N.E.R.O.: Nothing Ever Remains Obscure Reviews

  • Lil Miss CherryLil Miss Cherry1,017,578
    16 May 2015 16 May 2015
    19 10 3
    Posted on PressA2join.com

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    Most games tell a story to some degree but not a lot really move you emotionally. Just think about the thousands and thousands of online murders you’ve committed without so much as a second thought, ok maybe you had a second thought but it was probably damn, I should have reloaded.

    Nero, a puzzle adventure game developed and published by Storm in a Teacup, have created more of an emotional experience than a game. There’s no combat, just words floating around a beautiful world which at times is very Avatar-esque. Glowing animals and crystals light dark and beautiful environments and leave you walking around in amazement staring at the giant caterpillar or watching the stars shine in the exquisite night sky.

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    Nero is a tragedy in all senses. The tale of a small boy who is dying and his parents struggle and helplessness to save him. If that doesn’t pull at your heart strings I honestly don’t know what would. You play as a child, although your character is a little weird hooded guy with bright blue eyes and your story is told by a mysterious voice, with floating text dotted around the landscape filling in the gaps and adding more to the already dismal tale.

    The majority of the puzzles are optional and not needed to progress in the game, in fact you could run straight through them all and be done with the game in under a couple hours. If you choose to do this though, you’d definitely be doing yourself a disservice, uncovering the games secrets and solving puzzles reward you with a deeper look into the story and as this is what the games sole purpose is, avoiding them would lessen the overall experience and your understanding of a story so wonderfully pieced together.

    A little into the story you meet another hooded figure, who then proceeds to be the stalker you never knew you wanted. He helps solving a couple of puzzles but mostly serves to follow you around so that when you turn around you bump into him or when trying to solve a puzzle and move quickly transforms into a nice barricade to prevent you from getting to your destination. On occasion he will sit and ponder life’s many mysteries while sitting down on a rock or wave at you with a strange look in his orange eyes.

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    The puzzles themselves are pretty basic, lining up pictures and making sure lights are lit shouldn’t be too taxing, some however like the solaris puzzles are a little harder to solve but you are rewarded with an achievement for solving them all. They require spinning a block and getting all the lights to glow, which is easier said than done. You have the ability to cast a sphere of light and throw it by aiming a circle marker at objects. This for me was sometimes hard to do, I’d have to aim my circle around the object instead of at it to get it to hit correctly and that was pretty frustrating at times.

    The mix of story and puzzles is done perfectly, the puzzles providing a distraction to the narrative and although don’t differ much as far as variety goes serve their purpose well. The world you explore is pretty unique and open with the path forward pretty obvious and straightforward to begin with but then opening up allowing small diversions to puzzles you would likely miss if you didn’t try to explore it all. You also collect mementos during each of the four chapters, which when pieced together become a photograph, a memory of a certain event giving life to the story and the characters you don’t get to see.

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    The game has a few issues with a shockingly bad frame rate and a character who couldn’t move any slower if he tried, he walks about as slow as you would if you had your character crouched in other games, otherwise known as snail-pace. There are a couple of spelling and sentence errors dotted around due to the company being located in Italy, but all these issues are definitely forgiveable with a story that makes an impact and surroundings that will have you staring in awe.

    Overall Nero is a short but sweet game that aims to make the player feel and think about what is going on around them. It’s an experience that shouldn’t be missed even with it’s slight problems, even in text form the narration and floating text really paint a tragic picture and it’s not often a game makes you feel something having played it. Definitely a credit to the ID@Xbox program and would probably have been a game we would never have gotten to play without it. That is a tragedy in itself.
    4.0
    Showing most recent comments. View all comments.
    The graphic is indeed VERY beautiful. Sadly, I find this game having too little for me to do. I normally dislike long side quests or things that distract me from the main quest too much, but NERO just offers too little.

    Another thing is the frame rate. Perhaps because of the good graphics, in many areas the game lags. I mean, can't the developer have anticipated this when they release this game just on X1?

    Puzzles are mostly simple, but the Solaris puzzles lack instructions to complete them. I just blindly released energy balls into the slots and it was not until I read a guide did I finally realize what I was supposed to do.

    I seldom regret buying a game but NERO, I was quite disappointed in it. Of course this is just my own opinion.
    Posted on 17 May 15 at 04:06
    LAFTAWell written, nice work.
    Posted by LAFTA on 19 May 15 at 19:51
  • JohnnyC3POJohnnyC3PO548,702
    07 Feb 2016
    9 1 2
    When I saw the trailers for this game a few months ago, I knew I'd be getting it. I'm big into the Indie games at the moment, and the £7.99 price tag forced my hand - even though I knew it was a short game.

    When I started the game, the 2+ minutes load time stood out, but for the graphics I'd seen in the trailers I forgave it. Then the frame rate kicked in. The story is a good one, but told at a very slow pace, and the beautiful graphics seem too much for the game to handle, resulting in a lot of lag.

    As for the gameplay, the basic concepts are there;
    Large(ish) world. Check.
    Puzzling. Check.
    Great music. Double Check.
    Immersing the player. Fail.

    Something was definitely missing. The puzzles are only of a couple of different types: Press on on a few switches, arrange an object, try and fire balls of light in an inconsistent manner etc. Then there are the Solaris puzzles. After getting stuck on most of them (since there are no instructions or obvious logic) I did have to Google to find that nobody really understood how to do them. Most of them I solved randomly, and some of the puzzles don't even need doing to complete the game.

    I got so frustrated with the snail pace that the character moves, that it seemed to take forever to get around the fairly open, but definitely linear, levels. I found myself getting distracted and not paying attention to the narrator as I went, trying to find ways to speed up my character. 'Running' in this game is the normal walking pace in most others.

    A final note on the achievements. Most of these are standard, story/puzzle/collection related achievements, with a number of memories to find in the various areas. One of the other achievements has to be done on a Thursday, and is a little buggy as well - this kind of achievement infuriates me and meant I had to go back to the game after completing it. On a Thursday.

    On the whole, if you have a few hours to kill (mostly trying to work out the light puzzles) then NERO is a game to fill in between other titles. Be warned: Myself and other gamers have had the game crash while loading - which takes 2 minutes every time on my Xbox One - and lost a lot of save data. Mine crashed midway through level 3 and I restarted back at the end of level one. This doesn't happen to every one, but I had this twice so is a word of warning before you start.
    2.5
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