Nitro Family is an arcade first-person shooter from Korean based developer Delphieye Entertainment (Helikia2 MMORPG makers). The main storyline of this game is about crashes between Victor Chopski Family, who lived peacefully in a deep forest as a hunter, and "Golden Bell" which is a multi-national corporate that tries to rule the world by legalizing the drug production. This drug causes serious brain damage over time and they turned into raving maniacs. While Golden Bell recruits babies for the research of a cure for the drug, they make a huge mistake to accidentally take Victor's baby. So the Ultimate goal of "Nitro Family" is Victor and Maria's adventure to get back their baby "Red Chief". And that's where the game starts off, with you running down the street, your wife in the carry case on your back, and a whole bunch of drug crazies in front of you.

The run n' gun gameplay of Nitro Family doesn't require much explanation as it is your standard arcade styled action-shooter and can be compared in some ways to Serious Sam or Will Rock. Yeah, you will play the classic - repeatedly move from point A to point B, killing anything in your way, riding on elevators, pushing buttons etc. The enemies charge in hordes at you, you aim and shoot and see your enemies break in to pieces of flesh. Just shoot everything in your path and keep walking and you will complete the game.

There're over 50 different enemies including drug planters, drug refining technicians, guards, soldiers, mutated chickens, mutated pigs and large ladies with even larger machine guns. Every few levels you will run into a boss which are pretty easy and require no strategy except hide, pop out, and shoot. There are totally 15 various levels such as Latin America, South East Asia, China, Russia and U.S. The game's locations are pretty varied as well, from industrial complexes to oriental temples to even an aircraft carrier.

One of the most interesting things about the game is the weapons and combat. Weapons are divided into two kinds, upgradeable 3 combo weapons and four regular weapons. Combo weapons are used for combo play, handling different weapons on each hand - each hand carries a weapon that can be switched, fired or reloaded independently of the other. The basic combo weapons are shotgun, machine gun and rocket launcher, each one can be upgraded into 3 levels. To be able to upgrade your weapons, you have to collect enough of what look likes credit cards which are scattered around various places in the different stages. Through the upgrade, the size of magazine and shooting speed and power will be increased. There are also hidden madnum "gold cards" throughout each level, which if collected, lead to a special reward. Besides, you can automatically (after you kill enough enemies) enter "Ecstasy" mode, sort of like Max Payne's bullet time, only with funky music playing in the background, and warped visual FX.

In terms of multiplayer, there is only co-op mode (over a LAN or the Internet) as an option. The co-op mode is decently implemented, with minimal lag times, but it does not keep your attention very long. While the co-op mode is probably the best feature in Nitro Family, they should add some DM, CTF modes to increase the replay value of the game. Besides, the co-op mode gets boring pretty fast :(

Overall, Nitro Family is pretty mediocre mindless shooter with high level of repetitiveness. The more you play the more you realize that this game is just not finished. To be honest, the game is boring and not very fun to play at all. Gamers looking for a good arcade first-person shooter should most likely skip Nitro Family and go buy Painkiller.

Related links: demo (211MB)

System requirements:
Minimum: Pentium III 700 MHz or Equivalent, 256MB of RAM, 32MB video card or higher such as Geforce 2 or ATI Radeon or better /Video card must support hardware transform and lighting (T&L)/, Windows Direct X 8 compatible sound card, Windows 98/ME/2000 or XP Operating System, Direct X 9 Required, 1GB of free hard drive space
Recommended: Pentium IV 1.4 Ghz or higher, 512MB of RAM or higher, 64MB video card such as Geforce 3 or ATI Radeon 8500 or better, Windows Direct X 8 compatible sound card, Windows 98/ME/2000 or XP Operating System, Direct X 9 Required, 1GB of free hard drive space