NieR Automat-ically Dropped

NieR Automata’s demo just released yesterday on PS4 and, being a massive fan of the first game, I really wanted to try it out after feeling confused and worried ever since they announced the game was being made at all – let alone by Platinum which still confuses me to this day. In fact, it confuses me even MORE now after having played the demo. This isn’t NieR at all, it’s a generic by-the-book Platinum game where they ticked their usual boxes and said “yeah, that’s good enough” and did nothing beyond that. Worse, they BARELY did that based on the demo, it feels very bland and INCREDIBLY BORING compared to every single other game they’ve developed and the great smooth feeling action of something like MGR is completely absent here with every move you make feeling clunky and every fight you go through being unbelievably unrewarding.

I had some clips but wordpress won’t let me put them on here as mp4s and converting to gif keeps making immense filesizes so whatever.

This is one of the shortest things I’ve ever written for this blog but there’s just nothing positive to say and all the negative aspects don’t have any depth to pull apart for deeper explanations. NieR was a game all about meaningful moments, incredible twists, an “ugly yet beautiful world”, and an immensely powerful and touching story for every single member of the cast from a fucking book and a gay kid to a hermaphrodite and your own daughter as well as every single enemy you fight and kill. Everything in that game was full of meaning, impact, and depth. Here? Eh, here’s some baddies hold down R1 to have your drone robot shoot nonstop (yes, this is really a thing, there’s not even overheating or anything either) and kill them or do SOME SICK NASTY COMBOZ NOSCOPE X3 SCORE MULTIPLIER WOOOHOOOO PIZZA PARTY S-RANK IN STTYYYLLLEEEE because that’s apparently what people think NieR was and so it’s great to see repeated here…?

“B-b-b-but it’s just a demo”, yeah, and in this demo they get a lot across about the gameplay and the cast. The boy is obnoxious and a faggot who acts exactly how you’d assume based on that, the girl is le edgy emotionless hardcore strong womyn who is very focused and to the point but doesn’t miss out on being sassy to her drone because strong girls are all sassy and bitchy and because “Hey, wasn’t that really popular Kaine character also sassy?”, and the drone is an infinite bullet dispenser.

What makes up this game? Very poorly watered down clunky feeling versions of MGR combat that lacks any of the fun element that game had to it’s gameplay. Retarded writing so far with unbelievable dialogue that is very shitty-anime-dub quality. Retarded fucking power armor mech suits. Fanservice up the ass – LITERALLY because all you have to do is slightly put the camera down and you get a very fat, juicy, shiny, DOAX3 soft-engine bouncing ass in your face at any point in the game that you feel like seeing it. Enemies that make no sense and only exist to be enemies. Generic strong womyn lead character who outright says, and I quote, “Emotions aren’t necessary” which should just be slapped on the back of the box when it releases because it sums up how this felt entirely.

So much of this also just shits on what made NieR so amazing for example the aforementioned fanservice. I love tits and I love asses, but there are some places they don’t belong unless there’s a very good reason for it – and NieR’s somber, serious, and beautiful world isn’t a place they belong in just “because”. Kaine was INCREDIBLY SLUTTY and the model was detailed to the point that her dick bulge was even there, let alone her tits and ass, basically nonstop – yet that was not only relevant but incredibly meaningful and important both to Kaine and the story and easily the best handled thing regarding that sort of stuff I’ve ever seen (not retarded Kojima-tier “she breathes through her skin!” bullshit). It wasn’t there to get otaku interested, it was something the game and Kaine would suffer heavily for not being how it was, but here it’s just “AW YEAH JIGGLY ASS”. Worse, she’s just made of fetishes – leggings up to her ass, high heels, blindfold, maid outfit? On your battle android? Come on. Another great example would be the diversity of gameplay in NieR that had every type of gameplay you could imagine, while this is just run of the mill Platinum Action Game #734.

As for the story overall, well that’s one area where “It’s a demo” is applicable…but based on it and even moreso based on Platinum’s history, the story is going to be “lacking and incredibly fucking stupid” at the very best.

This is a total fuck up so far and I can’t imagine the full game will be much different, Platinum knows how to do one single thing and it refuses to ever go anywhere beyond that and it’s become more and more apparent with every new release of theirs that they don’t care and just phone it in. It’s the most obvious here and in that shitty transformers game. Shitty music which is especially sad given NieR’s OST is one of the very best ever made, graphics that could be from a late-life PS3 title, the blandest of enemy designs that lack any in-world logic for existing at all or looking how they do as there’s absolutely no real world applications they could be applied to unlike the few robotic enemies in NieR, and gameplay that is just outright boring to play and very clearly lazily slapped together from recycled Revengeance code. I was worried before and now I just have absolutely no interest. This is a shitty demo, the game is going to be just as bad, and the Platinumdrones will eat it up because it’s Platinum and they also get extra shitposting cred for pretending to have played NieR.

The biggest problem with this isn’t the fact that it has NO right to be titled “NieR” in any way at all, but that even if you named it something else and it had NO connection to that game at all it would still be just completely boring with really uninteresting gameplay.