TGS 2009: Nier Gestalt Hands-On
It's great what just a few months of development can do for a game. At E3 2009, Nier, a third-person action game, was shown by Square Enix to the press for the first time. They didn't let anyone play it as it was severely underdeveloped, with poor graphics, and gameplay that looked thrown together. Nier all around underwhelmed in that state. Enter Tokyo Game Show 2009 however, and Nier looked completely uplifted.
Now known as Nier Gestalt on the Xbox 360 it honestly looked fairly complete in what was demonstrated. Microsoft was running demos of Nier Gestalt at TGS 2009, and Gaming Union stopped in to get some hands-on time with the game.
The action began in a large, long room that looked like it could be in a temple of some kind, with two huge, dormant sets of armor standing at one end. The playable character at hand was an old, but strong warrior, armed with a sword. At first luminous monkey-like gold and black skeletons swarmed in, attacking the old man. Gameplay was fairly simple, the old man could attack, block, run and jump, with camera control on the right stick. From the get-go Nier played like a typical action game, but considering where it was just a few months ago, it's more of a relief to see, rather than a concern.
Enemies weren't too challenging as the old man could also summon large spire-like javelins to project at enemies. Once the skeletons were all taken care of, the dormant suits of armor then sprang to life, surprising us once again as the game's battle animation already looked up to genre-par. Nevertheless, the suits of armor had some honestly cool animation with a fast paced lumbering motion to them.
Once again like the skeletons, the suits of armor didn't pose much challenge. After dispatching one, a short cutscene was shown of one javelin deflecting off a suit of armor, and stabbing into a platform with a sleeping women on it. Finishing off the second suit of armor was particularly spectacular as a javelin pierced its helmet by-way of an eye opening in the helmet. Considering the amount of blood that exploded out as the javelin traveled through the helmet, it's probably safe to say the armor wasn't actually dormant.
The demo ended there and couldn't have lasted even five minutes. The graphics themselves were impressive, everything was shiny and the polished animation backed it all up. Nier Gestalt currently doesn't have a release window, but hopefully the development team innovates on the gameplay like Square Enix is promising, and ups the challenge, as otherwise the title looks quite promising.
