Nano Assault

A virus is on the loose, humanity is on the brink, and our only hope is a microscopic vehicle that shoots first and asks question later. Never mind that the plot makes absolutely no sense, or that it’s never clear if you’re flying through a human body or a marble-sized organic galaxy or a pile of bat guano. Nano Assault EX is pure fun, details be damned.

There are two modes of play. Most levels take place from a top-down POV. In these you’ll navigate the surfaces of peculiarly shaped organisms and zap malicious viruses, twin-stick-shooter style. The remaining levels play more like Star Fox [スターフォックス], your ship constantly moving forward as you evade obstacles and blast enemies. These stages conclude with boss battles against large organisms that often nearly fill the screen.

All throughout the adventure, developer Shin'en Multimedia pushes the 3DS hardware to the limit. The 3D effect is implemented wondrously, producing imagery that looks absolutely massive on the tiny screen. It’s not all good news, however, as enabling the third dimension has a clear impact on performance. While the game remains eminently playable in 3D, I generally stuck with 2D mode and its silky smooth frame rate.

Short and not overly difficult, the main campaign in Nano Assault EX will entertain you around three hours. There are other modes, like Survivor and Boss Rush, you can explore if you want to eke more fun out of the game, but I suspect most players will have had their fill after finishing the campaign. Even if you never touch the extra modes, however, the campaign alone makes Nano Assault EX worth the price of admission, and it’s a shame that the game will be lost forever when the 3DS eShop shuts down in 2023.

Nano Assault Ex is a Twin Stick Shooter, although the 3DS doesn't have 2 sticks, so you use the buttons. It works well enough, but is slightly awkward since you have to press two buttons to shoot diagonally. Although the game looks like a Sci-Fi theme set in space, you are actually battling infections inside a biological cells. There's two different styles of levels; the main being in a Super Mario Galaxy style-world, but occasionally you do on-rails Star Fox-style shooting.

In either style, the graphics are impressive, but the gameplay is lacking. In the normal "Galaxy" levels, the enemies spawn without much notice, meaning you often die by hitting enemies that have just spawned in without giving you time to react. In the "Star Fox" levels, I found myself struggling with depth perception, which was made worse with the camera constantly panning. You can try and move right, but if the camera decides to move left, then you haven't moved at all.

In general, it can be quite hard to judge where bullets are which is a huge problem. This can be really bad on some levels due to the use of colours. There is one boss which is green, his weak-points are a different shade of green, he fires green projectiles, while you are also trying to avoid another green creature.

Early on, I was thinking the game just came down to trial-and-error, and I found randomly dodging helped quite a lot. Later on, you seem to have more lifes, and some bosses can be defeated just by repeatedly using your special attack. When you respawn, you start with a full special attack bar, so it was a case of spamming the special, dying, then repeat. As a result, the game becomes easier as you progress, culminating with the easiest boss in the game.

Sometimes games can be ruined by one or more bugs. This game doesn't have those problems, but is simply ruined by poor game's design. I rarely felt I was having any sort of fun with this.