NOT
Two times the players doesn’t always mean two times the fun
Contrary to many other twin-stick style shooters, there’s a two player mode in Nano Assault Neo that largely plays just like the single-player mode. It is a fun addition to the game but just doesn’t really feel all too fleshed out. One player uses the gamepad exclusively while the second player focuses up on the TV screen using either a wiimote and nunchuk combo or wiimote and classic controller setup. My biggest complaint over this is that trying to aim with the wiimote/nunchuk just doesn’t feel precise. Rather than the fluid aiming and turning with dual analog sticks, your aim is instead relegated to the directional pad on the wiimote and limited to only the eight diagonal and cardinal directions. As an added gimmick, the gamepad will constantly record the player’s face and project it up in place of their ship on the second player’s screen.
It’s over before you know it
The core of Nano Assault Neo is based around the single player mode featuring four diverse clusters each with only a few levels culminating in a boss fight. The first couple of clusters can easily be finished within a matter of minutes with the last two clusters requiring a fair bit more time due to the sheer number of enemy cells to overcome. To help lengthen the game, Shin’en added a leaderboard system (practically standard in action games these days) as well as a series of missions. These missions are achievements in all but name alone and vary in difficulty from gathering up 5,000 credits to lasting a full minute in the bonus round, all the way up to making it through an entire cluster without being hit once. When being tracked on the leaderboards, you can see how many of these missions a fellow player has completed (but not which ones).
VERDICT
Nano Assault Neo is a damn fine game that is over all too soon but what it offers is one of the best shoot-em-ups on the console. Nano Assault Neo is what Mrs. Frizzle would’ve done if she was given funding from the Department of Health and Human Services to construct a cancer-fighting Vic Viper, shrink it down to the nanomolecular level, then inject it into some poor fellow that’s infected with both epsilon and omicron strains of the Nanostray virus. The Wii U definitely needs more games of this caliber as Nano Assault Neo definitely showcases the power hiding inside the gamepad. To this date, I’d have to recommend Nano Assault Neo as being one of the best downloadable titles available on the Wii U store.