"A Minute Wanderer Better Ignored"

Long have I been a fan of the sidescrolling shooter, the classical arcade format seen in games like 1942 and Gradius, and now having seen a small little revival in Ikaruga on the Gamecube and 360. In these games, you pilot a small ship against wave after wave of enemy forces, collimating in a final fight with a gigantic boss. While each game offers the same material, each series introduced something new to the tried-and-true gameplay, like Gradius' many upgrades and Ikaruga's polarity system. Most recently, a DS title, Nanostray, was released, and was an overall disappointment. Now, a sequel has been created, more or less following in the footsteps of its predecessor.

One will notice one of the better features of Nanostray 2 right off of the bat – the amazing visuals, for the DS at least. The game flaunts its three-dimensional backgrounds and enemies, as well as its original designs and interesting environments as much as it can, and, to the game's credit, it very well should, as the visuals are perhaps the strongest point of the game – they're beautiful, plentiful, and technically astounding, with slowdown only being minor and occurring at extremely hectic moments.

Unfortunately, all of this adds to something that really makes this sort of game, one where you must know every detail and be able to navigate through seas of deadly bullets, more complicated than it needs to be – busy. Between 3D backgrounds, enemies, players and shots, it really becomes hard to determine exactly what is good and what isn't; many a time I've flown into a wall thinking that it was in the background, not the lethal foreground. It also doesn't help that enemies will oftentimes come out of the background and into the shoot-able field, leaving their exact position and danger a mystery until you finally get a hang of the transition.

Secondly, the game sports a surprisingly decent soundtrack, filled mostly with pulse-pounding, adrenaline-heavy techno that keeps a steady beat and the mood constantly frantic. However, the music does nothing else, and you're certainly never going to find yourself humming the tracks outside of the game. One of the highlights, thankfully, is a good amount of voice acting; all cutscenes are voiced over with a higher quality actress who brings a bit of personality to stale lines, a thankful transition from monotone voice actors most often featured in smaller games such as this.

Now, there technically is a storyline to go with the game's main mode, Adventure, but it's continued off of the non-existent canon of the first game, making it have no real weight to begin with, but its also completely out of place in a game like this. It has something to do with a virus and you researching a cure for it, but you really do not have to pay attention to enjoy this game. The only benefit is hearing something about a new side-weapon or to hear the nice performance by the first of two voice actors.

The general gameplay does not deviate much from the standard formula for sidescrolling shooters, as it really is hard to do otherwise – you fly a small ship armed with a standard gun and one chosen side weapon, flying constantly forward and shooting down any and all opposition. Half way through each stage, you'll fight a simple mini-boss, and, at the end of the stage, a much larger and harder actual boss. You'll beat the stage, collect a new sub-weapon, and continue on to the next level.

Everything here is good – at its core, Nanostray 2 is a faithful sidescrolling shooter that performs well. Unfortunately, after this, Nanostray 2 begins to introduce a number of additional elements, only some of which are an actual benefit to the game.

One of the better additions are the satellites – after you destroy a wave of enemies, they have a chance to drop one of two satellites, an orb that flies alongside your ship, firing an additional bullet whenever you shoot your main gun. One of the more innovate features about this, however, is that you can arrange the two satellites in three different ways, having the ability to switch between these setups on the fly. You can change not only their location, but also the angle at which they shoot, leaving you with almost infinite combinations for your satellites. This really helps to spice up the gameplay, because, with three different layouts, you can create different shots that can focus fire on one target, shoot behind you, cover a wide arc, or a number of other strategies that the individual can find useful.

Another feature, while not new, is very welcome to the gameplay, and that is the sub-weapon. Alongside your main cannon and satellites, you have a number of secondary attacks that you can use to assist you along the way. These range from a close range spark to a chain lighting-style beam that jumps from target to target. While these certainly aren't out of place here, they do help to give the normal gameplay a bit of a kick, thanks to a few unique sub-weapons – were there no other means of fire beyond the normal cannon and satellites, Nanostray 2 would be an extremely bland game.

Unfortunately, even with the sub-weapons, Nanostray 2 is an extremely bland game. It doesn't do much beyond be a great looking, proficient game, which makes it seem very boring and unoriginal as a whole. Whereas Ikaruga featured a rather revolutionary element for its genre, the polarity system, Nanostray does not do anything original beyond have satellites that have been featured everywhere else, and have the ability to change their placement. Were the game to have taken some risks, it could have paid off, but as it is an sidescrolling shooter and nothing more, fans of the series who have played all of the games I have mentioned will find nothing interesting or exciting here.

To the game's merit, however, there are eight stages, a fairly high count when other games feature only a few more or several less stages, and each stage is very well done and fairly imaginative. There are also a number of additions to lengthen gameplay time, such as multiplayer, uploadable high-scores for determining the true masters, 32 challenges, and four unlockable mini-games, but these don't particularly add enough content to warrant a second glance; single-card multiplayer is laughably horrible, highscores are really only devoted to obsessive players and won't be looked at by casual gamers such as myself, and the mini-games aren't really anything new or interesting.

The difficulty is another thing worth mentioning in that it tends to be a little variable as opposed to the gradual increase in complexity and skill needed featured in most every other game. As you can choose stages at two junctures, you can never really be sure if you're choosing the next hardest level or the more difficult out of the bunch. It is also worth mentioning that the mini-bosses fought halfway though a level are oftentimes far harder than the actual boss of the stage – one notable example is a gravity-skewing beast that rotates the walls and spews out projectiles, some of which can't easily be avoided unless you've already moved to a tiny portion of the screen. This is understandable pattern learning, but the final boss can be beaten by literally staying in one spot and holding “A” – no more effort is needed, as its attacks can be shot down. Please remember, developers, that difficulty ramps upward rather than downward.

A final note is given to the control schemes – in a relative stroke of genius, you can use normal D-Pad controls to move your ship, as well as stylus-based controls, where your ship follows your path. Of the two, it comes down mostly to personal preference, but the stylus controls are at a serious disadvantage for not having the ship go as fast as your stylus stroke, creating a lag between its current position, you moving to a new one, and the ship actually getting there, as well as your hand obscuring a good portion of the screen, which royally blows when the game requires you to see the entire screen.

In the end, Nanostray 2 is a very unoriginal, safe sidescrolling shooter that will whet a fan's hunger without fully satisfying it, and will only serve as a picture of brilliance for the general DS owner. Due to an overall lack of innovation, but great graphics and technically proficient gameplay, this game is good without being great. If you've enjoyed games play Gradius or 1942, picking this up wouldn't be too terribly painful at the recession friendly 20 USD, but everyone else would be perfectly fine to ignore Nanostray 2.

Thankfully, this is better than the first game, but improving it couldn't have been very difficult...

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 06/27/08

Game Release: Nanostray 2 (US, 03/11/08)