Quick Look: Nano Assault Neo is a Game That Someone Might Like.

And it falls into the “twin stick shooter” genre which is one that I honestly don’t have much experience with. Not since that Quick Stop employee watched as I pumped quarter after quarter into Smash TV before calmly telling me “This isn’t your thing” back when I was 12. So coming into this style of gameplay fresh is a little strange and honestly a bit hard to get used to. In Nano Assault Neo developed by Shin’en (Garfield’s Nightmare for the DS), you pilot around a little spaceship thing around what appear to be human molecules (but visually resemble planets from the Galaxy series), blasting the holy hell from what I can only assume are mutated versions of those virus dipshits from Dr. Mario. True to the category, the left stick on your controller operates the ship while the right allows you to constantly fire in all directions around you. I can see the appeal here but for some reason can’t help but be slightly disoriented and confused a lot of the time. And confusion as we all know, is just one slight step away from anger. What really goes a long way toward making the experience pleasurable though are the flat out jaw dropping visuals, but of course this is obviously to be expected from the visionaries behind that Strawberry Shortcake game. Here, just have a look at the textures on this thing.

And it’s all running at a rock solid framerate and set to a score that most middle aged women would feel right at home working out to. As you can see from the shot above, the mechanics are occasionally mixed up with these tunnel levels that are *fucking hard* quite challenging and truly a graphical sight to behold. The goal is to collect as many points I guess before you explode (the ship, not you personally I believe) which is of course a very basic design but still a nice inclusion and even fun for the several seconds before you die. There are bunch of other welcome little features like the expected ability to play on the gamepad’s screen exclusively as well as online leader boards for those of you “hardcore” players I keep reading about in the news lately (However after playing it for the first time, the measly amount of points I scored was somehow strong enough to earn the 77th top spot *in the world* so I can’t really speak to the size of this game’s active community).

Let’s see, what else do I have to say about this game. Oh! Here’s a trailer:

So the bottom line is this: Here is a game that if you enjoy batshit crazy shooters will provide you with some fun probably. And at a measly ten bucks in the Wii U’s eShop, *Nano Assault Neo* is a title that at the very least will happily live out its tenure on your home menu as a drunken download.