The first thing I do when I get a new system is to see what it has to offer in the shoot ’em up-department. The Nintendo DS didn’t have a wealth of shmups but it did actually have a few. I immediately got my eyes on the slimmed down version (a boss rush version called Death Label) of Ketsui but I never found it at a reasonable price. Then I saw Nanostray and I went for it, thinking that if I liked it I could get the sequal as well. I never did, for reasons to come.
Nanostray is divided up into parts – a bite sized campaign with a save feature to fit the platform (gaming on the go requires one to take frequent breaks), a more traditional arcade mode and a challenge mode. The campaign is not that long but it does have several different locations and a fair amount of difficulty. The arcade mode is a few of the campaign levels stringed together with traditional rules. Both are played with the same controls – being a regular shot, a charge attack and a smart bomb. The charge attack needs to be refilled constantly which is done through killing entire groups of enemies and collecting the blue medal they drop. Since the blue medals are basically raining down on the player at all times I felt it was a bit unnecessary to have that mechanic at all. Either make the medals few and far between or just have infinite charge attack. The medals can be sucked into the player ship by holding down R – something that could be used for something much more important. Namely switching weapons.
"It was a serious mistake that put me off from the get go"
As it stands, the ship has four different kinds of shots. All available to switch between on the fly when the situation calls for a different approach (homing, straight forward, sideways shooting and so on). The problem is that this is done on the touch screen. Not only do I need to take my eyes off the action to see where I should press to change to the desired weapon, I also have to move my thumb off the shoot button to press the touch screen, leaving my ship blind and not shooting for a brief moment. I used the main weapon during 99% of the game for this reason. Why it was done in such an idiotic way I have no idea. It was a serious mistake that put me off from the get go.
The stages themselves are okay with variety, a bit of walls to avoid (generally I don’t like that but here it made sense) and a couple of unique enemies. Nanostray is played at an angle which makes shots fly into the centre of the screen when the ship is off to either side and this takes some getting used to.
The bosses are where it’s at though. They don’t cheap out on the attacks and they often have several formations, even though the last boss is kind of a let down. (The final form of the last boss have exactly ONE attack pattern which it repeats throughout, they could’ve added a few more attacks to make things interesting if you ask me.) When the bosses try their hardest it’s actually really fun to play. I’d love to see a boss rush mode.
"It left me wanting to play a ”real” shoot ’em up instead"
I didn’t really care for the challenge mode where I had to reach certain goals within a set time or place. It felt like artificial lengthening with no worthwhile rewards. When the end credits rolled on the screen I felt pretty much done with Nanostray and although it had its moments it left me wanting to play a ”real” shoot ’em up instead.
