nanobreaker
a game by konami
a review by chris gesualdi

Konami's M-rated Nanobreaker is a game "from the producer of the renowned Castlevania series." I know this because the flavor text on the back of the game tells me such. It wants me to know this fact, because it wants me to equate Castlevania with Koji Igarashi, equate Koji Igarashi with quality, and equate quality with Nanobreaker, making me buy this game which has a not too terrible cover and a pretty decent logo. I did the equation - saw the potential, and took the initiative. I bought Nanobreaker, brought it into my home, and I played it.

What a fool I was.

Did I lose a lot by taking a chance on Nanobreaker? Not really. I spent $10 and learned a valuable life lesson about being wary of Circuit City's bargain bin. I think that maybe its price tag should've told me something about its quality being that most good games do not drop to bargain bin prices a scant four months after release. But the promises of cartoonish bloodshed ruined my sense of judgement, and the Castlevania equation only drove me over the edge. But I mean, there were other games in that bargain bin, games like "King of Fighters: Maximum Impact" or "SVC Chaos," games I had bought for prices over $10 and enjoyed. Sometimes when games are cheap, it doesn't always mean they're shitty, sometimes it just means they're misunderstood.

Well fuck that, because there's nothing to misunderstand about Nanobreaker. It is the shittiest goddamn game I have made the mistake of playing in the last few years. It is devoid of any shread of quality, save for the cutscenes, which we already knew were going to be good because it's from Konami. The combat is repetitive, the graphics are terrible, the A.I. is laughable, and the music doesn't even come close to having any sort of interesting structure to it. But, perhaps worst of all...

Nanobreaker has no soul

Now, I'm a pretty relaxed gamer. I can usually accept even bad games for their faults. I've only returned one game in the last five years and that was "Dead or Alive: Xtreme Beach Volleyball" - a game that just reminded me how much easier it was to look at porn like a regular person. But otherwise, even if a game has no redeeming qualities whatsoever, I can usually find at least something I like about it. Eve of Extinction is one of those games.

An early era PS2 beat-em-up (or "brawler" if you read the DPS wiki), Eve of Extinction is a bad game I can play without being offended. The game has many of the same elements as Nanobreaker - the fresh faced hero goes around beating up dudes with his transformable energy weapon, occasionally stopping for a plot revealing cutscene along the way. The difference is that in Eve of Extinction you were beating up Matrix inspired agents rather than nanobot monsters, and your transforming energy weapon actually housed the soul of your girlfriend. As a game, it's pretty bad. You stumble around a bland cityscape wishing the combat engine was better, until eventually the game forces you to do this crazy jump maneuver across rooftops with the orange staff weapon and you screw it up and fall to your death. A while back I gave Eve of Extinction the distinction of being the "best game that would've been awesome if it didn't suck." All the ingredients were there, a vaguely intriguing plotline, a likable hero with the traditional badass goggles around his neck, a combo system that allowed weapon transformation in mid attack, etc. But alas, Eve of Extinction did indeed suck - and no flashy logo or cool box art could change that. The game sold a few copies, IGN wrote another review where the author tried to be funny not knowing he wasn't, and Yuke's would go back to making mediocre wrestling games. But even though it wasn't a success, there was still one thing Eve of Extinction had that many games don't. It had soul. From playing it I could tell somebody at Yuke's had poured their heart into making this game. It had that feeling of ambitiousness, like somebody had said "Damnit you guys, we're going to make the best damn game ever." However somewhere along the line Yuke's realized they didn't really know how to make action platformers and EOE was quickly wrapped up before they could make it any worse. But the soul was there.

What exactly is soul? I can't define it exactly, but it's something that represents all the hopes and dreams that went into making something. Sometimes I go to the Dollar Tree and look at the novels that have ended up sitting on the shelves next to the startling array of Christian themed coloring books. It rips me apart. These people spent months, or years, or maybe their entire goddamn life just trying to write the best damn book ever, and here it is sitting next to discarded Garfield children's books and closeout bags of candy. It's the same thing with the game industry sometimes. People work their asses off to make the best damn game they can, and it just doesn't come out as something the general public wants to play. It's nobody's fault. Making something great is hard. But even if you try your hardest and your efforts turn out shitty, at least know that your shitty work has ten times the soul than the guy who shits best selling horror novels weekly - even if his book is better than yours.

When I first began playing Nanobreaker, I had hope. In the game you play as Jake, a tall white-haired bishounen cyborg armed with a big sword. On the cover he appears holding out his sword in a kind of fey manner and looking rather angsty. And of course, every tall angsty bishounen needs their troubled past. Jake's past is that he was in some big unspecific war, where he slaughtered a bunch of women and children and was put in cybersleep so the government could tell everyone "Yeah, we executed that guy" when they were really like "Dude, I'm not killing off our totally awesome cyborg guy, just put him to sleep for a few years." Why is Jake awakened from his cybersleep? Well that information is given in the opening cutscene, which in lovingly rendered CG spells out the plot. See there's this big island of scientists and it's the peak of human civilazation. Now, everybody on this island has nanobots injected into their bloodstream for indentification purposes. But, in a less than surprising twist of fate, the central computer breaks down and all the nanobots go berserk, turning the city folk into biomechanical monsters. Now, of course the generic military guys come rushing in so we can watch them run in circles and get themselves killed. See, the monsters are made of nanomachines, meaning they can break down the component elements of the bullets being shot at them and absorb them into their bodies. This of course is shown in totally awesome slow-mo bullet time. From there the monsters go totally nuts and start the killing frenzy. This one guy who tries to run away, oh man I can't even tell you because it was so totally sweet. And then there's this little girl and she's all like... oh man - it's so freaking nuts!

God that was an awesome cutscene.

At that point my friends came over, so of course I had to restart the game so they could watch the cutscene and we could all totally be like "Damn that was awesome!" But then you know... you get to the actual game and something changes. It just isn't the same anymore. My buddy Jair was the first to speak.

"What the fuck is this shit? Nothing's happening."

"I don't know, it's like the first level," I retorted, mindlessly mashing the square button while the cartoonish bloodspray flew around the screen "it probably gets better further on."

"Why the hell does he have wings, can you fly?" Asked Jair.

"Try flying" chimed in Rosie.

"You can't fly" I said pressing all the buttons and confiming that no, you cannot fly.

"Can you double jump? Try double jumping" said Eddy.

"Yeah, you can probably double jump" added Jair. I tried double jumping.

"Nope, you can't double jump either" I responded.

"So this guy just has wings for the sake of having wings?" Jair asked.

"I guess so"

"Fucking Japs..."

Although he doesn't know it, I think Jair's blanket statement of unfounded racism was probably better directed at Koji Igarashi, the man apparently responsible for this garbage. Igarashi is kind of a big deal - mostly because made Symphony of the Night - an admittedly brilliant piece of work regarded by many as the greatest 2D game of all time. Koji Igarashi also made Aria of Sorrow, a Gameboy Advance game I was so addicted to that I played nonstop for days until I collected every goddamn soul the game had to offer. And Koji Igarashi is also making the sequel to Aria of Sorrow, which we can assume won't suck because it's the same game archetype with nicer sprites. Sprites so nice you don't even notice that they're new sprites until somebody shows you comparison screenshots and you go "Hell, how did they make the same frames of animation look so much better?"

All of these games are Castlevania games - the series which Igarashi is the primary director of, and has been since about halfway through the making of Symphony. Since he took control he's been the director for every new Castlevania game made - except for one. Circle of the Moon - the game that is probably the reason Harmony of Dissonance exists, and the reason Igarashi started to lose his touch.

Harmony of Dissonance was a game made by Igarashi out of frustration after Konami branch KCEK produced Circle of the Moon, the first Castlevania game made for Nintendo's then new Gameboy Advance. Igarashi was convinced that if he didn't take up the reigns and steer the Castlevania franchise back on course, KCEK was going to ruin it, an argument not entirely unfounded. On one hand, Circle of the Moon was as good a Metroid clone as any other Castlevania - it had the action, the dark gothic backdrop, the constant learning of new skills that enable you to get to previously unaccessible areas - all that good stuff. On the other hand, it wasn't really true to the Castlevania series. Kcek saw fit to just run with the idea of some dude with a whip fighting Dracula in a castle. There was no Belmont, no Alucard - just some generic guy whipping skeletons and collecting magic cards. A good game, yes, but not a true Castlevania title, rather more of a creative take on the license. So a concerned Igarashi took firm control of the Castlevania series and made Harmony of Dissonance as his attempt to get the series back on track. The problem was, Igarashi tried to make the same game he had already made, and you just can't do that. Many times Igarashi stated that with HoD, he was trying to create a Gameboy Advance version of his biggest hit, Symphony of the Night. However, as it usually turns out, you can't just keep making the same game and keep it fresh. Sure, Capcom's been doing it for years and I'm sure a Megaman joke would be more than proper here but it's just too easy. But the point is, everyone knows the Megaman games got worse as time went on - for the same reason HoD was a pale shadow of it's predecessor. HoD suffered from a lack of creativity, and with that comes a lack of soul.

Sure, HoD had the exact same elements SOTN did, a long white haired bishounen with this blue trail effect following him for no other reason other than it looks cool, a castle that was totally two castles, etc. But though artists can get away with painting the same picture hundreds of times, but the truly successful ones are the ones who can improve and reinvent their work. When it came down to it, HoD was just a scaled down Symphony of the Night with worse level design and less soul. Almost as an apology Igarashi made the totally awesome Aria of Sorrow and we forgave him, but HoD went on to have to have a reputation as the worst game of the GBA Castlevanias. The game that was supposed to save the series ended up becoming its black sheep. But, that wasn't the end of it. Then there was Lament of Innocence.

Lament of Innocence was a game which for months I was excited for. The graphics looked awesome, the combat looked awesome, I didn't think it was possible to screw a game like that up. I mean, it was the same way I don't think anyone expected Episode One to be so bad - it just couldn't be. It was Star Wars, but with all the advantages of new technology and amazing CG special effects. How do you screw up Star Wars? But, as we all know, George Lucas found a way, just like Igarashi found a way to screw up Castlevania. I was so disapointed in the reviews I waited a year before buying the game on sale for $15, interestingly enough - at Circuit City. I got like ten hours into the game when I realized I wasn't having fun anymore, especially after I found out you could just... you know, run past all the enemies. There was no reason to fight anybody, it wasn't like there were experience points or anything - no because that would've made the combat worthwhile. Instead, it feels like a Kirby game, where I can either spend the arduous task of running around the level, collecting powers and fighting bad guys OR, I can just fill Kirby up with air and float to the end of the stage with no repercussions. Hell, I played Kirby on my Gameboy for five years doing exactly that before I realized that Kirby could take on the powers of his enemies. It's bad game design when you don't have any reason to fight. I feel guilty for avoiding the battles, but in the end it's really the game makers' fault for making the battles so unrewarding.

You think Igarashi would've learned his lesson from LOI, but in Nanobreaker I find myself doing the exact same thing, simply running from level to level wishing I cared enough to turn around and kill some nanomonsters.

But of course, I don't.

Anyhow, after Igarashi screwed up Lament of Innocence, the next logical step was to make a shitty action platformer based on the same engine as his failed attempt at bringing Castlevania to 3D. The game would feature a transforming plasma sword, a big white-haired cyborg, and blood - lots and lots of stupid looking blood. And I don't know why, but the gaming world bought into it. I read countless previews that said Nanobreaker was going to be outrageous. They didn't really say why, but I believed it. I saw Nanobreaker in the store for $40 and thought "Man, I totally have to pick that up when it drops in price." I don't know, it made sense at the time. At it's bare minimum it seems like any game company given those variables could make a halfway decent game. How do you screw up a hack and slash with transforming weapon combos, sweet particle effects and crazy amounts of blood?

"How do you screw up Star Wars?"

By taking away the soul

The main "feature" of Nanobreaker, I guess you could call it (I like to think of it as more of a "gimmick") is Jake's transforming plasma sword. As you wander around the drab cityscape, occasionally you'll find chips that unlock the sword's transforming abilities. The more chips you find, the more complex combos Jake can pull off. But these chips are no easy task to find, I mean, sometimes they're like, behind a truck. And you have to walk over to a door to get to where the chip is. You know, because though Jake's sword can cut things down at the molecular level, it can't destroy trucks. And you'd think using the giant plasma scythe transformation combo on your lady friend scientist would take more that 1/16 of her health bar down. I know it's pointless to nitpick about realism in games, but c'mon, let me destroy some shit. Make me worry about accidentally cutting the hell out of my female companion. Give me something to make this something other than a mindless hack and slash.

Oh wait, there was a crate puzzle this one time. Well, it wasn't really a crate puzzle. It was more like "Hey, there's some crates in front of the door. How do we tackle this situation?" You spend 10 minutes using Jake's cyber whip to move crates, in a design element that reminds me of Kingdom Hearts in it's un-neccessarity. You know I'm going to move the crates, there's no trick to it or anything, so just get rid of the crates altogether. It's the same way that the final dungeon in Kingdom Hearts has these pillars that you spin around, and occasionally they'll spin so the treasure chest in the pillar is facing you and you can open it. You know I'm going to keep spinning that goddamn pillar until the stupid chest faces me, just get rid of the pillar and give me the chest, you're wasting my time.

There are boss battles as well, terrible stupid boss battles. The first one is like this giant cybernetic Venus Fly trap and I was honestly embarrassed to be playing the game when my friend Jair said "What the hell is that shit?! It looks retarded!" If this game was Contra, I would forgive the zany boss designs, but it obviously isn't Contra because Contra had bosses that were challenging. Nanobreaker's bosses can be beaten in about a minute once you which part to hit. Hit the head three times, the chest opens up, hit the chest two times, the chest closes, hit the head three times, repeat until dead. With bosses this easy, it seems the only way Nanobreaker can even the score is by making them ridiculously overpowered. Sure, all you have to do is follow the pattern, but if you miss even once the boss takes like 75% of your health with his screen filling death laser. It's frustrating losing because you know you're supposed to win, and with unlimited continues you will - eventually. It has the same kind of hopelessly pointless feeling as that crate puzzle from earlier - except since games have to have boss battles it remains an understandable annoyance.

But speaking of boss battles, I think the game's worst moment is when you're squaring off against Jake's evil cyborg counterpart Keith, and for the first time you realize what a joke this game is. There's a cutscene, where the huge hulking Keith gets all pissy and starts yelling at you everything you would expect the villain who shares a past with the hero to yell about (You did something terrible to me in that war that will be revealed later in the plot line, let's fight). So of course, there on a crumbling suspension bridge, they fight. But... there's just no thrill to any of it. Keith is a goddamn pushover. It's just square, square, square, maybe use that stupid little cyber whip to pull him closer to you, square, square, triangle. His health bar falls, you win the battle, and a cutscene starts up.

All of a sudden Keith goes fucking nuts, and uses his plasma weapon to decimate the bridge. The entire thing explodes in a shower of red light, debris flies everywhere, and you plummet to the waters below. It's awesome to watch, a disappointment to comprehend.

I mean, it's a joke, It has to be. That Igarashi would have to nerve to throw the most uninspired boss battle at you, and then show that same boss going berserker and doing all sorts of crazy shit you know you're never going to get to see him do in the game itself. It's one big gigantic cosmic joke. Like on Christmas Day when you run downstairs and see all your presents lying in front of the tree. Your dad comes in the room and he smiles and watches as you try to decide which present to open first. And then you spot it, that huge fucking box wrapped in bright colorful wrapping paper. And all you can think is "I knew it, I knew Santa would get me that train set." You run over to it and start tearing off the paper, only to find a big brown cardboard box underneath. You open that box and there's another smaller box. You open that box and there's yet another smaller one. Slowly you start to realize, this isn't a train set. And then you open the last box and there's a package of underwear. And your dad starts laughing and your mom starts laughing and your sister starts laughing and slowly without even realizing it you start to cry. Your dad comes over, smacks you in the face and says.

"Don't be such a sissy - it's just a joke."

Nanobreaker is filled with these moments, wishing for a train set and getting underwear instead. Nanobreaker's cartoonish blood spray was supposed to be awesome. Every preview of the game was like "Whoa! That blood sure is crazy!" But every time I hit one of the bumbling retarded enemies scattered around the half-assed environments and a tiny little geyser of blood erupted from it's mangled body, I felt no thrill, no spark. In fact the blood is so tragically uncool that the developers included the feature to let you change the color of the blood to see if maybe that'll make it interesting. I tried a few colors before I realized how fucking stupid the whole thing was and turned the console off in disgust. And then if that wasn't enough, they have a counter - a blood counter.

Let me go off on a tangent for a second here.

Plastic Little is some stupid Japanese anime about criminally underage little girls getting naked and piloting spaceships or something. It's essentially lolicon, e.g. that whole thing where Japanese men like to see naked underage cartoon girls. Still, if you're any sort of respectable anime "fan," e.g. one who doesn't shout "Wind Scar!" at me as I'm just walking into a store minding my own fucking business - and then laugh with your friends about how totally confused that guy must be - and for the record I know what the fuck Inuyasha is and I know enough about it to know that it's another stupid formulaic anime for the same retards who with a straight face tell me Ranma 1/2 is funny because every episode has a new 'wacky' martial arts battle about baking cakes or flying hot-air balloons or something like that.

(Rumiko Takahashi, you're actually a pretty good artist. Just... make something I care about.)

Anyway if you're not a complete retard like a good portion of anime fans are, then you've grown to accept the part of Japanese culture that things like Plastic Little stem from. Yeah, Japanese guys like their lolicon, and if you took the time to say "Omg loli lol" every time you saw something like that you wouldn't even make it through half the mainstream anime out there. The point is, you accept it for what it is and you move on.

The point is that Plastic Little was recently released on DVD here in America. I actually spotted the DVD in the same store not five minutes after having "Wind Scar!" yelled at me. I was standing in awe of how many god awful manga get English translations these days when out of the corner of my eye I spotted it - and the accompanying banner there on the cover art.

Plastic Little - Featuring the all-new "Jiggle Counter!"

Oh c'mon, fuck you ADV or whoever the hell though this was clever. It's not, it's sad. Sad because it shows how clueless you people really are about the whole thing. Sad because I know people will buy this DVD and find it entertaining. The same people who think they're so nerdcore because they watch anime and yell "Wind Scar" at random people on the street. I don't need you to take something like breast jiggling and turn it into this "Look at how outrageous Japan is!" thing. All it does is bring to mind every idiot who did the exact same thing when reviewing DOA:XBV. It wasn't funny then, it isn't funny now. It's about as funny as a counter that measures how many gallons of enemy blood your futuristic cyber soldier has spilled.

You know, like in Nanobreaker.

Yes, Nanobreaker has a blood counter, which in a hardcore edgy font and neon pink letters tells you how many gallons of enemy blood you've spilled, down to the hundredth of a gallon. See, the blood in Nanobreaker is already outrageous, we get it. There's a lot of it and it flies around the screen in a zany manner. And as with any game that uses outrageous violence as a selling point, you want people to take notice of the outrageousness. Imagine the first time your friend described to you, in graphic detail, how in Grand Theft Auto 3 you could beat a hooker to death, wait for the ambulance to come, beat the ambulance driver to death, jack that hospital on wheels and take it on a carnage filled bloodbath through the city streets. Half the fun wasn't even in committing the act, it was in your friend describing the act to you and you and the both of you remarking how totally awesome that sort of freedom is. But in Nanobreaker, they've cut the middleman out. Yes, the blood is outrageous, terribly uninteresting, but still outrageous. But the game doesn't let it end there - it has to count the blood for you. I think this could be the feature that really defines Nanobreaker's design philosophy, which basically boils down to "Look at how outrageous this game is! Look at all this blood! Hey! Particle effects! Fancy cutscenes! Look how hardcore I am!" It's like a fat kid at a public swimming pool who stands on the diving board and keeps screaming "Look at me!" when everybody already fucking knows he's going to do a cannonball, because all fat kids ever do are cannonballs.

I see you Nanobreaker. Do your fucking cannonball and let somebody else use the diving board.

Nanobreaker is Igarashi's cannonball. It isn't a novel he labored over that just happened to come out badly, it's a shitty little action platformer he and his Konami buddies came up with and knew from the get go was going to be terrible. It's the other books at the Dollar Tree, like a biography of Britney Spears co-authored by her mom and her sister, a sister who despite having no talent of her own gets to be on Nickelodeon by riding the coattails of her superstar sister. This is the kind of book I sneer at and remark "You don't deserve to be here, amongst these works of sweat and tears." The same way I sneer when I see games like Nanobreaker sitting next to games like Eve of Extinction in Circuit City bargain bins. Igarashi didn't want to make something of worth - he didn't want to make a game that was good on it's own merits, he didn't want to make a game with soul. He wanted to make something that rode the coattails of his fame, something "from the producer of the renowned Castlevania series." And while I played it he was standing there the whole time, waiting for me to start crying so he could smack me in the face and tell me "Don't be such a sissy, it's just a joke."

Well Dad, it's a pretty fucked up joke.

So anyhow, if what Nanobreaker shows us is any indication of the kind of games Igarashi wants to continue making, then the Castlevania series is in the hands of a monster. A monster whose forgotten what it means to create something meaningful. Too harsh? Probably. But Nanobreaker hurts, it hurts bad - especially when you look at the new Castlevania game - Curse of Darkness. Innocent Devils? Forgemasters? Sure it sounds nice, but all I see is a screen cluttered with icons and action scenes that look just as uninspired as Nanobreaker's are. So just stop it Igarashi, stop your fucking gimmicks, stop your fucking transforming plasma weapons, go back to making good 2D games instead of bad 3D ones, and for the love of god stop making Ayami Kojima paint her beautiful works of art for your Devil Forgemaster nonsense while the new Aria of Sorrow has this bullshit shiny anime look about it that makes the whole thing seem like a child's toy.

Ok - now that I've gotten that out...

But maybe at the end of it all, I've just been reading too much into the whole thing. Maybe Nanobreaker was just a big mistake pulled together by poor planning and Igarashi isn't a complete screw up. Maybe Curse of Darkness, in all its icon-filled screen glory, will actually be rather good. And maybe even if Curse of Darkness isn't good, there'll still be enough soul put into it so that when I see it in the bargain bin at Circuit City, I can smile and say "Nice try Igarashi." People can change, things like Nanobreaker can become small bumps on the way to something great. And if Igarashi truly puts his soul into it, maybe he can do great work again.

Just don't fuck up the new Aria of Sorrow.

Please.

-Chris Gesualdi

(It's pronounced Jizz-Wall-Dee)

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