Genre : Action
Publisher: Konami
Developer: KCET
Release Date: February 15, 2005

How much help should a game give you before it’s fun to play it?

Some games opt for an approach that combines approachability with immediacy, where you’re playing and being entertained within five minutes of putting the game in the machine. Others start off slowly and build to the real gameplay, making you walk before they let you run. There’s merit in both approaches, and both have been done well.

Nanobreaker, Koji Igarashi’s new slash-‘em-up running on the same engine that powered Castlevania: Lament of Innocence, is an example of the second approach. You begin the game with a tiny fraction of your possible arsenal, and over time, will accumulate a vast array of possible offensive techniques. Part of the fun of the game is using those techniques with wild abandon, shapeshifting your malleable weapon through a variety of different forms and literally smearing antagonists across a country mile.

Unfortunately, that fun is hamstrung from the outset by flaws in the engine, level design, and character abilities. If you’re down, I’ll expound.

Nanobreaker takes place in 2021, after two decades of experiments and government funding have resulted in unprecedented advances in the field of nanotechnology. Science fiction rapidly became simple fact. As is the way of such things, however, the central computer at the major nanotech research facility, Nanotechnology Island, has gone insane. Nanites are killing humans for the iron in their blood, and transforming the survivors into homicidal Orgamechs.

To combat this threat, the Americans defrost the cyborg Jake Warren, a war criminal known as the Genocide Hero. To combat the Orgamechs, he’s given an experimental plasma sword, which can destroy its targets on a molecular level. Jake’s dropped onto Nanotechnology Island with two goals: rescue a scientist named Michelle Baker who knows how to shut down the main computer, and destroy any Orgamech he sees.

When Jake dispatches an Orgamech, it spews a slightly ridiculous quantity of blood across the battlefield. For every two thousand gallons you spill, you’ll receive a powerup or upgrade. Squeamish sorts can change the color of the blood in the Options menu; personally, I have it set to Mixed, so I can pretend that Jake and the Orgamechs are having an arts and crafts party.

The central hook of Nanobreaker’s gameplay is its combat system. Jake’s plasma sword can morph into other weapons, such as an axe, spear, or scythe, each with their own special effects. By upgrading Jake’s combat protocols with Combo Chips, you can unlock new combos, customizing Jake’s arsenal as you see fit. You can also find Boosters, pieces of equipment that you can use for special maneuvers, and Jake’s sword has a useful function that drags distant enemies over to him for an instantly-fatal Capture Counter.

When you start the game, you’re chipless and have no Boosters, and things are fairly dull. Jake’s got a couple of combos, but there’s not a lot to hold your interest. If you stick it out, install a few chips, play with the system a bit, and start getting into the game… well, honestly, Nanobreaker still feels like a chore.

In its better moments, you walk through Nanobreaker like a natural disaster, destroying all who stand against you. None of the enemies have the tools they’d need to stop you, and their only real advantage is in numbers. You’re not a conquering hero; you’re an exterminator, sweeping opponents aside as they foolishly rush you down.

At its worst, Nanobreaker is pretty painful to watch, let alone play. I could give you a long list of bad things here – a busted camera, ill-thought-out platforming, a lack of health pickups, constantly getting nickel-and-dimed to death, running into a squad of enemies who can guard-crush and kill you almost at will, bosses with attacks that cannot be blocked or dodged – but there’s one big flaw that overshadows the rest.

Like a lot of 3D brawlers in recent memory, Nanobreaker gives you a lot of moves to play with. In the best games of this type, you’re encouraged and even required to master most or all of the moves on the list, using each according to its type to deal with a constantly evolving situation.

In a mediocre game, such as Nanobreaker, you can go ahead and cross half your moveslist off from the beginning. Jake’s a combo monkey, so all his attacks start from his basic slashes. You’re either always surrounded or you’re up against a single powerful enemy who won’t let you stay near him. If you use Jake’s better combos against a boss, he’ll send you flying well before you get the last move off; if you try them against ordinary enemies, you’ll waste one of them while the other six punch you in the back of the head. You’re stuck relying on Boosters, the Capture Counter, and basic slashes to take out most of the enemies in the game, and that gets old fast. If Jake had a throw, a couple of moves that weren’t combos, or could morph his weapon at will, this’d be a lot more fun.

Nanobreaker is ultimately a disappointment because of just that. It wants to be a complex and visually spectacular brawler, and every so often, it succeeds. You can have some fun with it if you play around with Combo Chips and some of the cooler Boosters, it’s got great graphics (can Konami make a bad-looking game?), and I won’t deny that some of the bosses require real skill to defeat. The rest of the time, you’ll be stuck flogging the Square and Triangle buttons, mowing down yet another squad of robots in a nearly infinite mob. Simply put, when Nanobreaker’s not frustrating, it’s boring.

Score: 6.8/10