Nanostray DS Review

There’s a soft spot among most gamers for a decent 2D top down view shooter, and if executed correctly a game developer can have them selves a sure fire hit on their hands. A good 2D shooter should have simple easy to use controls while still providing a decent challenge; it’s a shame that Majesco didn’t achieve this with Nanostray.

Story

The story is as follows; Slowly awakening from a blast to the side of your ship, your memory is jumbled and you can't remember what just happened or what you're doing in this sector. Instinctively, you check your console; a destination is still plugged in. You must take action; the enemy is starting to swarm. most of the time games like these to have fantastic story lines anyway, we just want to get in there and shoot stuff, so I wont rate the game on it’s story line that’s for sure.

Game Play

With Nanostray you have four game play modes, Adventure, Arcade, Challenge and Multiplayer. Adventure mode sets you on your way fighting through each stage and defeating the boss at the end, you have three level choices to begin with which are selected via touch screen, once these three levels are conquered you move onto the next lot until all eight stages are completed and you face the final boss.
You get sent into battle fully loaded with both an energy bar and lives plus all weapons and bombs, there’s no power ups to collect, and if you die you’re respawned in the exact location of your demise, again fully equipped and your bombs replenished, this does take a large chunk of fun from the game, part of the fun of shoot’em ups is collecting the scattered power ups through out a stage hoping you have enough fire power to take out the end of level boss, the only thing to collect are secondary weapon replenishments that appear when a sting of enemies are destroyed, these replenishments are represented by a blue token, yellow tokens appear when a larger enemy is destroyed these only reward you with points.
Four weapon types are at your disposal each with their own secondary function, the secondary function is basically a pumped up version of the primary but with limited supply. There’s a blue straight shooting beam which is the strongest of the four, a green sideways shooting beam, a pink homing beam that seeks out enemies, and a yellow lock beam that locks onto an enemy until you release or that enemy is defeated. All these weapons have their strong and weak points and if used correctly can be used to your advantage, the only problem with this theory is that to use them efficiently you have to switch between them quickly, this isn’t possible due to the cumbersome weapons selection system, I’ll explain further in the controls break down. For about 90 percent of the game you can get away with just using the blue laser beam and simply dodging your enemy’s simple and predictive attack patters.
The boss fights are a complete disappointment as well, at the end of a level when approaching the level boss you receive a warning and a mini intro to what your up against, before the fight commences you’re prompted to scan the boss to determine it’s weak points, and basically all that’s required is to lay into it’s weak points with both your primary and secondary weapons, drop a few bombs and that pretty much ensures you a victory. The attack patters of the bosses are just as simple as the rest of the enemies leading up to the boss, the final boss on games like these should be nail biting challenge requiring some time to crack the attack patters and discovering best method approach.
Arcade mode lets you select any stage that has been unlocked and go for a score attack, then your score is saved and code is generated and you can choose to enter this code online at nanostray.com and see how you good you are in the Nanostray World Ranking, which isn’t such a bad idea and gives you some else to work for, but it would have been more convenient to have a WiFi option as well.
Challenge more lets you choose a stage with a set score challenge to see if you can beat it, not hugely different from arcade mode. Multiplayer allows you to play with friends using a local connection on four different levels, sorry I never had the option to explore this feature so I wont give my thoughts on it.

Controls

There’s both good and bad with the control system of Nanostray, the good part is that actual ship control is smooth and responsive, use the D-Pad to navigate your ship past bullets, enemies and other obstacles with ease, A is primary weapon, B is secondary weapon, and X is for bomb, this part of the control system works well and is very similar to the classic arcade shooters. The bad part is the weapons selection; to switch between weapon types you press the touch screen in four different spots and even though they have been located on the right hand side of the touch screen close as possible to the fire buttons it’s still out of reach when you need to access it quickly enough for the weapons to be effective. To switch weapons you thumb has to come of the fire button completely, which at times can just defeat the purpose of changing weapons, for example your fighting a boss head on but it now has moved to bottom of the screen, you go and reach for the green side firing beam and by that time the boss has moved back to the rear of the screen where you can attack it head on again. Alternatively a cycle system could have been implemented using the L and R buttons or even the option to pause the game and switch weapons.

Graphics

The visuals of this game is the one aspect that Majesco can be proud about, with colourful pseudo 3D back drops that that do an excellent job of creating a sense of depth to each level which gives the illusion of flying, even though this is a 2D shoot’em up the way the background pitches and rolls around you may find your self slightly tilting the DS to compensate. Each level has its own theme, from the must have jungle level to the volcanic planet with erupting streams of lava blazing towards you. The basic stage enemies and level bosses are all nicely detailed and creatively rendered some of which scale in nicely from background to attack you, the explosions are nice and bright and light up the screen, the only down fall to the graphics is when the screen is gets loaded up with action the occasion patch of slow down will occur, it’s noticeable when there’s multiple large explosions are happening simultaneously but it’s not frequent enough to hinder the game play.

Sound

Sound isn’t usually a strong point on most DS titles; the little speakers provided in the DS unit struggles against ambient noise, so to really hear what game developers have composed plug a set of ear phones in. Nanostray’s audio isn’t nothing special, the music is a up tempo dance style sound track and suits the game style, but some of the tracks do get a bit repetitive at times though, a big let down is the totally weak sounding explosions, destroying enemies big or small sounds more like a small pop from a fire cracker not an exploding ship, even earphones don’t amplify the explosions enough to sound beefy.

Value

The game is much to easy and can be completed in a few hours in normal mode, increasing the difficulty will reduce the amount of lives and continues you have, but it’s still enough to get you through the game. With only eight stages available and three identical single player game play modes there isn’t much replay value, the only thing that will keep you coming back is beating your hi score and posting it on the Nanostray World Ranking.
I wouldn’t suggest going out of your way to purchase this game at full price, but if you see it in the bargain bin or a two for one sale I would say only purchase it if you’re really into shooters and would like to kill a few hours.

Game play videos

Overall Rating 6/10

This review is also posted on MyDS.com.au