Nier: Automata review: 'Ridiculous and unabashed'

Few games do such a representative job in their first thirty minutes as Nier: Automata. This genre-skipping RPG opens its story with a whistle-stop tour through several play styles, from vertical shoot em up, third person action, 2D platformer, horizontal blaster, top-down twin-stick shooter and some others I've probably forgotten, before setting you up to fight a giant mechanised oil rig. Forget the Automata suffix, this game should probably be called Nier: WTF?. Nier: Automata is actually a sequel to last generation's Nier, itself a spin-off from the Drakengard series, but don't worry about any of that. You don't need any prior knowledge of what's gone before, especially when Nier: Automata's story takes place a couple of thousand years after the first game. The plot revolves around an alien invasion that has seen the last of humanity escape to the moon, while earth has been taken over by robots. Rather put out by this, humans have been sending androids back to earth to battle these interlopers, including your character, 2B.