Nitroblitz.com the Game Episode 1- Dick Troubles

Nitroblitz: The Review

There is nothing particularly grabbing about Nitroblitz: the Game. In fact, in as far as a title can be called a big fat liar, Nitroblitz is. The name promises something fast-paced and high-octane. Instead, the game is a plodding grind, broken up only by advertising and misogyny.

I have played as far as I could realistically get into Nitroblitz-dot-com's magnum opus, and now I'm here to fill you in on the details of this game.

Plotwise, Nitroblitz is meant as a lighthearted bro-romp, where a couple of young, successful company executives team up to fight evil feminists in order to save their damsel in distress: a man called Andy Dick. What it actually comes across as, however, is a very long-winded "well, screw you, too" directed at someone who presumably must have criticized the vaunted nitroblitz-dot-com's staff at some point in their life. There is sometimes some cleverness to the dialog in Nitroblitz: The Game, but not nearly enough to redeem it.

Mechanics-wise, Nitroblitz is in even sorrier shape. The only bit of custom I could find was that most of its items had been renamed from things like 'healing potion' to 'primo weed.' Everything else in the game is bog standard, and badly implemented bog standard to boot. Equipment does very little to keep characters competitive against the enemies they face, and leveling up doesn't do a whole heck of a lot, either. Special attacks are costly, do very little, and take a long time to earn. Random battles begin appear out of nowhere in the latter half of the game, and not only take a long time to resolve, but happen extremely frequently.

The aesthetics in Nitroblitz are not a treat, either. Because only the pre-packaged assets that came with the maker are used for mapping, there are no random tone-clashes or overlap issues. In fact, the whole game is refreshingly bug-free. However, it's also visually uninteresting. Most maps are big, empty hallways with nothing much going on in them. Sometimes they might feature a sprite, or some symmetrically arranged furniture, but there's more bad than good--especially towards the beginning, where the game should be focused on hooking new players.

The only place where I can't find any fault with Nitroblitz is its soundtrack. True, it's all generic, but no part of it feels out of place. There are no poorly dubbed-in sound effects or garishly bad music samples. While it does nothing especially to help the game, the sound design for Nitroblitz doesn't do anything to make it worse, either. I'll take my miracles where I can get them.

Overall, the Nitroblitz experience is somewhat hard to describe, but if I had to settle on an analogy, it would be this:

Nitroblitz is a game that flips you off more and more the further and further you get in it until it's giving you the atomic double-bird while you feebly scratch away at the limitless lifebar of the end boss, crying listlessly into your keyboard all the while.

In short, it's worth a play if you have some sort of strange, sentimental attachment to Nitroblitz-dot-com. Otherwise? Give it a miss.

Nitty-Gritty Nitroblitz

The Good:

-Lightening-fast text speed. It's amazing how many otherwise good games are hampered by slow-scrolling dialog.

-Run option. Always welcome, and it moves at a pretty good clip, too.

-Dialog actually flows pretty well. It feels dynamic, and I can imagine the lines being spoken in actual conversation instead of being declaimed by Shakespearean actors. The back-and-forth bickering between party members is pretty good, if crude, and is probably the primary draw for the game.

-Music is pretty soothing.

-Consistent characterization. The characters may not change or grow very much, but they stick to their values and I feel like I'd have a good idea how they'd act in any given situation.

The Bad:

-Minor spelling and grammar mistakes abound.

-Characters all appear to be based off of real people, and thus there's a certain amount of in-joke-y-ness and self-insert-y-ness to the narrative.

-Game straddles that awkward line between obvious hyperbole and bias, where it's hard to tell just how much is parody and how much is writer-on-board.

-Mapping is very sparse and uninteresting.

-Combat starts as nothing more than an attack-mash-a-thon and takes a while to go anywhere from there.

-Pop culture references masquerading as puzzles. If you've never watched American b-movies, good luck.

-Primary villains are gimicky strawmen. Worse, they're uninteresting. Their purpose in any given scene is to stand there and have quips thrown at them by the heroes, and then get beaten on for a while.

-No real modifications to the database to make for different spells or attack options. Everything is straight vanilla.

-Crassness can be really hit-or-miss. If you chuckle over the idea of calling the save-and-heals room 'the Masturbation Station', this might be the game for you.

-Random corridor of fights that has no bearing on the plot (and if there's a reason for a chimera to be roaming around the nitroblitz hq, I think that would make for a more interesting plot than this game.) The fights in the corridor are not challenging at all, and seem to be meant as an intravenous drip of exp to get the player ready for the next section of the game. The corridor does serve as a setup for a pretty okay joke, but it could still be handled better via cutscene.

-Extremely frequent, grindy, annoying random battles appear out of nowhere midway through the game.

-Armor so strong it trivializes damage. Weapons so weak they're hardly worth buying. This is a one-two punch from the devs that turns combat into an even longer, more arduous enter-spamming ordeal than it would usually be.

The Unfortunate:

-Has a bit too much of a bone to pick with feminism. Parts of the game are trying to be parody, but it feels like there's a lot of seething anger underneath. To illustrate the point, the first batch of enemies you fight are all called "fem-c**t", and things go downhill from there.

-Difficulty consists of adding hp to enemies, and only of adding hp to enemies. Because your attack stats will not increase in any meaningful way, be prepared for boss battles that last over 25 minutes, and that you end up losing because you failed to pack enough weed and cocaine to keep yourself healed up with.

-Constantly spams advertising at you. You will see the phrase 'nitroblitz'--on average--at least once per area. At one point, out of exasperation, I broke down and visited their website to see what it was about. The first thing it did was to spam an ad at me. Touche, nitroblitz. Touche.

Bonus Content!

Nitroblitz: The Game: The Drinking Game!

-Drink every time someone says 'nitroblitz.'

-Drink every time someone talks about how cool of a company nitroblitz is.

-Drink every time a random battle lasts more than five minutes.

-When you get to a riddle door, drink until it becomes challenging.

-Drink when you realize that the beer items cure a status condition that no enemies can afflict you with.

-Drink every time you worry--just a little bit--about the people who made this game.

-Drink if you get sent to the ER for attempting this drinking game.