Lets get one thing out of the way up front. “Awesome” means something that’s completely retarded, but appeals to that twelve year old boy in all of us. We can’t help loving it, even if thinking even the slightest amount detracts from its quality. Lightsabers are awesome. Metal is awesome. Dinosaurs are awesome. NanoBreaker is awesome.

NanoBreaker was released on the Playstation 2 a few years ago by Konami. It failed miserably. At least I think it did. Mostly because I got it for five dollars. The awful thing is, this game is easily worth ten dollars.

The main gimmicks of NanoBreaker are the truly excessive, downright silly blood splatter and the titular weapon, an fancy energy beatstick with the ability to shift into different weapons during special attacks.

The mechanics are solid, though far from impressive. It’s a generic action beat-em-up deal. Throw combos at monsters, advance. Luckily, a couple of interesting things are thrown in to keep you from having Streets of Rage flashbacks.

As you progress, you’ll receive Fancy Powerup Things that allow you to unlock new combos and special attacks in the order you want. This doesn’t actually mean much, but it provides just a tiny bit of interaction with what would otherwise be a static movelist.

The other twists are the Action Dealies and the Grabby Thing. The Action Dealies which are special effects that you can have equipped. One allows your block to reflect lasers, one makes it easier to use special attacks with your Grabby Thingy, and so forth. The Grabby Thing launches out and grabs things, Scorpian style. Pull enemies out of the sky and wail on them, use it to bring one member of a tough crowd to you to fight it one-on-one, stuff like that. Basically, it’s DMC4’s gimmick, just a couple of years earlier and done better.

Hey, and if you love block pushing puzzles, get ready for the BALL INCINERATING EXCITEMENT OF BLOCK PUZZLES WHERE YOU GRAPPLING HOOK THE BLOCKS INSTEAD OF JUST PUSHING THEM.

Alright, the game is decent. Enough of that shit. Back to the transform-o-lightsaber and enemies made entirely of blood and the enigmatic spurt boson. Simply put, this game is bloody. Not disturbing, just… has blood everywhere. Enough blood to make you wonder if your goofy ass robot ninja angel character can swim. Gallon upon gallon of blood is pumped at high speed out of everything you wound and kill, and enemies are numerous. This game has so much blood that they were considerate enough to put in a blood color option. With like fifty damn colors. Including random, where every enemy will bleed a different color. For when you want to feel like you’re slaughtering an enclave of wicked fairies or something. Literally painting the room with rainbow gore.

And there’s a transforming lightsaber thing, for fucks sake. If you have five bucks, pick it up.