Developed by GameCrafterTeam and published by GameTomo, Nimbus INFINITY is a direct sequel to the original Project Nimbus. If you have played Project Nimbus, you will find a lot of similarities between the two games since both of them have been developed by the same company GameCrafterTeam. Nimbus INFINITY is also a mech combat game similar to the first one and allows you to zoom around in a powerful Battle Frame and shoot down enemy mechs. This is our review of the PC version of Nimbus INFINITY in which we shoot down massive dreadnoughts and take on tons of mechs.
Nimbus INFINITY puts you in the shoes of a young man who uses a mech to deliver tofu for his mother’s business. The year is 2100 and you are Taiyo, who by luck, manages to get his life turned around as he suddenly finds himself piloting a prototype battle mech called Warsprite and manages to become part of a force that is trying to save Earth from destruction. The game takes you across cities, vast, open deserts, and different places in the vast, open space where you get to engage in intense battles as part of an elite squadron and complete different objectives to reach the final boss and ultimately save the planet from destruction. Nimbus INFINITY picks up the story 21 years after the events of the original Project Nimbus.
Nimbus INFINITY offers you two different modes in its current version, the Campaign Mode and the Survival Mode. The Campaign Mode is a narrative adventure spanning over 11 missions where you will meet plenty of different characters, learn the ropes of controlling your very own mech and fight huge and intense battles across a variety of landscapes. If you need a breather from the missions and their objectives, you can jump into the Survival Mode where it is just you and tons of enemy mechs. The goal here is simple: Survive as long as possible and kill as many enemy mechs as you can before getting blown up yourself.
During the campaign mode, you will hear dialogue and mission commands on the top of the screen and when you are back at the main hub, the ship Akatsuki, you can explore its different areas and interact with different NPCs of the game as well. These conversations are optional and if you love to dive deep into the story and get to know more about the characters that you are fighting the enemies with, these cutscenes are a good way. These are presented in the form of visual novels where there is minimal activity and only the dialogue text changes on the screen with the main characters and everything else staying still. I love the mission briefing screen as it feels retro and something straight out of the classic Ace Combat games.
While there is not much to explore aboard the Akatsuki, while you are not on a mission during your campaign, you will spend your free time here. There are different divisions of this ship, and you can customize your Battle Frame here as well. Before every mission, you are given the option to customize Warsprite both visually and offensively. It has four weapon slots, and you can equip a different weapon in each slot. However, while increased firepower is always good, it adds weight, and you have to watch out for this because some missions will require more agility than firepower. Apart from adding or removing weapons, you can also customize the visual look of your mech here. The visual customization is limited to just colors however the ability to change certain parts to alter the look completely would have been really cool.
You have a decent variety of weapons to use in the game however there is not enough depth to each of the weapons. They all feel the same and the only way to use all of them is to spam the attack button continuously until your locked-on enemy is dead. You can press right-click to turn on auto lock-on and the mech will choose its next enemy on its own and then you can just unload everything you have on it. If you equip all four slots of weapons, you can choose one, empty it, start reloading, and move to the next one and once the whole cycle is complete, your first weapon will be fully charged. You just need to make sure that you fire the weapon at the locked enemy while they are inside the lock-on circle and your weapon will do the rest. The missiles, bullets, and everything that you shoot will seek out the enemies and take them out.
This means that there are no complex aiming mechanics or strategies involved here when it comes to different weapons and shooting. All weapons deal damage to the enemy in their respective stats and you can just spam whatever you want without any repercussions. However, the sacrifice comes in the mobility and agility of your mech because the heavier weapons you install, the more weight your mech has to carry, and its movement speed is affected by this. However, despite this mechanic in place, I do not remember equipping all slots affecting the speed of the mech too much and I was able to clear the levels fairly easily. You can switch between three mech modes Offensive, Defensive and Speed based on the scenario and the mech will adjust its power routing.
This does, however, give you a sense of freedom because no ammo limits mean that you can go absolutely berserk on your enemies and unleash hell on them. This bit of gameplay is quite fun and if you are playing on the lower difficulties, you will feel like a god as you chew through wave after wave of enemy mechs without worrying about a thing. On higher difficulties, you will need to watch out for your own health because the enemies are ruthless, and you cannot just focus on shooting as well. You will need to evade incoming missiles, bullets, and any sort of attacks by using your boost which gives you agility. If you love mech action games, I will recommend that you play Nimbus INFINITY on a higher difficulty because it feels really easy on lower difficulties.
When it comes to Game Modes, Nimbus INFINITY is definitely lacking because the single-player campaign is fairly on the small side and Survival Mode is only fun for some time before it starts to get repetitive. There is no post-campaign content in the game and the missions in the campaign themselves are not that big as well. On average, one mission takes less than 10 minutes, and you are done with it. Nimbus INFINITY seems to pack potential, and an online multiplayer mode would have been excellent where players would battle each other from around the globe, and even the addition of a multiplayer aspect to the survival mode could make it better as co-op is always fun in shooting games. The developers will need to think something along these lines to make Nimbus INFINITY reach its full potential otherwise the singleplayer-only content is not going to keep this game alive for a long time.
Technically, Nimbus INFINITY appears to be in fairly decent shape when it comes to visuals and overall optimization of the game. During the early stages, the game feels a little laggy and during some of the story missions, there are massive framerate drops when there is a lot of activity on the screen. This is evident during the later part of the story where the enemy numbers are large and there are a lot of bullets and missiles flying around on the screen at the same time. Even with a powerful GPU, the frames drop massively if you are running high resolutions with maximum fidelity. The developer is releasing new updates for the game and it appears like the performance issues might eventually be fixed in the game in the coming weeks.
Nimbus INFINITY started its journey as an Early Access title and despite spending a decent amount of time in this period, the full release of Nimbus INFINITY still feels underwhelming in nearly all of its aspects. It has a small campaign, there are only two game modes and there are no variety of different mechs to use in the game. This seriously limits the post-campaign life of Nimbus INFINITY as players will only complete the campaign, spend some time in the Survival mode and then move on to some other game because there is not enough content in the game. If GameCrafterTeam and GameTomo want to increase the life of Nimbus INFINITY, they will need to add more content to the game in terms of mechs, pilots, and missions to keep its spirit alive. Some gameplay optimizations would be excellent as well because, in its current form, it might not appeal too much to hardcore fans of mech action games.
Final Verdict:
Nimbus INFINITY is just another generic mech shooter that has its moments but will not keep you entertained for a very long time. The mech controls are easy to understand once you complete some of the initial missions and the story is just typical of what you can expect from such a game. For fans who love mech action as they zoom around and destroy tons of enemy mechs, Nimbus INFINITY could be a decent title to try out while you wait for something else to come along however do not keep your hopes very high. The main campaign is not that big, and the survival mode is only fun for a few hours. Still, Nimbus INFINITY is not a bad game, but it is not a very good game either. It is decent if you want to keep yourself occupied for a weekend or just want some mech action and shooting cool bosses. If you want to try it out, go in with an open mind and do not expect too much.
Final Score: 6.5/10
