Razerwire: Nanowars (Nintendo Switch - XB One - Series X|S)

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Sturmvogel Prime
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Razerwire: Nanowars (Nintendo Switch - XB One - Series X|S)

Post by Sturmvogel Prime »

TRASHFALL PART II

The "Anti-marathon" of bad shmups continues.
Yeah, "Trash Gaming" is still persistant, and once again here I am doing a "Judicare per ignem" (Judge through fire) to them. This time is Razerwire: Nanowars for the XBOX One and Nintendo Switch.



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They attack it with laser wires, but they just can't kill the freaks.

Razerwire: Nanowars' gameplay is way too simple: Kill the enemies with the laser wire generated by your Warp Drive. This device is the only thing you can move because the Generator remains static on the far left side, making this game a slight mixture of "Tower Defense". The idea of the game is to destroy the insects without the Warp Drive hitting them and keeping the generator safe from any harm since there's no health items to regain energy if its hit by the insects. Naturally you'll be on a hurry as the waves will drop more enemies and occasionally the game will trigger "Rouge Waves" where the game will drop unusually large numbers of enemies against you, and that will result in your impeding demise. One single death and it's Game Over, but you can get a checkpoint after 20 waves and there's an autosaving function to continue where you left off. In a curious decision, they grant you three saved slots in the style of RPG's and the ability of resetting the game back to Wave 1 but keeping your upgrades when you die.



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Welcome to Weaponalds.
Sorry, the girl who attended you quitted 31 years ago.


After losing the game, if you've made at least 3000 points, you can buy an upgrade on the store. To get a DNA Strand which is the currency of the game, you have to earn 1,000 points. Fortunately, the price tags are the same for all the upgrades: Level 1 costs you 1 DNA Strand, Level 2 costs 3 and Level 3 is 7. The upgrades list comprises from Missiles, multi-shots and time slowing items to ship upgrades like extra health for the Generator, reduce the time of the Warp Drive damage and the Scrambled Warp Drive, you'll be facing these two very often in the game when the Waves reach the hundreds.



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Broken Beams

With the Wire Drive as your main weapon you expect some fair and fun difficulty curve, right? Unfortunately that's not what you'll expect here. The Wire Drive suffers from the typical issue that plagues most indie games: Turrican Syndrome or "Turridamage" which depletes the Wire Drive's energy faster resulting in a broken Wire Drive incapacitating your ship's offensive capability for 5 seconds (Three if you upgrade the recovery time in the store) and slowing the drive's speed drastically, granting free hits to the enemies, this is annoying in the later waves since the game will throw you more than 60 enemies and mines that if you hit them they will damage your Wire Drive instantly. Another hazard is the Scrambled Wire Drive which will revert the controls for five seconds, this one is caused by one of the enemy projectiles.
On the bright side, dealing with the Scrambled and Damaged Wire Drive problems for an accumulated time grant you achievements, the biggest problem is that both "Still alive though" and "Possibly drunk" achievements are glitched and won't unlock. There's nothing more frustrating than playing the game doing your best efforts and the hard-to-get achievements are jammed for unknown reasons (This happens on the XBOX One port, I don't know if the Switch and PC ports suffer the same thing).

Along with the glitched achievements, the game has one third issue. Once you've reach waves beyond 780, the console will display the message "We can't save more data for this game or app", as if the auto-saving function of the game is bugged or something like that. I'm sure it's bugged since I've checked the portable memories where I have my XBOX games and they aren't even half-way full. I don't know if that happened to you, but it happened during my second and last gaming session and it was very, very annoying.



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Featuring Local TV quality graphics!

The main focus of the graphics is to resemble the 80's, not just on the logo, but on the screen styles as it replicates the scanlines and even the visual effects of an old TV set, being the last one with disastrous results. While the graphics clearly say "Homemade" they're pretty well made, especially the Generator which was redesigned on the XBOX and Switch ports looking more like a space station rather than an electric device out of The Steel Empire. The background is horrendous because the whole thing is overpixelated, killing the possible detailing it may had. For the sake of your eyes, you can disable the screen effects and the screen shaking and I think that's for the best.
As for the sound, it blends 80's-like Synthwave, with some modern Ambient-Techno influences, making it more like a strange mix rather than a node to the decade like Star Hunter DX did.


TRIVIAWIRE: FUNFACTWARS
- "Nanoblade Chainsaw Massacre" is a reference to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
- "Nothing else antimatters" nods the phrase "Nothing Else Matters" which was used as slogan and even for the name of a Metallica song.




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It's complete for now, Nina.
The Trashfall still continues, and that means reviewing Space KaBAAM.


"An unstable and broken game" is the best way to describe Razerwire: Nanowars. The fun factor of this game dies out really fast making the whole thing unworthy and with 23 of 25 achievements available, that totally kills any potential wish of picking this game. If you're looking for some 80's loving shooting game, stay on Star Hunter DX. There's nothing to look in Razerwire: Nanowars.


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A "Crying Lea" doesn't mean good news about the game.
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