By the end of Friday, to my own not inconsiderable surprise, I'd played through all the demos on my Next Fest list. There was I on Wednesday, wondering if I'd have time to get through them all before the event ended and now here I am, all done with three days to go!
Well, all done bar the writing-up, of course, which is going to take quite a bit longer than playing the damn things did but there's no deadline on that. I can feed the remaining five reviews in as and when I feel like it.
It's not like there's any urgency, after all. None of these games is out yet. Some of them may never be, although I have to say that the completion rate for games I've added to my wishlist following demos I've played in Next Fests comes close to one hundred percent. My follow-through on buying them? We won't talk about that just now.
The only thing left to decide is which demo should I review today. The one I liked the most? The one I spent longest playing? The one I have the most to say about?
It can't be the one I thought was bad because there wasn't one. They were all good, in their way. I did a stellar job this time around, only choosing demos for games that look like they'll be worth buying one day.
And yet, I didn't wishlist them all. They may all be good games but they're not all going to be good games for me. I'd recommend them all, just not necessarily to myself.
Enough with the preamble. Time to pick a demo. And because I have other things I'd like to do this morning, I'll go with the one I probably have the least to say about. There's very little chance I'll be picking this one up when it launches some time this year but I'd be happy to here more about it if anyone else does.
Nitro Gen Omega
I picked Nitro Gen Omega mostly for the graphics but also because the developers describe it as a turn-based tactical rpg. In my head, that means something like Solasta, Dungeons of Nahelbeuk or one of the several similar titles I've enjoyed in recent times. It also could be closer to the X-Com format and although I didn't get on with X-Com itself, I've had fun with other games that follow that model.
NGO (Unfortunate acronym...) isn't much like any of those. Not from the brief time I spent with it, anyway, which was just under half an hour. What it is, as far as I can tell, is an arena battler with RPG mechanics but nothing you'd call a storyline or a narrative.
Play begins with a highly stylised map, over which you fly in your airship. A tiny model of your airship. You can't land anywhere except certain designated areas. When you fly over those you get the option to land but if you take it all that happens is the view changes to another stylised map with some clickable locations.
Selecting one takes you to a menu screen. You can recruit team members, effect repairs or buy stuff. I had no idea what I was doing so the first thing I did was buy a whole bunnch of new team members. That was a mistake because I needed the money for other things later.
Everything works via static screens and menus. You can move around inside your airship but only by way of floor plans that, once again, let you to open more menus to access more activities, including some mini-games and entertainments.
I'd go into more detail about those but they all required money I'd already spent. YThere are several currencies, all of which you earn by undertaking missions, that being the core gameplay. Or I think it is. It's hard to be sure. I only took one mission and I failed it.
When I chose this demo from the list, the one thing I didn't pay attention to was the sub-genre. It may be a tactical rpg but it's specifically one in which you pilot giant Mechs. That makes it a first for me. As far as I can remember I have never played a Mech Battler in my life before.
On this slight evidence I'm very bad at them but I'm sure most entries in the genre aren't much like this, either. Combat, like everything in this game, feels extremely stylized and abstracted. There's no lurching around a batlefield, grappling other Mechs and blowing bits off them. Or rather there is but you can't see it happening.
Combat consists of selecting actions for each of the members of your team and placing them in "Timelines". When you've set them all you affirm your readiness and the battle plays out. You see some very good cut scenes and animations but they all play out with no further intervention from you.
I'm convinced it would be a compelling and satisfying experience - if I had any idea what I was doing. Like everything about the game, the battles are slick, stylish and gorgeous to look at. Unfortunately, I never had the least clue what I was supposed to be doing or, if I did, how to do it.
There's no blame attached here to either the game or the demo. It's basically the tutorial as far as I can tell and it does explain everything in considerable detail. I just couldn't follow most of it. Not in the time I was willing to spend on a demo, anyway.
The level of detail is overwhelming. There are so many stats, abilities and options and the developers, not unreasonably, assume a great deal of pre-existing genre knowledge that I don't have. I'm fairly sure I could pick enough up, eventually, to stumble through a few fights to some kind of result but it would take me a lot longer than I'm willing to give it, especially in a demo.
I don't feel as though it would be a good use of my time to play the full game when it arrives, either. Not because I can't imagine enjoying it but because it's clear that a huge amount of the appeal is going to come from building teams, training and gearing characters and generally min-maxing your way to the top. That that takes a lot of time, effort, research and commitment. Some people live for that sort of thing but I'm not one of them.
It's a pity because I absolutely love the visuals. Everything about the game is hyper-stylized, often to the point of incomprehensibility, which is always something I enjoy. The problem with hyper-stylization is, while it may be an aesthetic pleasure, it's not always very practical. One of the reasons I never knew what I was doing was the sheer amount of visual information on screen. The brutal learning curve required to make sense of it all wasn't helping much, either.
Visually, though, I was having a wonderful time. I loved the look of the characters, their idiosyncratic fashion sense, their volatile expressions, their sheer sense of dynamic exuberance. I loved the graphic design, especially the UI and the text, all of which explodes off the screen in a riotous chaos of sharp lines and angles. The color palette is unusual and sophisticated. The whole thing seems to have been design-led to an extraordinary degree and it very definitely works. Providing, in my case at least, that all you want to do is look at it, not play it.
Ironically, perhaps, given my overwhelming incompetence, the best moments of all came during the fights. That's when you get short cutaways to your team members in the cockpits of their mechs. These reminded me hugely of Neon Genesis Evangelion, perhaps the greatest of all mech tales. Especially when my team were losing badly, bouncing around the interiors of their Mechs, clawing their way back to the controls for one more, desparate, do or die try.
Those scenes really brought back memories of watching Evangelion. Not surprising, I guess, considering develeopers DESTINYbit appear to have "borrowed" most of the title of that famous series for their own game.
There's clearly a whole lot more to Nitro Gen Omega than I was able to see for myself in my brief and unsuccessful run. There are other types of mission than battles, or I think there are, and there's a whole relationship system involving the characters in your team, for a start. I'll have to leave all of that for someone else to explore and post about, though. It's all to much for me. I know my limits. I just got two of my team killed. Best I quit while I'm behind.
Not wishlisted. Recommended, just not for me.
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