Nightmare Operator is a ghostly Tokyo-set shooter in which you switch bullets by doing Street Fighter moves

rockpapershotgun.com:

Every man has his breaking point, and mine is the DP motion, aka the D-pad input used to perform Ken's Shoryuken uppercut in Street Fighter, and moves like it in other fighting games. I've never been able to perform it consistently. It's one of many moderately fiddly special attacks - written down for posterity in a tear-stained journal I keep sorrowfully beneath my pillow - which have walled me out of enjoying fighting games, much as I love thinking about them.

That wall grows ever higher as I age and my digits turn to dust and my dreams of launching Ryu like a sack of potatoes fade into the twilight. Still, at least I can still play and have fun with shooters, right? All you have to do in shooters is press a button once to make stuff go boom. Wait, Nightmare Operator, what are you doing? Nightmare Operator, no!

Nightmare Operator is a third-person "action-horror" game in which you play Misha, a trigger-happy exorcist hunting folkloric abominations in a sumptuous low-poly, low-res Tokyo. Misha has a fancy modular gun, with modules inflicting different types of elemental damage and status effects. "Learning when your next shot is going to send a Youkai reeling or freeze them solid is key to survival," notes the Steam blurb, and yes, I am on board with this. I do like me a modular gun. I still think fondly of Rogue Trooper. But there is a twist: the game uses a Clutch system whereby you "rapidly switch between Weapons Modules using command inputs inspired by fighting games".

Please, DDDistortion. I can get my head around a Power Reload, but do not ask me to nail the fingering for a Zangief Screw Piledriver in order to plug in some ice bullets. From the looks of the just-released Tokyo Game Show trailer, above, Misha also gets a parry and melee counters. You'll need to keep a "level head". It's all so technical, ugh. And yes, they've got my old nemesis the DP motion in there.

The enemies themselves are a characterful bunch. They're inspired by yokai stories,