We reviewed Neon White on PC using mouse and keyboard controls. Neon White is one of the best games of the year, and it'd be a colossal mistake not to check it out. Not only is it one of the most entertaining experiences I've played in years, but it also speaks to a highly specific audience many just don't anymore. Neon White achieves everything it sets out to with remarkable success. If the above reads like a different language, you'll likely still enjoy Neon White, but you're hardly the key demographic. If any of that means anything to you, you are the "really specific" person for whom Esposito made this game. You can imagine 480p AMVs of Neon White playthroughs set to " The Show Must Go On" or " Love Rhymes With Hideous Car Wreck." You can imagine seeing kids in brightly-colored Neon White shirts at a Taste of Chaos tour date. Like the tee-shirt section of a Hot Topic and the anime aisle of a Suncoast Video collided into each other. Its heavenly-yet-violent aesthetic is slick, striking, and full of attitude. It recalls anime like Trigun and Cowboy Bebop and music from now-defunct bands like Drop Dead, Gorgeous and The Blood Brothers. It’s reminiscent of Japanese action games that don't really exist anymore, like Killer7 and El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron. It also helps that aesthetically Neon White scratches specific and neglected itches. In moments of weakness, I even laughed at obnoxious dialogue like when Neon Violet said Neon White was a good guy, "The kind that will catch a girl's spit with his mouth!" Since the story's told via visual novel, I felt compelled to explore every character's storyline, giving them gifts to unlock new dialogue and sidequests. I even love Neon White's stupid-but-charming story – that of White trying to figure out why he and his team of fellow assassins are dead. I even care about the global leaderboards, a personal first, as I don't think I've ever paid much attention to rankings in any other game. I’m still flying through the game, beating all my previous times and loving nearly every second. Luckily, the level design is top-notch and, save for two or three exceptions, rarely frustrating. Nearly 30 hours in, I have no plans to stop until I get an Ace rank in every level. It's one of the most fun games I've played in years. It's remarkable for such precise and intricate gameplay to feel so effortless, but Neon White pulls it off at all turns. Doing it all in literally seconds with no mistakes, feeling effortless as if you’ve practiced for years, not just 15 to 20 minutes that's the base of Neon White, not solely the high-level play. Especially in its back half, you will feel as cool as those videos look.įlying over enemies, shooting as you rocket above their heads, sending yourself plummeting to earth to slide across narrow ledges, grappling your way back into the stratosphere, then using explosions to bounce around to the finish line. More than that, it appears designed around YouTube videos of speedrunners breaking games, flying through levels with pinpoint accuracy like a well-armed ballerina. My heart was often firmly lodged in my throat as I crossed the finish line, and few things feel better than besting my times by literal tenths of a second.įrom its mechanical foundation, Neon White is designed around the idea of speedrunning. I loved trying and retrying levels over and over until I finally got the combination of moves correct, and then I loved, even more, trying to whittle my times down to the "Ace" score. Levels demand mastery of all these options you must run, shoot, jump, and use discards at precisely the right moment to reach your destination, while also killing every demon in a level. Discarding pistols gives a double jump, shotguns blast you in the direction you're facing, rifles directly forward, SMGs send you hurtling toward the ground, and rocket launchers give a grapple shot. The second, however, is the discard option, which grants White a brief platforming advantage. You pick up firearms via cards strewn inside a level, each having two functions. Running and jumping feel excellent they're fluid, quick, and give an impression of floating throughout a level.īut it's the guns where Neon White shines. It also emphasizes replaying levels for increasingly better times. From the jump, it stresses you play as fast as possible at all times. With rare exceptions, playing through any individual level of Neon White takes less than a minute.
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