them swimming through the blood of every island inhabitant, suddenly go haywire, transforming all who carry them into hideous monsters, the military taps Jake, a flaxen-maned cyborg prettyboy, and tosses him onto the island, arming him only with a shape-shifting plasma sword (it slices baddies at the molecular level, apparently the only way to kill the nanobeasts).
It's once Jake touches down and the game actually begins that things get a little rocky. Essentially a combat-heavy hack and slash affair, Nano Breaker is really quite difficult right from the start, and just gets harder as the game goes on. This was probably done to make up for the fact that the game is rather short in the grand scheme (of course, with all the times you'll die, it won't seem like it), but multiple endings and a genuinely interesting storyline can be enough to hold interest, but only for the most committed.
A camera that does a wonderful job of showing you exactly what you don't want to look at (floor, a wall, etc.) makes combat difficult, and given that it's the game's bread and butter, it can make the massive stretches in between save points so ridiculously difficult (that's right kiddies, no friendly checkpoints here), that after the 10th or so time jumping over the scorching hot floor, battling through the room of repeatedly spawning enemies on a conveyor belt moving towards a roller that you couldn't spot if your life depended on it thanks to that awesome camera showing you a whole lot of nothing, and then a simplistic but tedious boss fight before you finally encounter multiple jumping puzzles that forces you to not only work around the puzzle, but the horrid sense of depth thanks to, you guessed it, the camera.
And the worst part is, the game could have been fantastic. The storyline, when revealed through some detailed and impressive CG work, has enough visual punch that you want to see the next part (though the content is utterly vapid, it's still fun to watch), but it's a constant struggle against a camera and a difficulty level that never really ebbs long enough to let you enjoy the combat system, which allows you to upgrade your combo strings with varying levels of combo chips.
The chips, when dropped into the proper slot along a branching combo tree, all for longer, more powerful strings of moves. Only certain level chips will fit in the appropriate slot, and each attack that starts the combo (triangle for vertical overhead slashes, square for horizontal sweeps and the R1-enabled shifted variants that are slightly more powerful) has its own branching tree. Of course, you probably won't notice all the depth in place since you'll be using the same effective combo over and over again to cut down the incessantly spawning bad guys in the same look-alike rooms.
Booster elements can be picked up that allow you to reflect lasers or capture-counter enemies easier (normally, tapping the circle button to lock onto and reel in an enemy can mean they can be killed in a single perfectly-timed hit, one booster, for instance, makes the reaction time much wider, allowing for huge one-hit kill runs while boosted), among other things. The boosters upgrade themselves after you use them enough times, allowing for bigger, more powerful variants.
Attacking enemies and spilling their blo--er... oil, works much like experience in a role playing game; as more and more gallons are spilled, Jake's health and booster meters slowly increase their max, effectively leveling him up. These almost RPG-esque elements lend a fantastic amount of depth to the combat when coupled with the combo chips, but with the horrid camera and ridiculously long stretches between save points, it feels more like Konami was trying to come up with an answer to Ninja Gaiden than making a game that seats itself in a more appropriate difficulty level.
Nano Breaker uses the Castlevania: Lament of Innocence engine, and it shows. The framerate is solid, the animations fluid, the texture detail decent, but the color palette leaves plenty to be desired. I've seen so many shades of brown in the past 10 hours that every other game I've played since seems unnaturally bright and vibrant. This game quite literally can make your eyes tired of seeing the same color. The only real breaks in this seem to happen during the pre-rendered cutscenes, which throw a smattering of colored lighting across things from time to time.
The audio doesn't fare much better, offering some basic voice work during the cutscenes that grates more than entertains with bland, clichéd dialogue and characters you'd rather off than identify with, and then little else besides cookie-cutter techno cheese broken up with some random ambient bits and the same sword swipe effects ad nauseum.
Simply put this is a bad game. Scratch that, it's horrible. To think that some of the talent working on the Castlevania series (including producer Koji Igarashi) actually had a hand in this isn't just scary, it's successfully put into question how well the next Castlevania may turn out. Regardless, this is not a game that needs any further exploration, and should be avoided at all costs.
Things start off promisingly enough: somewhere in the year 20somethingsomething, nanomachines have infiltrated every aspect of human life on an island specifically set up for nanomachine research. With the world's greatest scientific minds working unimpeded on nanotechnology research, massive gains are made in just a few years, but when the microscopic machines, millions of them swimming through the blood of every island inhabitant, suddenly go haywire, transforming all who carry them into hideous monsters, the military taps Jake, a flaxen-maned cyborg prettyboy, and tosses him onto the island, arming him only with a shape-shifting plasma sword (it slices baddies at the molecular level, apparently the only way to kill the nanobeasts).
It's once Jake touches down and the game actually begins that things get a little rocky. Essentially a combat-heavy hack and slash affair, Nano Breaker is really quite difficult right from the start, and just gets harder as the game goes on. This was probably done to make up for the fact that the game is rather short in the grand scheme (of course, with all the times you'll die, it won't seem like it), but multiple endings and a genuinely interesting storyline can be enough to hold interest, but only for the most committed.
A camera that does a wonderful job of showing you exactly what you don't want to look at (floor, a wall, etc.) makes combat difficult, and given that it's the game's bread and butter, it can make the massive stretches in between save points so ridiculously difficult (that's right kiddies, no friendly checkpoints here), that after the 10th or so time jumping over the scorching hot floor, battling through the room of repeatedly spawning enemies on a conveyor belt moving towards a roller that you couldn't spot if your life depended on it thanks to that awesome camera showing you a whole lot of nothing, and then a simplistic but tedious boss fight before you finally encounter multiple jumping puzzles that forces you to not only work around the puzzle, but the horrid sense of depth thanks to, you guessed it, the camera.
And the worst part is, the game could have been fantastic. The storyline, when revealed through some detailed and impressive CG work, has enough visual punch that you want to see the next part (though the content is utterly vapid, it's still fun to watch), but it's a constant struggle against a camera and a difficulty level that never really ebbs long enough to let you enjoy the combat system, which allows you to upgrade your combo strings with varying levels of combo chips.
The chips, when dropped into the proper slot along a branching combo tree, all for longer, more powerful strings of moves. Only certain level chips will fit in the appropriate slot, and each attack that starts the combo (triangle for vertical overhead slashes, square for horizontal sweeps and the R1-enabled shifted variants that are slightly more powerful) has its own branching tree. Of course, you probably won't notice all the depth in place since you'll be using the same effective combo over and over again to cut down the incessantly spawning bad guys in the same look-alike rooms.
Booster elements can be picked up that allow you to reflect lasers or capture-counter enemies easier (normally, tapping the circle button to lock onto and reel in an enemy can mean they can be killed in a single perfectly-timed hit, one booster, for instance, makes the reaction time much wider, allowing for huge one-hit kill runs while boosted), among other things. The boosters upgrade themselves after you use them enough times, allowing for bigger, more powerful variants.
Attacking enemies and spilling their blo--er... oil, works much like experience in a role playing game; as more and more gallons are spilled, Jake's health and booster meters slowly increase their max, effectively leveling him up. These almost RPG-esque elements lend a fantastic amount of depth to the combat when coupled with the combo chips, but with the horrid camera and ridiculously long stretches between save points, it feels more like Konami was trying to come up with an answer to Ninja Gaiden than making a game that seats itself in a more appropriate difficulty level.
Nano Breaker uses the Castlevania: Lament of Innocence engine, and it shows. The framerate is solid, the animations fluid, the texture detail decent, but the color palette leaves plenty to be desired. I've seen so many shades of brown in the past 10 hours that every other game I've played since seems unnaturally bright and vibrant. This game quite literally can make your eyes tired of seeing the same color. The only real breaks in this seem to happen during the pre-rendered cutscenes, which throw a smattering of colored lighting across things from time to time.
The audio doesn't fare much better, offering some basic voice work during the cutscenes that grates more than entertains with bland, clichéd dialogue and characters you'd rather off than identify with, and then little else besides cookie-cutter techno cheese broken up with some random ambient bits and the same sword swipe effects ad nauseum.
Simply put this is a bad game. Scratch that, it's horrible. To think that some of the talent working on the Castlevania series (including producer Koji Igarashi) actually had a hand in this isn't just scary, it's successfully put into question how well the next Castlevania may turn out. Regardless, this is not a game that needs any further exploration, and should be avoided at all costs.
