Project Nimbus: Complete Edition - PC Review

Do you like giant mechs? Do you love explosions? How about beam swords? Well then, we may have found a game for you!

Project Nimbus follows the exploits of two young soldiers who are the new recruits in a private military company. One a wisecracking mech pilot, the other a young Japanese girl. Presumably together they pilot a new mech and do aerial battle with terrorists, their combat units, and other mechs! Set in a futuristic world following the nuclear fallout of another world war, humanity has been relegated to the skies on floating cities in order to live. There are factions nipping at each others heels, with two main factions having a cold war, and the third faction is the terrorist organization “Children of the Fallen Nation”. It’s a world of danger and combat, and you’ve got to make your place in this world.

The game is split into segments with individual missions in each segment. While these missions are generally “destroy all the enemies”, they do have a bunch of variation, with there generally being some sort of additional requirement, such as only having the beam sword available. So off you go in your mech! Shooting, slashing, and dashing your way through enemies.

If you’ve played games similar to Armored Core, you probably know what you’re walking into. You have a slew of different weapons available to your mech, mostly some form of rocket or missile and a machine gun. You also have a handy energy blade. Unlike Armored Core however, you have unlimited ammo, but you do need to reload every so often, which can be done either manually or automatically if you run out of ammo in your clip.

Your blade is always equipped as long as it’s available which is super handy, but be careful with it, as you do a sort of dash boost into enemies before slashing if you’ve locked on, which usually mean dashing right into enemy fire, but can be quite useful for dispatching the smaller enemies. That dash however is probably the most integral part to surviving your battles. Not only can you dash in any direction you can point in, but it’s pretty much the only really consistent way to dodge enemy missiles. Which are awful by the way. You’re supposed to have a flare that you can drop to draw the missiles away from you, but I found it to work maybe a quarter of the time. Thankfully you can hold boost down to nope right the heck out. You do have a limited amount of dash, but your dash will come back over time.

You have quite the arsenal at your disposal, with a myriad of different weapon types, all situationally useful and most being just generally useful. You have a machine gun, a railgun, homing missiles, drones, and rockets, all of which behave differently. There’s a quick swap option as well as a quick select wheel that slows time slightly while you’re selecting, which is really good since you’ll probably be super overwhelmed for the first while after being introduced to the gameplay. Seriously though, it can take a while to get used to, especially since the game can be rather fast paced if you’re in the middle of a group of hostile enemies.

There are three different difficulties to try if you’re looking for a tougher challenge, a wide array of weapons to play with, and an endless wave mode and “mini campaign” for added entertainment after you’ve finished the main campaign mode. While you don’t have the ability to customize your mech, your wide variety of weapons and being forced to “make do with what you have” was something I was actually more endeared to.

Overall I was pleasantly surprised by Project Nimbus. I went in expecting mediocre, and I came out with better than average. If you’re a fan of giant robots and 3D aerial battles, this is definitely something you’d want to check out.

Game Information

Platform:
PC
Developer(s):
GameCrafterTeam
Publisher(s):
KISS ltd, GameTomo
Genre(s):
Action
Simulator
Mode(s):
Single Player
Other Platform(s):
Nintendo Switch

Source:
Provided by Publisher

Article by Richard

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Project Nimbus: Complete Edition - Switch Review

From the onset, Project Nimbus will not be for everyone. Giant mechs called Battle Frames, floating cities in which humanity escaped to after the third world war, orbital elevators, mass drivers to launch ships into space and more missiles than the Switch knew what to do with at times, I was in love. Fans of Gundam, Macross, Aldnoah Zero, Code Geass or any other mech heavy anime out there that don't immediately come to mind will plenty to love with fast paced combat and a storyline that would make most anime lovers happy.

Other than some fast paced combat, I wasn't expecting much else with Project Nimbus. This isn't a bad thing as sometimes you just need to “play” and not worry about fifty thousand other things like if there was enough ammo in the cache or if you made sure to tune the servos in the arms. That said, it didn't take very long to be happily surprised at there being more than just fast paced combat.

The reason that I didn't really add in Armored Core or even Gundam Builders and just left it at Gundam, is because instead of building your own mech, you are given a mech or a choice of mechs through the characters that act as the protagonist of the moment. Having done so, by splitting your time between different characters and factions you get the whole picture of the current events instead of just the narrowed view of one or two individuals which adds a depth and a story to mesh it all together. At the same time you also get to experience what it's like to be at the top of the food chain and other times somewhere in between.

This is something that Project Nimbus does really well. By switching up the pilots and the mech, the combat doesn't ever limit you. Speed, weapons, altitudes… well it does in the case of falling into the atmosphere… but in general, it doesn't limit you. You can fight and fly high, low or somewhere in the middle while unloading ungodly amounts of ammo and missiles into the enemy forces that are trying to destroy you or what you are protecting. Each mech that you'll have the change to pilot has a variety of gear that can all be reloaded, and depending on the firepower, shorter or longer reloading times. You pretty know what you have in your hands the second you launch and while some can move faster than others, the others have railguns and only need one shot to even take out larger aircraft carriers.

That in a nutshell is really it. You get a bit of hanger dialog before a sortie, you get some dialog while dodging and flying through various environments both planetside and in outer space, you unleash hell while dodging and flying, and then you have a cutscene that moves the events forward before the rinsing and repeating. And it works. It works very well because of how they've tied the characters into the overall events and it honestly felt like I was playing an anime mecha series.

The only real areas that could have used a bit of a buff is in the sound and some of the visuals department. Because things move so fast, you don't really get to see the details on most enemies, they are just blips moving at fast speeds until you move in close for a sword strike. Larger enemies you can see and appreciate the detail but they are gone in an instant. It works with the speed set out but it would have been nice to see a little more than you do. The audio however was a mixed bag.

Sounds effects are spot on. The whooshing of missiles, the ra-tat-tat of machine gun fire, the sound of engines being kicked into high gear. Stellar. The character voices in comparison to all of that? Needed to be louder but if you decrease the rest, there's still a disconnect as the voices are low but the notifications of a certain ammo type being reloaded are unbearingly loud. The background music was often either there or nothing at all. When it's there though, wow, it's there and it brings everything into that feeling like when you're on episode 36~38 of 50 and things just HAPPENED. Sadly the rest of the time it's only really there to block out pure silence but not enough to be any sort of memorable.

Whether on a giant screen on or in your hands, in the middle of epic combat or between missions while getting a briefing or listening to dialog, the complete edition of Project Nimbus is fantastic. Fast paced, well written, it may not be for everyone but for lovers of mecha? It's a must!

Game Information

Platform:
Nintendo Switch
Developer(s):
GameCrafterTeam
Publisher(s):
KISS ltd, GameTomo
Genre(s):
Action
Simulator
Mode(s):
Single Player
Other Platform(s):
PC

Source:
Provided by Publisher

Article by Pierre-Yves

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Project Nimbus - PC Preview

Project Nimbus is a game after my own heart; take giant mechas called "BattleFrames", giant floating cities, the ability to target multiple bad guys at once, and then let slip the dogs of war. First, I am a massive mecha fan and I grew up on Robotech / Macross, Mobile Suit Gundam, Transformers, and any other giant robotic machines (man, I miss ExoSquad...). GameCrafter Team is an independent game studio based out of Thailand that is currently Project Nimbus and they have worked on previous titles like HyperSonic 4 and Smash Cat. While they are admittedly a young team, developing for the local market since 2008 and the global market since 2012, their dedication to providing a fast, action-packed, and most importantly fun, game is in full effect with Project Nimbus.

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