Xbox Indie Review: Nasty

I know what you’re expecting, a playful jab at the title of the game, one that brilliantly captures the condensed essence in a single beautifully constructed sentence. I’ll artfully dodge that one this time. No, Nasty will get some other elegant words from me instead.

You’re presented with a meager story that knows exactly what it is: something that you’ll forget after you beat the first level. As my recollection serves, you’re on an alien spaceship and you want to kill everything, but only 100 levels of things. In order to get through every level, though, you have to first eliminate all enemies present on the stage. It’s a formula that’s been used and worked before, which is a recurring theme with Nasty. Every bit of Nasty has been seen before.

The gameplay is essentially broken into two nearly equal segments: platforming and shooting. More often than not, the gunplay works. You can shoot in six directions à la Metal Slug, and this is made easier by holding the left trigger to stand still. While the shooting is fairly easy and all the enemies will likely go down without problem, you won’t have escaped the other side of the game: the platforming.

The running and jumping is a good chunk of the game. Each of the 100 levels is unique in their layout and some to require a bit of finger dexterity, but more of the kind that as a kid led me to inevitably break my SNES controller by throwing it at the wall out of frustration. It’s the type where you have to set yourself up, start running, and then jump at just the right time to make it over the precisely distanced gap. It’s the sort of obstacle that doesn’t need to be there and it doesn’t add anything. I’d be less frustrated if didn’t encounter them AFTER I had cleared the room of enemies. When the only thing keeping me from ending a level is a very specifically distanced jump, I feel like my time is being wasted. These moments crop up several times as you cruise through the levels of Nasty. They shouldn’t prevent you from considering the game, but as you encounter them, they’ll certainly prevent you from enjoying it.

Nasty’s got some finer points. The game has a nice score system in which random enemies will drop jewels and you get bonus points for finishing levels quickly and collecting the random fruit and gems scattered throughout the levels (more of those ideas you’ve seen in other games). You get high scores for all the levels, but with this kind of game, it’s more of a gimmick. I’m not sure how many times you’ll be going back for more, trying to beat your previous high score.  Along with the gems and fruit are some run and gun upgrades as well, such as a higher jump and double damage shots. They add a little bit for the short amount of time you’ll have them before you die again. Did I mention that part yet? You’ll die, a lot. I started out playing on normal, and for the sake of my sanity, shot it up to easy. Thankfully, you get checkpoints every 10 levels; so when you inevitably get a game over, you don’t have to start from square one. If you want to make it easier, you can enlist a friend to play some couch co-op with you, but just make sure he doesn’t have a temper.

Visit the Xbox Marketplace to add a free demo of Nasty to your Xbox 360 download queue.

Nasty was provided for review by Fun Infused Games, and the review is based on the full version, available for 80 MS points ($1)

By Taylor Bliss at June 30, 2010.