The corpses of player droids who died in battle are sucked into your game. N ieR: Automata, like the Dark Souls series, introduces a subtle multiplayer component that helps this feel like a living, connected world, despite the absence of humanity. Why not simply program your pod to automatically use one of your health items when your HP drops below a certain point? Fighting already requires a significant amount of dexterity to manage melee attacks, ranged attacks, and dodging simultaneously. You can even equip your drone with numerous passive performance enhancing chips (as well as changing its paint job), enhancements that not only provide stat boosts but also have the capacity to automate commands. Beneath an unpredictably twisty plot there are rich systems for upgrading your weapons using cogs and wheels harvested from downed robots, and tinkering with 2B’s design and abilities by crafting and implanting chips, which can even alter the look of the game’s HUD. Unlike the majority of other games in Platinum’s oeuvre, NieR: Automata also includes a deep RPG-like structure, with crowds of whimpering NPCs in need of assistance. But for those who learn to dodge incoming attacks (usually signalled by a red flash in the enemy’s eyes) the rewards are exponential, resulting in balletic displays that thrill across the game’s generous running time. Players will be able to progress through the main quests without needing to master the system’s subtleties. Stabbing the buttons results in sweeping, electric animations. AdvertisementĮnlargeIn combat, NieR: Automata sings like few others. Developed by the Osaka-based Platinum Games, the company behind contemporary action classics such as Vanquish, Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, and Bayonetta, it sits firmly within the Japanese action tradition with a deep and meaningful battle system that places an emphasis on pitch-perfect dodges and feints, and sky-rocketing combos. 2B is supported by 9S, a boyish droid who, as well as providing AI-controlled backup, supplies a steady stream of quips to counter 2B’s rather stern outlook on life.Īs with its 2010 predecessor, which became something of a cult classic, NieR: Automata is a fidgety sort of game, slippery in the hands of genre. Appearances deceive: 2B is whip-quick and deadly, able to wield two melee weapons (which she switches between depending on the ferocity of your attack) as well as an orbiting drone, which adds back-up fire as well as providing a floating support for when 2B performs a giant leap and needs a handhold for a gentle landing. 2B has been built in the shape of a waifish girl with a short, blonde bob and a taste for black clothing. 2 Model B (hereafter 2B for brevity and sanity’s sake), a combat droid deployed by the human survivors who live on a spaceship circumnavigating Earth. Only robots and androids, two distinct mechanical species, walk our now overgrown cities. We have, in Taro’s fiction, been forced to take refuge in the stars. Price: £40, $60 NieR: Automata, a hyperactive action game from the idiosyncratic Yoko Taro-the closest Japan has to a Tim Burton-winds the clock forward to a time when humanity has been driven from Earth by their robotic creations. Release Date: February 23 (PS4), March 17 (Windows)

Automaton story game