Housemarque is known for their extremely polished twin-stick shooters and the power of the PlayStation 4 has afforded them the opportunity to make games with relatively simple mechanics while opening up processing power for massive spectacle, such as the insane explosions of voxels (three dimensional pixels) in Resogun — which, for the record, is still one of the best games on PS4. With Alienation recently released, and Matterfall still without a firm launch date, it was surprising to see another Housemarque game take the stage at the PSX showcase, though Nex Machina wasn’t a bad surprise at all. I mean, come on. This is Housemarque we’re talking about. It has to be good.
The staple of any Housemarque game is polished, fast-paced shooting while bullets and explosions fill the screen. I don’t normally like bullet-hell games, but somehow Housemarque manages to cut past all of that, to where I not only like their games, but they become some of my favorites, regularly coming up in my gaming playlist. What I really wondered was how Nex Machina would retain the signature Housemarque fundamentals while being a new and different game. I knew that the only way to get the answer to that question was to get my hands on it. At its most base level, Nex Machina is a twin-stick shooter. At first glance it looks and plays like a cross between Resogun and Dead Nation. The top down shooting plays like Housemarque’s zombie title, yet the explosions of voxel...