Ah... Test de Nanostray by IGN...
Nanostray
We get an updated hands-on with a near final build of the game. Multiplayer impressions, new movies.
by Craig Harris
June 23, 2005 - On July 19th, Majesco will unleash the unofficial follow-up to its 2004 GBA release Iridion II, the Shin´en-developed shooter Nanostray for the Nintendo DS. This was one of the first-revealed third-party games for the dual-screen handheld, but it´s taken this long in development to finally hit the portable scene. Majesco´s given us the opportunity to play around with a near-final version of this stunning action game before its release next month.
As we´ve already written several times before, Nanostray is an old-school style vertical shooter that puts nearly every function of the Nintendo DS to use. The game features several levels of balls-out action across multiple planets of different environments, with the Nintendo DS providing the powerful for a really excellent 3D engine pushing some really wild effects. The action takes place exclusively on a 2D plane, but the environments rotate around the ship as if flying freely around the world, and the Nintendo DS system does an admirable job providing enough horsepower for the developers to pull off some really excellent visual tricks.
Missions will have players zooming across cityscapes, desert terrain, canyons, oceans, and even some asteroid-based space stations, all the while enemy craft will be invading from every direction…even up high and down below. After several minutes of surviving the wild space combat, players will have to do battle with a gigantic, monstrous boss vehicle that has a specific attack pattern and unique weaknesses that players will have to exploit in order to take it out. Using the touch-screen, players can select from four different styles of cannons, from a forward stream to a sideways spread. And each cannon will come in handy in different situations. All of the weapons have a more powerful secondary weapon, but its energy depletes quickly; players will have to shoot down enemies in a combo chain and scoop up the energy tokens they leave behind in order to replenish these guns.
Nanostray is an obvious evolution of the development team´s Iridion II, a game design that kept in line with such old-school shooters as Raiden and Axelay. Shin´en is keen on really exploiting the power of the hardware it works on, and at the very least Nanostray looks and sounds fantastic. The team has always been known for its incredibly lively soundtracks, as the studio´s worked on the audio for more games than you can count on a dozen hands, and their sound expertise really shines through in their first Nintendo DS product.
Visually, it´s some of the best looking 3D on the Nintendo DS thus far. In the current build there are bouts of slowdown when too much " stuff" is going on the screen; when the display fills with a dozen enemies, a massive mother ship, some fog effects, and the player´s flying bullets, it´s not surprising that the game hits the occasional slowdown glitch, but hopefully this will be ironed out by the time the game ships next month.
Nanostray capitalizes on the Nintendo DS system´s single cartridge multiplayer for a variety of two player competitive modes. The owner of the cartridge can set game into wireless mode, and when the cart finds a system within range it will upload the selected level data to the cartridge-free unit. In this mode, players compete for points in the same level; both players are on-screen but they can´t hurt or hinder the other person´s ship…other than spraying a wild assortment of firepower over the competitor in an attempt to obscure his vision. The slowdown of the single player is a little more obvious in two player due to the more demanding visuals and the wireless support. Again, hopefully the developers can squeeze a bit more out of the production in order to exterminate the bouts of sluggishness during gameplay.
The game, so far, is an energetic blast on the Nintendo DS, and a really great non-sequel sequel to the already solid GBA Iridion II. Any fan of classic shooters from the 8 and 16-bit days, or even Ikaruga on the current generation consoles, should really give this game a serious look. Thankfully, we´ve grabbed a new batch of video so you can see just how wild Nanostray is turning out on the system. We´ll have a full review when the game ships on July 19.
http://ds.ign.com/articles/628/628683p1.html
8/10!! Ah ca a l´air geniale!
!!
On aura toujours Advance Wars pour le 30 Sept...
