Watch a robot parry a nuke in this Nier and Devil May Cry-influenced indie actioner
Stop the Bomb, indeed
I like to think that I'm above the lure of Cool Violent Thing in Videogame these days, but when I see a lanky robot parry a nuclear shockwave with a katana as though swatting a wasp, I find myself Enthused.
The videogame in question is Pyrolith's V.A. Proxy, which I've had my eye on for a while, on account of it being inspired by Nier: Automata and Devil May Cry, with a landscape of megastructures and bruised and rusty art direction that calls to mind The Signal from Tölva. In this moody open world action game, you play one of three robots who awaken to find their memories gone, and promptly set out in search of their creator. It'd be an eye-catcher even without the atomic parry, which you can witness for yourself in the embedded clip below.
(Apologies if you're having trouble loading the vid - Alice0 and I have experimented with embedded TwX videos in different browsers, and as with all things Elon, the results are inconsistent. You might need to sign into view - here's the link.)
To apply a connoisseur's eye to said footage, what makes the move so enticing for me is the Moses-parting-the-Red-Sea effect of projecting a clear path through the flames. According to the developer, you will need to upgrade the katana a bit before you can pull this off.
You won't just be fighting mushroom clouds in V.A. Proxy, of course. There are robotic enemies of all shapes and sizes, some hefty enough to necessitate aerial combos. You also get a flying drone sidekick, or V-Unit, with combat abilities of its own, as in Automata. Here's some non-XXX footage from last year:
The landscapes have a nicely chiselled, glitchart vibe, with clouds, hills and buildings bleaching away to nothing in the distance, and a HUD that seems to consist of scratchy computer lettering. Pyrolith is the game's sole developer. They describe it on their Patreon as "probably the most ambitious indie game in the last decade", which is overegging the pudding a little, but there's something to be said for moxie.
Here's the Steam page with more. What's the biggest thing you've ever parried in a game? I'm pretty sure I walked off a hundred-strong Ball of Velociraptors in Exoprimal the other day.