Spaghetti Anime Mechstraveganza
The trailer for this game fucking floored me and I can't believe I hadn't heard of it until last week
I think it's important to clarify that it was not the cinematic trailer or the launch trailer; it was the gameplay explainer detailing how the combat of the game works; a trailer that I'm pretty confident the devs put out specifically because the other trailers for the game are riddled with "sure it's pretty but what is the actual game like" comments, and rightly so because it's often hard to tell where the line is being drawn as the game is so gorgeous.
Like I said in my Absolum writeup last week, games that over-use non-gameplay animated sequences in trailers has been a bit of a plague lately but what this game is doing is VERY cinematic and what may seem like a cutscene is part of the game. Let me elaborate a bit but I gotta back up first and make the sell.
Nitro Gen Omega is a new turn-based mech anime game by a small (14 people listed) team in Italy who literally call it a āSpaghetti Animeā - which, sorry to tangent again but is just so fucking funny to me. I'm half Chicano and I grew up in California surrounded by racist stereotypes about "Mexicans", many of which came from the prevalence of "Spaghetti Westerns" that when boiled down, most of the cast were Italian or Greek due to cost cutting measures moving film production to the Mediterranean. I have to laugh.
As a fun aside, you should check out the 1985 film Tampopo - it's a Japanese comedy that bills itself as a āRamen Westernā that puts a fun spin on this idea. Has a young Ken Watanabe in it, it's wild.
Anyway - we digress. Let's talk about how Nitro Gen Omega's Turn-Based Combat is like directing your own mech anime fight sequences
This not-review is based on the early access version of the game which launched June 17th
You play as "Fools" aka randos who fly in an airship above a ruined world overrun with killer AI robots (so like, near future y'know?), trying to ostensibly help people survive the AI threat. Your crew (names and appearance) are procedurally generated at the start of a run by clicking a button and watching four characters get cobbled together like some sort of picrew randomizer with a heavy anime aesthetic.
You can re-roll them as much as you want (and in a more recent patch can lock in some and re-roll the others) before you commit, but I was eager to get started and went with my first batch. Once you're set, you give the crew a name and get moving.
Meet the Quails (Yes I know Quail is plural, but it's a thing we in the band use and it's stuck ever since)
How do you fight this rogue AI robot threat? Not with the airship, no. That'd be madness.
You have a mech.
A giant gorilla-shaped monstrosity that honestly reminds me a lot of Mow from the Friends at the Table seasons Partizan + Palisade. Unlike something from Battletech or a Mobile Suit, this machine needs multiple people to pilot it with each person handling a station like it's some kind of battleship. One person is assigned to pilot, one to fire weapons, one to scan or deploy countermeasures, and one to manage cooling and other systems. These systems (or options per-role, rather) can change depending on what gear you've bought and replaced as the game goes on. It's always kind of cool when you buy something that allows your Operator to do an Engineer ability.
Early game loadout with only one or two modifications from stock. The color of ability maps to the role of which pilot can use it in combat. In the above you can see that Fire Missile and Reload Missile both come from the chest component but are handled by different crew members.
What's left of humanity exists in these Sim City 2000-esque Arcologies; large cities high above the ground where, upon first visit you are given a story mission with a request to help them in some way (usually by destroying enemy mechs but sometimes it's courier work). Afterwards you can head to the town's "Fixer" aka, someone you get contract jobs from. I'm legitimately shocked at how many towns I've already experienced in my time with the game; each have staples (a general store, a fixer and a gas station to fuel your ship) but some towns will have shops for specific items and I've started taking notes on "Oh that's right the paint shop is at..."
Once a job or mission is locked in, you can fly to the location and, well, it's goddamn mech smashing time.
LET'S FUCKEN GOOOOO
Each combat, you're greeted with a pretty incredible animated sequence of your crew climbing into their respective seats and flipping switches, pulling levers (y'know, standard mech bullshit) as your machine is air-dropped into the battle zone with guitars riffing furiously; this is where some of the trailer confusion came up because it LOOKS like an out-of-engine cut-scene until you realize the game is just this pretty.
In combat, there are several resources to manage
- Hit Points (you start with a base amount that can be upgraded with gear)
- Heat (mech actions cost heat and can be reduced with other actions)
- Ammo (some weapons need to reload, smoke screens and other assist tools also have limited numbers)
- **Quadrant Location* (combat has 4 quadrants, north south etc that you can move between)
- and lastly, Pilot actions
Each of your four pilots have one action point which allows them to do one thing per round; you queue up which action from their list you want them to take on a timeline that goes across the bottom of the screen almost like a video editor. In the below shot, we've put 'Deploy Smokes' from our Operator in the first slot. The top row is all of our actions (only one has been selected so far) and everything in the Wolf and Hare rows are enemy actions that will also happen in those same timeslots.
Gotta try to take out that Wolf before it goes defense mode later on
At first you can only see some of what the enemy has planned for their actions with more becoming visible as you start to line up yours, unless you use specialized scanning gear from your Operator pilot's action list that not only reveal them, but also tell you SPECIFICALLY what they're going to do. "Movement" for example on the above screenshot would become like "Move to South" had I scanned. This is important because some attacks require the target being in a specific quadrant in order to hit.
There's no "chance to hit" or RNG outside of that however, the game elects more of an Into the Breach approach where selecting an action will do that action and you'll only miss if the enemy did some kind of move on the timeline that predates it. For example - you confirm a melee attack on an enemy next to you in the North quadrant in timeline slot B, only to find out that enemy will dash away to a different quadrant in timeline slot A; this will result in a miss.
Once you've confirmed your actions, you click the 'Resolution' phase where you get to see it all play out in pure anime nonsense; everything you and the enemies have lined up become a fluid back and forth animated sequence that cuts between the mechs and close-ups of your pilots reactions; it's like an anime storyboard you've directed and now get to sit back and watch. Sure there are some reused shots but like, this is anime, remember??
aaaaaand ACTION
peace outtttttttt
RELOADIN
After each combat, your crew will gain proficiency in the job they were assigned to (eventually unlocking new abilities) while also taking a hit to their overall happiness stat. This is, of course, provided your mech didn't take serious damage and either severely wound one of your crew or outright kill them. (Fun fact for X-Com sickos, there's an Ironman mode if you want it). Towns often also have a place to recruit new Fools if you lose someone (or want to built up multiple teams to swap out for mood management)
Maybe not the most accurate screenshot since Kaho here's mood is as high as the number will go BUT you can see they've leveled up Driving from an F to a D
Better example - Yoshino's happiness reduced but Electronics increased at end of battle
In addition to currency rewards for missions (Marbles in this world) you're also granted 'Activity Tokens' which function like downtime actions in a TTRPG like Beam Saber or Armour Astir; these can be used for various activities with your crew around the ship; solo actions like weightlifting or playing bass to increase individual happiness...
...or group actions like yoga or boxing to increase friendship level. Why this matters is that it creates some caveats with the above combat description; the one-action-per-pilot-in-combat rule can be fudged a bit if you have pilots that are either rivals or close friends, allowing pilots to donate their action to (tag in) or steal from (overtake) other pilots. (Playing Shogi in the game room is a great way to get people to become rivals btw.) Additionally, pilots in good morale during combat can occasionally get an extra dodge in or do critical damage; pilots low in morale can have breakdowns and lose their ability to do certain actions.
You've got full run of the ship from the get go, but as you progress new options will pop up; the ability to grow plants on board, the ability to cook meals, video game carts for your arcade system or magazines to read (each of which increase specific skills when used as downtime actions).
You'll also encounter random events as you fly around - characters can study on their own and have breakthroughs, significantly leveling a skill that maybe you haven't even had them try - they can also have bonding moments with other crewmembers, moments of embarrassment, or a sudden aspiration to go do a thing like cook a specific meal or go help a specific town, netting you a bonus when you act on them.
View on board the airship from the hangar
There's a lot going on with this game and I really, REALLY enjoy the combat. Since this is Early Access I can see the potential of this being am all-timer; more mech bodies / customization, more variety between towns, hell even a multiplayer mode? All of that would lock it in as GoTY for me. But at least at current you CAN buy paint around the world to spruce your machine up a bit.
The Anime-Sized Elephants In the Room
Despite all of the above, it's worth talking about a few things that give me pause.
I've long been skeptical of pieces of media that present as overly āanime inspiredā when being made by majority of non-Japanese individuals. That said, I get that 'Anime aesthetic' is rather ubiquitous in culture (western and otherwise) at this point and my stance above isn't monolithic; there's times where this can feel appropriative and weird sure, but there are also times where it feels either done out of love or commitment to a bit and Nitro Gen Omega feels like it's firmly in the latter category, again doing itself a service by saying āSpaghetti Animeā up front because that tells you exactly what you need to know: āWe're a group of Italians making something trying to approximate the Japanese art that we loveā
Granted - they could do without the kanji all over the place and the Japanese-sounding names in the character generator but again, I think the dedication to the bit is the point.
The other major criticism I have of this otherwise incredible game is that despite the seemingly infinite possibilities of the randomly generated character designs...they are all thin with the effectively the exact same body shape.
I get it from an animation standpoint; they're committed to an art style, they have a rig for this particular shape and changing it would be more work, it just feels a bit jarring that there's no one with like...bodyfat? Everyone is the same shape and height.
It also doesn't help that all femme-presenting characters have gratuitous breast jiggle as the mech gets tossed around - and like, yea - sure, that's an anime trope...I'm not a prude but from a physics standpoint...again I need top stress these are all INCREDIBLY petitely framed people - The jiggle physics on display here are harder to believe in than a giant mech being able to not weigh down an airship.
All things said though - I'm shocked at how solid this game feels and plays, and how I had never heard of it until it's early access release. There was apparently a demo in a nextfest like a year ago that missed me entirely.
The art is great, the gameplay loop is really satisfying, and the music slaps which, as I'm writing this I'm now realizing was written by Alex "everything can be funk with the right bass attitude" Moukala and suddenly everything makes more sense.
Fun sidenote, I participated in his 'hey internet, let's all funk jam on the Mii Channel theme' video back in 2021 alongside Lena Raine, Dale North, FamilyJules and more). I was the only person to show up with a Gameboy :D
Wait so Should I Play itā¢?
Maybe! If you liked Into the Breach, or are a fan of turn-based games or even (bit of a stretch but yoga with me on this) like a Hitman style game where you set up events to play out - this could really be up your alley. I'm really excited to see it succeed if early access pays off.
You can pick up Nitro Gen Omega in Early Access on Steam.
Anyway, thanks for reading. Here's your cat photo.
Possum, the fake gamer catā¢ of the week