Nier: Automata
Never change Yoko Taro, never change
Developer Platinum Games publisher square enix price $ 59.99 usD AvAilAble At steam www.niergame.com
The camera in Mass Effect: Andromeda is sometimes a little weird in cutscenes, zooming in too close to see anything, or looking in another direction entirely. Nier: Automata, on the other hand has one of the best, most intelligent and intelligently used cameras we’ve ever seen in a game. A single move from the camera lets the player know what is coming next and prepare for that eventuality, not necessarily by showing the player what is coming, but simply by changing angle. Much like the original Nier, Automata is a deeply strange and melancholy mash of genres roughly placed under the umbrella of JRPG. While it definitely fits that mould, Nier: Automata is so much more. It’s something that could only exist in videogame form, and even then, it something so idiosyncratic that it could only come from Japan. It’s the story of androids fighting robots on a future Earth. It’s the question of what it really means to be human. It’s a story of betrayal and redemption, hope, evolution and endless cycles of despair. It’s a third-person action game, a side-scrolling action platformer and a twin-stick shooter. It’s bullet hell meets gothic
why the androids are all goths, and warriors are elfin women in lace is never explained and doesn’t need to be
Lolita in the post-post apocalypse. All in all it’s a hell of a thing.
It’s the future. Hundreds of years ago aliens invaded and all but destroyed all life on Earth with an army of robots. The surviving humans fled to the moon, leaving a ring of satellites manned by goth androids to defeat the robot invaders and make Earth livable for humans again. Why the androids are all goths, and the warriors are elfin women in lace and velvet is never explained and doesn’t need to be. It’s just one of the factors in the world of Nier Automata that you will come to accept unquestioningly and love. 2B, the first of these androids is first sent to Earth to scout out an area known to contain a “goliath” class enemy. She is joined by the strangely petulant, shorts wearing 9S, a scout android who asks too many questions in a society that frowns on all emotion. The opening hour of the game, the search for this enemy, serves as a tutorial and as the gaming version of an amuse bouche, letting the player work their way through all of the camera angle related play styles up to and including three massive scale boss encounters, first against a single huge excavator arm, then against two, and finally against the enormous Destructicon that uses the excavators as arms. The end of this sequence also shows off one of the most interesting/alarming mechanics in the game - strategic suicide. Androids can blow their own black boxes to do massive
damage to nearby enemies. Naturally, blowing yourself up comes at a price.
Explosive suicide is an option of last resort when it comes to combat, and one you probably won’t want to use too often, and not simply because the benefits don’t really outweigh the consequences (resurrection on low life and the loss of XP). The reason you won’t use it too often is that you’ll be having too much fun with the regular combat systems to even remember it’s even an option. The third-person hack and slash gameplay is the most fully fleshed out system and it’s every bit as good as you’d expect from Platinum Games, the developers behind Bayonetta, Vanquish, Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance and Transformers: Devastation. Most androids wield two weapons personally and have a Pod, an AI companion that acts as a mobile turret. Basic attacks are comprised of combinations of light and heavy attacks, with each weapon combination available having different optimal basic sequences, such as four light, two heavy. Rather than blocking, damage mitigation in Automata is all down to dodging. These dashes can be quickly comboed together, turning even the most basic fight against the weakest, most pathetically adorable robot into a crazy ballet of carnage. Existing weapons can be upgraded with scrap found throughout the world, and new weapons can be found or purchased from vendors. Equipping new weapons not only changes how much damage a combo can do, but what kind of effect it has as well, encouraging, if not demanding experimentation and changing of gear to suit different conditions.
While not quite as deep as the thirdperson combat mechanics, the other combat systems are definitely solid. The top down, twin-stick combat
combines the third-person hack and slash with a greater emphasis on the Pod, as bullets from the AI companion can destroy enemy bullets. Side-scrolling combat is mostly more about using range to your advantage, once again emphasising heavier use of the AI, but also rewarding melee combos that have a long reach so as to be able to damage a number of enemies standing in a line. At different times throughout the game, the androids gain access to flight suits (kind of open air Gundam things) that allow them to transform from a robot form to a jet form. When in jet form, the camera angle switches to denote whether the level will be a side-scrolling shooter affair, a vertically-scrolling affair, or a behind the shoulder stunt flying level. It’s all fun. When transformed into the robot mode, gameplay mostly resembles that of the twin-stick shooter mode for hack and slash, but swapping shooting for offence and melee for destroying enemy bullets. It all sounds a little overwhelming at first, but after only an hour or two each system makes sense and one move of the camera is all you need to prepare for the next fight.
Character upgrades come in the form of chips that can be socketed into the android to increase abilities and resilience. A basic chip can increase combo damage or show more on the mini-map, while other chips can cause the action to slow for a brief while after performing a critical evade (dodging at the last possible moment) or add a shockwave to each sword attack. Other chips can be socketed into the Pod to give it extra abilities, like a massive long range laser or a short range hammer, or to automate functions such as using healing devices on the android when their health is reduced to a certain threshold. Again, experimentation and customising the android for different encounters is encouraged.
You may have noticed that throughout most of the review, the identity of the main character has been left a little vague. There is a good reason for this. Finishing Nier: Automata is really just the beginning of the game. To know the story of the game and to see it from all the required angles takes making it to the first five endings and playing as three different androids, each with a different approach to action, a different combat system and a different take on the events of the story. A second playthrough sees you as the curious 9S and showcases his ability to hack into robots to damage or control them. A third puts you in the shoes of the enigmatic A2 with her ability to go berserk, dealing extra damage at the cost of constant damage to herself. Each playthrough is different, not simply because of the character. The story changes due to shifted approaches and perspectives in the second play, and the third is pretty much a prequel adventure. It’s an incredible achievement.
On top of the excellent combat is an incredible soundtrack, a deeply sad, extremely strange but strangely relatable story, a small but immaculately designed open world that has hundreds of years of history written into it, and some pretty memorable characters. There are some problems - sometimes the framerate hitches and textures pop in, and those of you wanting to play with a keyboard and mouse should give up on that idea as those controls are terrible in comparison to a controller, and the general weirdness that permeates the game may not be for everyone - but if you’re after a lengthy, engrossing and extremely memorable experience, Nier: Automata is here, demanding to be played more than once. DaNIEL WILKS
a small, immaculately designed open world that has hundreds of years of history written into it