Page 17
NECRO NESIA
Steven: In the corner of Nintendo's Wii booth stood a single kiosk containing this rather rough-looking game developed by Spike. What originally drew me to this game was this sort of mediocre aura that surrounded its graphics and design. I thought it was admirable how Spike had something of this caliber prepared for E3 amidst a display of much larger third-party titles from Sega, Capcom, Konami, and others. I thought that if Nintendo had any chance of getting niche credit while retaining as large an audience as possible, then they should be focusing more on smaller developers like Spike and encouraging them to try to design their own console game for themselves.
Spike's entry was a short demo of Necro Nesia, a survival-horror game where you control a human character through a dark, eerie forest that has been infected by giant mutated bugs. Travelling through a forest at night filled with fog, our character began to encounter little mutated millipede-looking creatures surrounding a lone shack in the middle of a large map. Once inside the shack, we discovered an orange which had no clear use within the demo. The shack was covered from floor to ceiling in nasty-looking bugs. I used the joystick and nunchaku to control the hero through the stage and attack enemies. When prompted, the joystick could be shaken to have the on-screen character roll and dodge to the left, and the nunchaku could be shaken to roll to the right. Holding the A button and moving the nunchaku around gave me free aim. Free aim allows the player to toss rocks at enemies that are too high or too low for the player to target while in the neutral camera mode. The character's primary weapon was a stick and when the B trigger was held, the game went into attack mode. Here, I swung the nunchaku around to give my character the command to swipe at an enemy with his wooden stick. This was especially useful against giant praying mantises, which could be stabbed and killed once they were knocked over.
The gameplay itself was certainly interesting. It had sort of a "low-budget, third-party Dreamcast game" charm to it. The attacks were done in real time, but the player had to stop moving in order to attack, giving it a psuedo-MMORPG feel to it. The style reminded me of a 3rd-person Lost in Blue/Survival Kids game mixed with a wannabe-Resident Evil 4 atmosphere, except not as stylish as either of the two. With Necro Nesia, Spike seems to be telling us that sure, this game could very well technically be pulled off by the previous generation of consoles, but the focus on the interesting and dynamic ways you can use the new controller to change your gameplay experience. For this level of enthusiasm, Spike is certainly a Wii developer to watch out for, along with Necro Nesia.
Danny: Arg. This game looked like a PS2 game and felt like the most gimmicky Wii title on the floor. You use the nunchuck's analog stick to move and the Wiimote to roll or attack with repetitive little Wiimote flicks. Not very fun.
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