I bought Nuclear Throne primarily because I had a great gaming experience with Vlambeer's Luftrausers, and I wasn't disappointed.
I'm a bigI bought Nuclear Throne primarily because I had a great gaming experience with Vlambeer's Luftrausers, and I wasn't disappointed.
I'm a big fan of procedural level design because - when it's done well - it makes for near unlimited replayability. Nuclear Throne's gameplay works very well with procedural level design and the sense of discovering something new every time I play is delightful.
Nuclear Throne is a top-down shooter that might remind you of Hotline Miami or even Binding of Isaac. The graphics are simple, and the controls aren't complex, but the gameplay is absolutely solid. The gameplay might also remind you of Binding of Isaac, but Nuclear Throne puts more emphasis on patience and strategy than praying for lucky drops or a favorable map.
In this way, it's more like Spelunky than Binding of Isaac, and for me it works very well. Unlike something you might play on a Sega Genesis, though, Nuclear Throne features fully-destroyable levels. Don't like your map? If you pick up a grenade launcher, then knock down walls as you see fit. Exploding barrels, cars, and other items in the environment can also help you widen corridors.
The controls are quite responsive and I never felt like I was struggling to play the game. There's an entertaining variety of weapons which are fun to use. Cross-bows shoot bolts that stab into their targets and stay there (which is fun to watch when I'm fighting a boss that has at least four bolts sticking out of it at different angles.) I haven't encountered all the weapons, but many of them make use of real-ish physics to bounce around the stage. The blade gun, for example, fires a round razor blade that bounces off the walls to keep cutting target after target. And so on. There's a variety of hand-held weapons, too, which can be used like baseball bats to hit projectiles back to the source.
The action is quite satisfying, but I also find it to be quite challenging. In the spirit of the wave of retro-inspired games we've seen in the past few years, the graphics are simple but the gameplay is quite difficult. Read that again: the gameplay is very difficult. If you like challenges, you'll enjoy this a lot. I think it's deliciously frustrating and it keeps me coming back for more. Truth told, I've already put more time into Nuclear Throne over the past 3 days than I've put into Borderlands 2 over the past two years.
What I enjoy most about Nuclear Throne is that the gameplay is deep enough to be engaging, but the story is simple enough that I can push "start" and be playing immediately. I prefer to play games that I can pick up and play for as little as 10 minutes, and for that reason, Nuclear Throne is really great.
Nuclear Throne also features online leaderboards as well as daily and weekly challenges similar to what you'd find in Spelunky. In other words, the "online multiplayer" only goes as far as competing for high scores - you can't play with other players on the same map at the same time. Which is too bad, because it'd be really fun if you could. Maybe Vlambeer will include such a feature if they make a Nuclear Throne 2? Time will tell.
The game sound and music aren't spectacular, but at the same time, they don't distract from the gameplay or feel out of place. Plenty of entertaining gun sounds, and it doesn't take your attention away from the action. There are plenty of what could be called "art" games on the Vita - Hohokum and Futuridium are both what I could call "art" games and I think they're great - but the music isn't anything you haven't heard anywhere else. But again, the combat sounds are satisfying and the music doesn't distract from the gameplay experience so it's a win for me.
The graphics aren't anything special, but I don't think that matters very much. For me, that's actually a plus because I enjoy the look and feel of retro-style games. Still, I can't give the game a full 10 because of a graphics-related issue: the "wrapper" used to port it to the Vita isn't very well done. The viewable map where the game happens is square, but the Vita screen is a rectangle, so that means there are some border bars on the left and right sides. It'd be really nice if the game could have been ported in such a way that it supported the Vita's widescreen layout, but I suppose you can't have everything.
I'm a huge cheapskate when it comes to paying money for new games, but this is a purchase that I feel was well-worth my money.… Expand
