Nasty Review

Nasty is a 2D run and gun shooter in the vein of Contra. Its eschewment of side scrolling in favor of layered one screen levels is reminiscent of Bubble Bobble, or perhaps Smash TV from a different perspective. This game is available in Xbox Live Indie Game labels for 80 Microsoft Points. Let’s see what we think of it.

In Nasty, you play the role of Bob and Guy, two should-have-been nameless soldiers out to defeat hordes of evil enemies bent on their destruction. These foes are the minions of a space-faring conqueror named Slug, whose apparent goal is to enslave random planets. Even worse than the enslavement, is the merely adequate health care that the enslaved receive. The Horror! Anyway, the two soldiers have oddly spent their lives engaged in training designed to counter any invasion by an evil alien despot. How timely.

Bob and Guy board the alien spaceship and proceed to fight through level after level, encountering many enemies along the way. These terrifying foes include giant robots with guns, miniature Bub characters who puke (argh!) fire at you, and deadliest of all, hopping knoosh balls. These vile fiends deserve a gruesome death, and you will be sure to give it to them.

The graphics are nice high res 2D, although a tad minimalistic in backgrounds. The two protagonists look good, small as they are. As do the aforementioned enemies. The level design is fairly clever, often designed to make maneuvering as tricky as hunting down that last foe. The ability to fall through the bottom and emerge from the top is a clever touch and hearkening back to retro games.

Music consists of five normal level songs and one boss battle song. The five normal level songs just loop from one to the next regardless of the difficulty level. It goes to the next song when either a song finishes or you die then continue. It is interesting that the developers chose to have the music change to avoid repetition. It can make it hard to hear each track on hard, as you’re likely to die more often. They still fit it very well, not since Heavy Metal Geomatrix has metal seems like such an obvious choice for a game.

There really aren’t enough sound effects in this game, mostly because what they have is very good. The door sound effect when finishing a level is appropriate, and I love the enemies’ attack sounds, argh!! The screams for when your characters die are amusing as well, as if the story is trying to take itself seriously.

Gameplay is classic run and gun shooting, much like Contra, Gunstar Heroes or Metal Slug. The levels are arranged much like a puzzle game, requiring you to kill all enemies on screen before being able to advance to the next level. Rinse and repeat, it’s as old as old can be, with extra lives gained by grabbing fruit for extra points. Various powerups help you along the way, like super jump and the most pathetic version of the spreader gun that I’ve ever seen. Seriously, this thing is hardly worthy of its legendary status from Contra.

Challenge is adjustable, with 15 continues for choosing the easy difficulty with less as the challenge goes up. There are more difficult enemies on harder difficulties as well, such as the enemies shooting fire on level 1 in hard mode. The settings also affect how many lives each continue grants you, with 5 on easy, 3 on medium, and so on. There are instant death traps and lava pits, so take care to watch out for those. Luckily Nasty doesn’t expect its players to run through the game in one sitting, with save points available after clearing every 10th level. Given that the game has many, many levels, I deeply appreciate the frustration that this system saves me from.

Replay value is not really present, as the levels are the same on each difficulty. There is the difficulty challenge, but seeing the same levels again just after finishing the game doesn’t interest me. This is the kind of game you play once in a while, enjoy, and set aside until the next time.

In summation, while Nasty definitely has the production quality of an independent game, the ideas that it calls to mind from retro video game history are interesting and fun indeed. Not enough 2D old-school games are a hybrid of classic games, and Nasty pulls it off well. I hope that any sequels maintain the nostalgia feeling while adding some unique elements of their own.

-Ugly Bob

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