Nightmare Reaper Review (PaperCake)
Nightmare Reaper: MY EYES, THE GOGGLES DO NOTHING.
In the realm of boomer shooters, I expected something like Nightmare Reaper to happen EVENTUALLY. With how the genre basically either embraces some older game or improves on a formula, and with the ready amount of kitbashing, someone WOULD do the randomly generated one. We saw it with Shadow Warrior 2 and 3 and we didn't like it there. So there's been an uphill battle of sorts. Nightmare Reaper puts a lot of things against itself. Randomly generated, looter shooter, boomer shooter, there's too many sales taglines here. The game feels like a marketing guy trying to make the most 2018~ era game possible. In a company's hands that'd be a problem, just look at the last few Borderlands. In the hands of Blazing Bit?
It's a terrifying concept.
Nightmare Reaper is a game that arguably knows the limitations it's hoisted on itself. It knows random generation's a gamble in any game, let alone one where you're supposed to be bouncing around the ceiling. As some counterbalance, it stuffs itself with enough side features to make up the gaps. Silly weapons, silly skill sets, and RNGesus that's loose enough to KINDA let you have fun. Sure it's a boomer shooter on flat-ish mostly cubic levels, you know that. And then you get into the weird extra movement mechanics that are both odd and horrifically fun. You start feeling the strange power creep as you bash different stats and skills together and find the thing that works. And that's what salvages this game, in my opinion.
Any lesser game would try to stop you or prevent RNG from giving you some silly benefits. Because they don't want you to push the limits of what the game can handle. Nightmare Reaper doesn't have that. When it says randomly generated looter shooter, it means it. You can find some of the most hilariously overpowered weapons in here, scrunched up with some piddly poodle shooters. It takes one dumb stat bonus to make the average minigun into an overclocked death machine that turns anything that isn't a boss monster into paste, and when you acquire that weapon, all bets are off. The game entirely changes the minute you find the most busted weapon in the game.
I have no idea what psychological monster in this woman's mind conjured said minigun with Overload, but I thank you because it made the boss fight for Act 2 last around a minute.