POSTED 29/10/14


NANO ASSAULT NEO-X

Shin'en Multimedia

Imagine if the Pikmin turned feral.

That was our first thought as we laid spacecraft upon a gobsmackingly wondrous, hyper-res, verdant, cactus-like world and went totally Floranator and Faunalizer on it. Then we remembered the blurb we’d read. Uh, we’re supposed to be zapping microscopic viral gremmies.

You mean this disgusting shit’s inside us all?! Yuk!

All the more reason to shoot it, in a classic arcade-influenced spacey twin-stick shmup with a twist. Actually, lots of twists, for each 3D cell thingy you adhere to spins in whichever direction you happen to drive hunting diseased fodder to eradciate and sweet, sweet power-ups. It’s a bit like Super Mario Galaxy’s planetoid thingummies, but with lots more shooting. LOTS more shooting.

We have to interrupt ourselves here and talk more about looks – as vacuous as that may sound. It’s rare that game visuals make us pause to go “Wow!” nowadays. However, with its stunningly rendered 1080p, 60 frames-per-second imagery the somewhat awkwardly-titled Nano Assault Neo-X really does inspire wows. Most importantly, all the pretty things have a grippingly addictive arcade blast attached to ensure the beauty’s beyond skin deep. Erm, even if the gremmies under the skin are as fugly as uck.

Anyway, where were we? Oh yeah. Collect bonus letters and at level’s completion you’ll be hurled into a tunnel to collect, well, bonus stuff. Then spend gathered credits pimping your cure-mobile (trust us, max out on satellites) in readiness for the next ickiness foray.

With four ‘clusters’, each with three stages and a boss battle, NANX is hardly a bulging pustule of content, but when factoring in difficulty, score-beating replay value, co-op mode and arcade challenges for a relatively microscopic price, any shmup fan would have to be sick in the head – or guts - to miss out on this truly fantastic voyage...

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