Game:

MADNESS: Project Nexus (2021)

Duration: 1:16:41

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94

This is much harder than the base game. I love this mod.

The devs made excellent design decisions. By adding in a lot of enemies with very low health but extremely tough TAC-bars, they make the Nexus Slam - previously a joke ability - a really good crowd control move. Giving soldats and riot guards the ability to reflect and block bullets respectively also gives more weight to melee weapons, whereas before they were basically just make-do weapons until you could find a decent gun.

Enemy variety is great, as is composition. Though, the occasional five-way battles really make the game chug. Apparently there used to be a more difficult version of Level-4, which is disappointing because currently, it's blatantly way easier than any of the other tower levels.

Mod Link: https://www.moddb.com/downloads/madness-project-nexus-core-mod
Mod Makers: Human Grunt, ShootDaCheese, Puzzlecube

Enemies:
- Nexus Agents: Regular agents, die easily.
- Nexus Riot Guards: They always spawn with melee weapons and block your attacks. They serve as tanks for other Nexus personnel; kill them with melee or slug them with a ranged weapon, preferably while you're using bullet-time to avoid being shot in the meantime. Super threatening in spite of having nearly no offensive potential.
- Nexus Engineers: Moderate TAC bars, always use firearms, propensity for focused shots. Their offence is way higher than their defence. They're not necessarily priority targets, but if you're going to take damage it's probably going to be from an engineer.
- Nexus Support: Really high health but no TAC. Often spawns with a heavy weapon. Surprisingly high offence. They're resistant to melee so headshot them repeatedly with a gun; kill them first, always. After you get the halo, you can disarm them with a nexus bolt; they can't pick up weapons once dropped.
- Nexus Soldats: Extremely high TAC, health, and mobility. If they have a melee weapon, they can reflect bullets at you, so never try to brute-force them with an assault rifle. Always just use melee on them until you get the halo. You can usually kill them last out of everyone in the room. Alternatively, after you've gotten the halo, always kill them first before they can use a focused shot on you. Two nexus slams or two bolts will kill one. Really threatening, really dangerous, sometimes bugs out and dodges continually. Really cool design.
- G03LMs: Unchanged. Kill them last, generally, and stay the hell away. Knocking them down with nexus bolts can keep you safe for a short time but don't waste all of your energy doing that. Variants of the G03LM without armour spawn in the early stages of the campaign and are basically harmless.
- Zombies: No change.
- Abominations: Nerfed into the ground. Now that the player has armour, they deal basically no damage and can only knock you down about every third time that they hit you (while strapped). I still don't recommend going melee against them. If you want, you can keep them alive to distract Nexus personnel.
- Sleepwalkers & Sleepwalker Experiments: No change.
- Asylum patients: Guys with straps and tiny TAC bars. Zombies wreck them completely, if they spawn alongside even two zombies, you can reliably get them to all get eaten by them. They also can't be zombified. Generally, if they spawn alone, you can afford to just spam melee at them because their AI isn't particularly aggressive. If they spawn alongside Nexus units and sleepwalkers, you should mow them down with a rifle or SMG. Their quick dodges and fast-regenerating TAC bars make it impractical to kill them with pistols and weak melee, and their grabs make you vulnerable to gunfire -- very annoying. Notably, asylum patients who spawn with their hands free don't have TAC bars, while asylum patients who spawn with straps *do* have small TAC-bars and will get up after dying, freeing their hands. Otherwise, they behave exactly like abominations.
- Asylum G03LMs: Their melee attacks bypass your TAC and deal major damage. They generally spawn in rooms where there aren't any guns, aside from those carried by Gas Masks. If you don't have ammo, stun them with a charging strike and spam melee before backing off.
- Gas Masks: Weird guys with small TAC bars and large amounts of health who spawn alongside asylum patients. They're sort of like a middle ground between sleepwalkers and asylum patients, with the ability to wield guns but absolutely dumpster-tier stats. They're annoying and spicy, but that's about it. They mostly exist to shoot you in the head when you're grabbed by an asylum patient.

Bosses:
- Mag Agent Gestalt: Unchanged.
- Phobos 1: Spawns inside a group of asylum patients who he attacks. Shoot him while he's slashing them.
- Phobos 2: Dodges way more.

Timestamps:
00:00 - Introduction
00:36 - Level 1
06:18 - Level 2
14:10 - Level 3
30:12 - Level 4
43:50 - Level 5
57:43 - Level 6
1:15:50 - Ending

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