The Therapist Gamer

Games don't get made much more perfect and well-balanced than Nex Machina.  It's truly a testament to the talent and skill of the people at Finnish game studio Housemarque (creators of Resogun, Super Stardust, etc.)  While this twin-stick arcade shooter might not be your type of game, it's difficult to find a single flaw in this short but replayable masterpiece.  If this game was released in the arcade era, I honestly think it would be considered one of the greatest games ever made.  Sadly, due to shifting consumer preferences (shifting in no small part due to the wishes of huge corporations), most gamers are unaware of Nex Machina.

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The game has six levels that only take about ten minutes each, but each level is broken down into 15 stages.  In each stage there are enemies to shoot, and when they're all dead then you advance to the next stage.  On the final stage there's a boss fight.  It sounds so simple but it's balanced perfectly for virtually any player.  A novice can play on an easy difficulty and excel at the basics, while a master player will have to use almost super-human planning and perfect technique to advance.

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In addition to basic shooting, you can also press L1 to dash.  While dashing is short, you're invincible during it and it recharges very quickly.   You can collect a few pre-set (but randomized) power-ups, including triple dash, dash explosion, wider shot, longer shot, and a shield.  If you get hit once you'll die and drop a power-up.  You can pick up dropped power-ups, but not if you die before you retrieve it.  You can also find a variety of secondary weapons, such as a laser, rocket launcher, or EMP blast.

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The game is set up such that it's easier to advance with the power-ups, but they're not necessary.  However, if you are playing on a higher difficulty the stages are clearly designed with a fully powered-up player in mind - for example, it would be almost impossible to kill the final boss without triple dash.

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You do have a set number of lives, but when you run out of lives you can continue on the stage that you died on.  The main penalty for death is that you lose your power-ups, but highly skilled players will also want to avoid having their score multiplier reset.  On higher difficulties you also have a limited number of continues and unless you have honed your skills it's unlikely you'll be able to beat the game on Hard, let alone Master difficulty.  I tried my very best multiple times, but just couldn't get past level four on Hard without using up all ten continues.

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For players trying to truly excel there are a variety of side objectives they can complete to maximize their multiplier and overall score.  There are various secret things to destroy in each stage, including items that unlock even more secret stages (so really every level has more like 20 stages, but five or more are hidden).  Those optional objectives will keep pretty much everyone satisfied, but the ultra-elite, world-class players still have more things to contend over.  On each stage there are humans to save and you get a sort of "human saved" multiplier, but it gradually goes away if you take too long in between saving them.  If you kill all the enemies without saving the humans then the stage ends and the humans are lost.  So in order to save all the humans AND maximize your "human saved" meter, you'd need to plan ahead and make sure that you space out how often you save the humans, and make sure that you get them all just before killing the last enemy of the stage.  You get points based on how high your "humans saved" meter is at the end of the level; most people will not care about this, but for the elite players it can make the difference between being world-class or a nobody.

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One final aspect that seems to have been put in the game just for the elite players is that there are three bugs randomly placed in each level that you can try to shoot.  While even a novice can shoot it and get extra points, I think it's true purpose is to challenge the elite players that have memorized how to play each and every stage - every time they see the bug they have to improvise their plans in order to perfectly complete the stage and get the bug (un-ironically called a "disrupter").  I think it's brilliant game design - a seemingly innocuous bug to the average person, but a deep challenge to the advanced player.

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I went into some depth in explaining some of the advanced gameplay features just to give you a feel for how thoroughly balanced and well-designed the whole game is.  Again, most players will have enough challenge just advancing through the frantic stages, but there is always something available for players who want more.

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And since they have Ari Pulkkinen doing the soundtrack, the music is amazing.  I've posted gameplay videos of just the music so you can hear the full soundtrack.  I've also attached a gameplay video of the world-record high score - it's still boggles my mind how good that player is and I find it mesmerizing.

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It's a shame that more people haven't been exposed to Nex Machina.  Less than a year after releasing this game, Housemarque posted an article entitled "Arcade is dead" and stated that there just aren't enough people buying their games for them to continue on as they have.  What a tragedy.  I know I'll be paying attention to whatever type of game they release next.