YMMV / MADNESS: Project Nexus 2

• Alternate Character Interpretation:
  • Is Gestalt fully controlled by Phobos or is he merely being used by the latter? Word of God indicates the second of these options, stating that Gestalt is a fully sentient being who's too overloaded with S3LF energy to think or act rationally, and that Gestalt is less so a body for Phobos to control as he is a living gateway to the Other Place that Phobos intends on taking the power of.
  • Hank: Ax-Crazy Blood Knight who just wants to kill everything, Dumb Muscle Cloud Cuckoo Lander who legitimately doesn't care about what's going on and is just here to Destroy Project Nexus and kill anyone in his way to do so or Death Seeker that just wants to die one way or the other?
• Anti-Climax Boss: Hank, due to being a far more standard firefight after the extended multi-form sequence that is Gestalt. Likely intentional, as he's very consistently portrayed as biting off more than he can chew and having a far more inflated sense of his contribution to the fights he's not the sole player character in.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment:
  • The opening cutscene of the story campaign features a Grunt that falls into the palm of a gigantic Phobos, and is promptly crushed. The scenery then turns a dark shade of red, as multiple agents surround the Science Tower in Nexus City. Phobos then floats toward it and is seen on top of the Tower, with some sort of sigil behind him as the screen fades to the intro. Nothing like this cutscene ever appears again, and has absolutely no exposition of the plot.
  • The Hive, a Mechanical Abomination that Christoff and Deimos fight at the end of Shakedown. There never was any indication that this thing was coming, its role in Project Nexus is unknown, as well as why the Nexus Core even guards this thing; its sole purpose in the story seems to just be a boss to fight.
• Catharsis Factor: Killing the S-3LF Eater is presented not just with a sword that one-hit-kills any enemy that's getting in the way of the fight, but a unique takedown animation where your character plunges the blade into its collarbone, sinks it in deep enough to puncture its core, rip it out to stab it in the gut, and then cleave the damn thing in half as it explodes. For all the time it spent chasing you and potentially instantly killing you, it's well worth it.
• Complete Monster: Director Phobos is the corrupt ruler of Nexus City and the head of Project Nexus, a scientific program aimed to do good for Nevada. Distancing himself from the Project's good intentions, Phobos tries to use it to achieve godhood for himself. When Dr. Christoff tries to warn him that this could lead to the world being destroyed, Phobos fires him under threats of sending him to the Other Place. Phobos is eventually killed by Christoff, but his S-3LF returns, taking control of Project Gestalt and trying to reach the Other Place to obtain godhood while attempting to kill the protagonists, resulting in the deaths of most of his minions. A megalomaniac with a god complex, Phobos is ready to sacrifice anything and anyone to reach godhood.
• Death of the Author: For years, fans assumed that the Project Nexus games were an alternate continuity to the main Madness Combat animated series. However, shortly before Project Nexus 2 came out, Krinkels said that everything is canon, implying that the animation series and the games are a single continuity. Some of the fanbase has preferred to ignore this info because of many contradictions and continuity errors between the animated series and the games, such as Hank and Deimos being back in their normal forms or the lack of references to the games in the animations to name a few.
• Demonic Spiders:
  • Nexus Core's Riot Guards, like in Project Nexus Classic, are a massive pain to deal with. To start, their shields can absorb just about any attack short of explosives and it'll block any shots if they are in front of other enemies leading to you potentially wasting your ammo. The only way to deal with them normally is to attack when they are raising their shock baton to strike but not only is this window fairly small, even then their healthpool is massive as you need to peel off their armor first to the point they can take multiple Sweet Spot shots or heavy melee strikes to fall. Compounding that is the fact their own attacks deal high damage and come out fairly fast which can destroy your Corpus block surprisingly quickly especially if you are swarmed by them which is the most likely case as they spawn semi-frequently.
    • Their downside is that they're slow and vulnerable to grenades. If grouped together, a grenade will knock them down or a flashbang stun them. They can also be individually mouse wheel click front kicked and defenses opened from there.
  • Elves in Slaughter Time. They teleport when shot at, and if they successfully grab you, they'll explode, resulting in heavy damage. If you're playing on Tough or Madness difficulty, then the Elves become more annoying since every explosion will mean a guaranteed loss of a corpus block and potentially a game over. The only means of properly dealing with them is to hit them with a melee attack just before they leap at you or get them with a sneak attack. If one attempts the sneak attack, then they must do so the moment the Elf spawns or else the Elf will just teleport away.
  • Apparitions from The Haunting of Nevada House compare to Riot Guards in threat level. Two Corpus blocks, teleporting constantly, and being a Shield-Bearing Mook that's very block-happy. And they resist Dissonance/explosive weapons. It's telling that the Demoniac Demonstrator, the actual boss-class enemy, goes down way faster than the Apparition it tends to spawn with.
  • The Vampires in Arena mode are are source of frustration for anyone playing it and are pretty much responsible for turning the single mission they're in into That One Level. The Vampire Punk has a base attack which is a multi-hit combo that can dish out heavy damage and a huge leap that can cover the entire arena you're in with a generous grab hitbox and you have to mash your dodge button fast if you don't want them to deal a heavy-damage bite to you - and since they always come in numbers it's not unusual to be stuck in multiple grab attacks back-to-back. On top of that if you aren't using weapons that deal fire damage, being knocked down will only stun them for a second before they revive (up to two times). Even worse are the Vampire Bruisers who have a Rush Punch that can ragdoll AND dizzy you, pretty much sealing your fate when there are any other enemies nearby that will grab you and destroy your Corpus block. Furthermore, they have an unblockable sprinting grab they'll most likely use while you're still recovering.
    • A less common but no less threatening danger is when Night Toughs get killed by their bite attack. They will resurrect as Vampire Punks or Bruisers depending on who killed them. Fortunately, the Vampires have one weakness in fire. The Night Toughs drop burning torches or stakes. Destroyed torches also become stakes. If you've unlocked the Improvised Weapon skill, you can drive a stake into a Vampire. One can also buy a pair of cheap Welders before the mission, which have high durability and inflict fire damage.
  • Patients, much like the Abominations, will ram you constantly and even can bypass your TAC-Bar, making them hard to avoid. Making matters worse is that in the Seeking Asylum chapter, you face hordes of them, and in confined areas to boot. They're usually Goddamned Bats in Arena Mode, however, due to being a late-game enemy encountered in the Murder Room, in which the spacious area at least allows you to avoid them better, but their ability to charge right at you combined with the various traps can make them annoying.
• Draco in Leather Pants: A lot of Phobos fanart paints Deimos as his brother/lover, with him showing lots of affection. This is despite the fact that neither are related and that when the two finally do meet, they try to kill eachother.
• Fridge Brilliance: The tutorial chapter taking place around the time of Apotheosis, based on Hank's attire, makes a lot of sense since that's when a lot of the more high-octane action was introduced to the series. You're getting accustomed to the fast-paced hacking, slashing and shooting just as much as Hank is.
  • The song "Funky Punch" gets used in two spaces over the course of the game's history; The first alpha trailer, and the final boss of arena mode. Given the nature of Arena mode, and specifically the wave progression of the final Contract moving backwards, it's only fitting that the song bookend the player's journey in such a way.
• Fridge Horror: With Gestalt's skinless appearance, it can be inferred that despite his potentially world-ending state, he's an Unfinished Mag. Even after he'd been forcibly removed from his Chamber, he was still growing. Whatever he would've been capable of had the Nexus Core been allowed to finish him could only ever be unfathomably apocalyptic.
• Game-Breaker: While most of the cast and loadouts in Story Campaign are balanced, the same cannot be said for certain Arena Mode loadouts:
  • Tinkerers get access to an workshop that essentially gives you every gun in the game for a fraction of the cost, allowing you to make dissonance based weaponry as early as you can mod your first SMG. Furthermore, they gain an extra magazine with every gun, unlike the Agent who only gets an extra magazine for handguns. Even moreso, they can access a trick to inflate their monetary gain much earlier than any other Origin, due to the game allowing you to sell certain modified guns for much more than the cost of the base weapon and mods combined.
  • An Offering is basically what happens when you give a Fragile Speedster a very easy way to mitigate their vulnerability. Offerings have the ability to recover a Corpus block through non-stealth takedowns, and can easily be abused through throwing flashbangs, which dizzies the enemies and leaves them vulnerable to a takedown. Furthermore, with every enemy they kill, there's a chance that they will be revived as a ghost that can assist the player, including "GO3LMs". Also, since they're an Acrobatic character, they can zip around the battlefield like crazy, with the ability to have their throwable weapons pass through enemies being a nice bonus.
  • The Massive. In theory, they're supposed to be a Mighty Glacier taken to extreme levels (they only level in Strength and Endurance, alongside having the most Corpus blocks of all the origins), whose effectiveness falls off once every enemy is packing guns and can outrun the slow Massive. In practice, their charge attacks more or less make up for their lack of speed; a Megaton Punch that is capable of crossing over various rooms, and a gigantic leap to go to greater heights. Furthermore, with the enormous amount of Strength and Endurance, this means that they can equip the heaviest armor in the game, use the biggest melee weapons and shields, and dual-wield even the heaviest guns, which make up for their accuracy penalty, and that isn't even counting the mods they can equip to their guns. The Massive is so overpowered that they can easily sweep a horde of Vampires without losing a corpus, and take on late-game levels solo without fail.
  • As far as weapons go, the Nevadean Dozer Model E is undeniably the most powerful firearm you can buy. While it's up to chance whether or not it shows up in Chef's inventory and it's in the pricier range, once you get it there's very little that can stand up to it. It's a fast-firing automatic weapon with a sizable magazine size that fires blasts of electricity that takes down most enemies in one hit and with sufficient skills and equipment you can carry several magazines that can last you for quite a while. Equipping multiple Gunman hirelings with this gun model is possible with enough patience and luck, which exaggerates this further.
  • While costing Boon Tokens, the Nexus Blade that you can buy from Dr Crackpot after the "Fickle Friends" Contract Mission is the deadliest melee weapon you can get for a melee focused Origin that trivializes the rest of Arena mode. With a small size, high armor piercing and high durability, you can quickly send even the most armored enemies to the Other Place, and take a Corpus block off the Grand Steward in only a few thwacks.
  • The Magiturge requires 3 imprints to unlock, and for good reason. While finding it difficult to wear thick armor, the Magiturge gains exclusive access to powerful magic items in exchange for Boon Tokens. You can purchase a wand immediately after clearing the first arena, then upgrade it to put out Bullet Hell levels of magic bolts, since wands can be reloaded unlimited times at the mere cost of suffering dizzyness for a while. Furthermore, their exclusive armor pieces increase the number of throwables they can use, allowing for Grenade Spam.
• Goddamned Bats:
  • Really, just about any enemy with a grab. The damage they deal when holding you in a grab isn't much to write home about, but it certainly gets annoying to have to mash the dodge button when resuming play, and it doesn't help that their grabs tend to have priority over mid-swing melee attacks. Even worse are the enemies who can throw you after grabbing, wasting even more time.
  • The syringe-gun-wielding Harmacists go down like any other enemy in the game, however, they have the ability to slow down players with their needles and make the screen suddenly daze colors. This leaves players vulnerable to be grabbed by Orderlies and Zeds, as well as making it easier to fall in the many trapdoors of the Murder Room. It also doesn't help that they have tac-bars, prolonging their annoyance.
  • Nexus Core Agents with melee weapons. Their aversion of Mook Chivalry, combined with their near-flighty speed and being commonly equipped with fast-swinging melee weapons like extendable batons mean they can aggressively rush you down en masse and quickly chip away at your health. The threat of getting caught in a Cycle of Hurting in hand-to-hand combat on higher difficulties and them distracting you from more dangerous enemies adds to their annoyance factor. This is best exemplified in Story Mode's "Base Jumping" mission, where there is a room with a Combat Wave that comes just a few before the boss battle against the Blackguard, and it is only comprised of these guys... and they are mostly equipped with the aforementioned extendable batons, and come at you from the numerous spawn points that are sprinkled throughout. Odds are, this Combat Wave alone just handed you a quick and unexpected Total Party Kill at least once.
  • The Hunter Gudgeon. They aren't any tougher than their commando brethren, but they have one annoying trick; they fire homing green balls of energy. At first, they aren't too bad, as they only shoot one at a time, but as the waves increase with more gudgeons, they become the first priority to deal with, as they can quickly kill you while you are distracted by other enemies.
• Good Bad Bugs: In the Sleepwalker Experiment arena, a sufficiently heavy melee weapon can force anyone through the floor like a particularly squishy nail. Even better, If they were on the players side, they proceed to re-enter the room like nothing happened.
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • Phobos crossed it in the past by trying to use Project Gestalt to achieve godhood, even though it would likely destroy the world.
  • Dr. Crackpot crossed it when he created Plan Zed, which was later used to cause a Zombie Apocalypse. The worst part is that Crackpot doesn't seem to care about this, nor does he care that Phobos's actions could possibly lead to The End of the World as We Know It.
  • We already know that Hank isn't exactly the most heroic protagonist out there, but he definitely crosses the line when he decides to destroy Project Nexus despite the fact that Jebediah could have taken care of it without ending the world. He also gleefully takes the chance to kill Sanford and Deimos when the two refuse to let him do that, revealing he was "hoping it would come to this".
• Tear Jerker:
  • One of the patients' death quotes has them saying "No more voice! No... more... voice..." while crying. Although Patients can be rather annoying enemies, it's heartbreaking to hear them like this.
  • Poor Burger Gil. The guy was so devoted to his job that he keeps cooking even after becoming a Zed.
• That One Attack: While Half-Mags aren't necessarily that hard to deal with, one annoying attack comes in the form of the Zip Punch, which has them punch across a huge distance in an blink that can not only potentially drain a Corpus block, but also dizzies you as well, leaving you vulnerable to a takedown by them or any enemies nearby. Consequently, when you finally get your hands on it as The Massive, it's that powerful.
• That One Achievement: Maximum Headquarters, which requires you to fully upgrade your base. Most of the upgrades aren't actually too expensive to get, capping at around $30k for the final upgrade, which you will probably have by the end of the campaign. However, the Hireling Capacity is where the real pain of getting this achievement comes from. The final upgrade for the capacity costs a whopping $700k, making it the second most expensive thing in the game (behind the Minigun). The only way to get that kind of money is either endlessly grinding the late-game stages, or by modding a gun to increase its value, and then selling it.
• That One Boss:
  • Tricky's "Murder Time" gameshow at the end of Sleeper Labs. Hank and Christoff must survive 3 rounds of different enemies, each round lasting a minute and 30 seconds. The enemies in question are Patients, Orderlies, Harmacists, Sleepwalker G03LM's, and exclusive to the area, the Honk Zeds. All of these enemies can mess with the player in one way or another, and there's also random hazards such as tiles dropping, burner tiles, laser turrets, and drones (Although the drones weren't meant to be part of the gameshow). As if that wasn't enough, for the third and final round, many of the tiles drop, reducing the overall ground that the player can walk on. Needless to say, it may take a while to get the hang of all the different hazards and survive the gameshow.
  • The Dissonance G03LMs not only can teleport like crazy, but are completely immune to being provoked into a Death or Glory Attack by meleeing them, making them much harder to take them down (though they don't have armor to make up for it), and they will not hesitate to beat you while downed. To add insult to injury, a laser that will instantly cause you to lose a Corpus block will appear as soon as you kill it, and since there are four of them, this will happen four times, and you have to fight at least two of them at the same time. Thankfully, they only spawn in one section of The Rush.
  • Director Phobos is not too bad of a boss fight, though he is a reasonable challenge for being the Climax Boss of the game. However, what really elevates him to That One Boss status is when you fight him on Madness Mode. His attacks are significantly more deadly and can destroy a corpus in two hits or one. His flying trash attack when you destroy one of his corpus' is a guarnteed loss in two to three corpus' if you can't dodge properly. This, combined with their tracking, make them an infuriating attack to dodge, bordering on unfair. Then, when he gets his sword, it makes fighting him melee borderline impossible, as doing so triggers him to slash at you twice. This, combined with his teleport dashing and fast attack speed, make him a nightmare to fight. It also doesn't help that, should you die, you have refight Gestalt in order to get back to Phobos, making the fight even more infuriating.
• That One Level:
  • Chasms is a massive brutal wake-up call, even on Tourist. For starters, this is the mission that introduces Abominations, and it gets worse from there: for those who prefer playing the game and skipping dialogue, they will miss out on an conversation on how to temporarily despawn the Abominations in certain sections (which is useful, since it never tells you that there's an Infinite Combat Wave occuring). Next, you have to beat Dr. Crackpot, but only after you defeat his guards first, since he'll take no damage until he teleports to the arena, and even then he can be a nuisance with his ranged attacks, not to mention he's frightening at close range. Finally, just when the level is about to end, Project Gestalt crushes Dr. Crackpot and you're forced into a 2-minute and 10-sec Escape Sequence, which aside from avoiding a rampaging Gestalt, has you dodge walls with a very limited time window. Oh, and if it's combined with a knockout from the carts, it's usually an instant Corpus loss. If you fail during this sequence, you have to fight Dr. Crackpot again!
  • The Climb is usually regarded as one of the hardest levels of Project Nexus, especially on higher difficulties. Not long after you start the level, the first units that appear (discounting the G03LM that you can spawn by ringing the attendant multiple times) are guaranteed to fill the entire room with bullets, which is compounded with a lack of cover. Furthermore, Hank and Sanford later have sections that split them up, and because the friendly A.I. isn't the best, whichever character you didn't control will most likely lose all their Corpus blocks unless you clear the rooms in time. While the Dissonance weaponry can help you out, this is compounded that there are very few places to fill them up (which is a godsend compared to the fact that you cannot refill normal ammunition in this level). To top it off, there are multiple MAG Agents which are heavily resistant and serve as a meatshield for the other grunts that can shoot you. Oh, and much like Chasms, there is a specific section that you need to shoot a specific object to stop the Infinite Combat Wave, except unlike Chasms, there is no clue that you need to shoot it. And since this is one of the longest sections in the game, if you fail the mission at any point before the boss sequence, you have to start the whole stage all over again, and while this applies to all stages, they were at least doable enough for players to not notice, though it's heavily pronounced here because of the sheer difficulty. There is also a puzzle in the middle of the level, which instantly kills the flow of combat, and while it can be solved by button mashing so that all the crates line up, the fact that it is there makes the level even more unfun. Finally, the end is considered by many to be one of the hardest boss battles in the game: After enduring an AAHW assault of 75 agents, including a MAG Agent, you have to survive three minutes and thirty seconds being assaulted by an combination of Project Gestalt, AAHW and the Nexus Core, made much harder that periodically, Gestalt will summon a Dissonance orb to obliterate anything in its path, though it's somewhat more of a benefit to you given how predicable it is, and makes the middle right floor an "Instant Death" Radius, since after a while, Gestalt will climb up and claw anything in its path, which (thankfully) includes other enemies. To top it off, you might think that getting a gun might solve your problems, though since the massive amount of mooks means a pileup of weapons, it's possible to get a melee weapon by accident and getting shot by multiple grunts that can and will drain your TAC-Bar easily. Fortunately, the last part is pretty easy since you can sneak up on the scientists and get a good cache of Dissonance weaponry, though good luck trying to even get there in the first place. Luckily, however, a recent patch has been added that adds an extra checkpoint, alleviating the Checkpoint Starvation that plagued this specific level. It doesn't make it any less hard though.
  • Hard Sell in Arena Mode is a contract mission where you have to defend a Core from N51 soldiers, and became infamous in the community for its sudden difficulty curve. Almost every enemy is a heavily-armed elite, the Core has three buttons that saboteurs can simultaneously interact with to open its shielding (as an aside, the Core only has four points before it opens up), and up to dozens of saboteurs swarm the buttons while you're already under assault by commandos and snipers. Any lock being undone decreases your pay if you win, and you basically lose the mission if the Core's shielding opens up, since the enemies then transition to just shooting it until it explodes.
  • The Haunting of Nevada House is a close second for Arena Mode. It's not particularly hard, but it has Hard Sell's mechanic of protecting a ritual altar from enemies that come in from several rooms. The main issue, however, is that most of the enemies will chase you and your Hirelings and will ignore the altar, so you can't just stay in one room like in Hard Sell and kill everything that comes your way; you have to hunt down the enemies yourself. It's not so much difficult as it is annoying, thankfully, as it's only in the second batch of missions. More annoying are the Demoniac cultists that do aim for the altar; they'll appear from one of four windows to try and break it open and get in, but each room has a window that they can appear from (With the library having two) and the AI ignores them entirely. Killing them doesn't even affect the enemy count for the wave!
  • One of the most universally disliked levels in Arena Mode is the Murder Room. It's essentially just a giant room with slopes, fire pits, and trap doors that, if you stand on them for long enough, instantly destroy your corpus should you fall down them. However, this isn't the reason why this level earns its place as That One Level. Instead, it is the utterly absurd amount of enemies that spawn. Per wave, there is at the least over 100 enemies, most of them being a mix between Goddamned Bats and Demonic Spiders. Surviving the Murder Room isn't so much as a an extremely difficult challenge and more of an insane endurance/patience test by surviving a fuckton of enemies that really only exist to make your life miserable. Oh and the cherry on the top is that later waves upgrade the trap doors with blenders that instantly kill you instead of taking a Corpus block from you.
• That One Puzzle:
  • The crate puzzle in Climb. It is the only puzzle in the entire game during an already extremely hard level. The main gimmick is trying to match up all the crates so that they align and you can walk across to the other side. However, the puzzle mostly consists of button mashing so that all the crates align. Word of God states that it was added to give the players a break from combat, and they succeeded, perhaps far, far too well.
  • While the final boss fight isn't hard, one of the sections of the boss fight is incredibly annoying. You have to toss plugs into their power outlets so that Christoff can direct the Divergence Engine towards Gestalt, and Gestalt has to be in a specific position for it to work. The problem is tossing the plugs to the outlets in the first place, since the positions to throw the plugs are very wonky, and as a result, can potentially bounce back even if the mouse cursor is directly on the outlet. Not only that, but they have a chance to disconnect from their sockets, forcing you to do the whole thing over again. Have fun doing this while Gestalt is targeting you!
• That One Sidequest:
  • The entire Legacy of the S-3LF Eater update is considered an extremely tedious and boring quest for what it was hyped up as. It essentially amounts to tracking down five graffiti markings and five portals, all while being chased by the S-3LF Eater. While you can kill the Eater, it is insanely tanky, with the only reward being a "clue" for where the graffiti/portal is located, usually to places that don't even have the graffiti/portal. Oh yeah, and the graffiti/portal are completely randomized, so you can't use a guide to find out their locations, potentially taking hours just to find one of them. The only good thing to come out of the goose chase is the "Prime Blade", an unbreakable sword that instantly kills most enemies, as well as the S-3LF Eater outfit, which gives two extra corpuses, similar to Deimos and Sanford's type 3 outfits.
  • Another annoying questline, as well as being a That One Achievement, is finding all of the Burger Gil bags. The bags are scattered across the overworld map and on different levels. The only hint you are given about their locations is an order list in Beat the Streets, and even then their specific locations are vague, as the bags themselves don't highlight when you focus on them, making them blend in with their surroundings. After completing the questline, the bags spell out a YouTube URL that sends you to a video of the Maker informing you about how Nevada is doomed to the Madness by the Machine. While this would've been a cool Easter Egg, this video was already used for a previous Burger Gil ARG, making the "reward" fall flat.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: The Legacy of the S-3LF Eater also largely focuses on Dr. Gonne and what happened to him, as well as the creation of the Cyber Bandits. However, Dr. Gonne's fate is never revealed, or why he was even experimenting with the Machine in the first place, while the Cyber Bandits don't really get much focus, apart from the one that first interacts with you. Either way, the lack of resolution makes the entire questline feel empty and confusing.
• Viewer Name Confusion: Players of the game have mispronounced Jorge's name a few times. According to Jonas Boda, Jorge's voice actor, his name is pronounced "Hor-hay" not "George", but because of his diminished intellect as a G03LM, Jorge always pronounces it as the latter.

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