NIER: AUTOMATA
Platinum’s number two with a bullet hell twist
FORMAT PS4 / ETAET 2017 / PUB SQUARE ENIX / DEV PLATINUM GAMES
Remember Nier? If you played it properly, you don’t – it erased your memory. The last of its four endings would wipe every single shred of data, every hour you’d poured into the action-RPG, from your PS3. It’s all flooding back to you now, huh? Then wrap yourself in your fuzziest blanket, rock yourself gently back and forth, and clutch your controller for dear life: Nier’s returning to riddle you with even more holes. This time, the holes aren’t in your memory, but in snowy-haired android heroine 2B. No, she’s not a pencil – she’s a combat machine deployed by moon-dwelling humans to fight against robotic invaders. God Of War-inspired combat flow and intricate combos are back with slick new melee weapons. Greatswords, short swords, katana, even a huge pair of metal gloves to bash in baddies’ bobble-heads. We’re spoilt for choice – but it’s going to make getting up close and personal with projectile-spewing enemies all kinds of tricky.
BUBBLE TROUBLE
The first game featured these kinds of boss fights, but Automata descends into the next circle of bullet hell. Undead cyborg opera singers spit laser orbs all around in fiendishly beautiful patterns, or pulse out scarlet rings of pain. It’s chaos. There are endless ways, however, to avoid a fate worse than Swiss cheese.
Movement is graceful – 2B flits and flirts effortlessly under squeezes of i, dodging and air-dashing close enough to land blows. The camera can also rotate 360 degrees, so we’re never caught out by awkward lines of sight. The occasional Resident Evil-style fixed camera angle, though, does provide a touch of drama, or a top-down view when we need it the most.
And bubble-blasting buzzkills aren’t the only ones packing heat. Skipping backwards, we call upon the ‘pod’ for long-range help. u has our floating robot friend fire a steady stream of directable bullets at our target (it can also be locked on for auto-shooting), while we switch to our second set of weapons and glide back in for the finishing blow.
Yes, combat’s been polished to a Platinum sheen, but the charms of the original Nier’s RPG elements remain. Once we’ve upgraded our weapons back at our resistance camp, we waltz through the gigantic world, blindfolded buddy 9S by our side. The vinewrapped, tree-threaded wreckage of a ruined city is breathtakingly tall – and it turns out our combat tools serve a more peaceful purpose. Hitching an airborne ride with our little pod, we get a better view of a waterfall tumbling through a ravaged skyscraper (and neatly avoid the gibbering grunts below).
JUST DESERTS
The city bleeds into the vast, silvery sand dunes of a desert, a far-off horizon dotted with explorable landmarks… but peace doesn’t last long. The place is crawling with machines that pop up out of the sand. We’re even told by the devs that their fetching scarfs are a type of costume local to the area. Adorable – but we’re the worst tourists ever, so it’s time to play some whack-a-mole. In one fluid movement, we don our iron gauntlets, launch into the air, then use our heavy attack on w to drop and clobber them on the head. A little heavyhanded? Absolutely.
What should come lumbering over the dunes next but even more trouble. A couple more pint-sized foes can’t be too much bother, we think... until a stream of those ungodly laser balls fires out of their arms like Mega Man’s blaster on Satanic fast-forward. RIP our dashing trigger: we weren’t expecting that.
Thank goodness. It’s thrilling that Nier: Automata has the potential to surprise us, perhaps even more so than its under-appreciated ancestor. Don’t let Platinum’s naff TMNT scare you – this will be unforgettable.