Have you ever had one of those games where you’re incredibly skeptical of everyone’s reaction towards it, especially after playing it for a whopping 10 minutes and not fully grasping the uniqueness of it, and not sure where the fun lies? I have had several of those games over the years and I must tell you, Neon White isn’t one of them.
To add more credibility to that notion, our own Ben Sheene raved about Neon White, mentioning that the story was solid, and the action was fast-paced when combined that is a recipe of simplicity that even a goober like me could make a nice dish out of. So, when the chance to review it on the Xbox came about, I jumped at the chance to see if Ben was correct.
And silly me, Ben is always correct.
What I found with the game was that Neon White certainly doesn’t show you its bells and whistles from the get-go. It introduces a simple speed-run concept where the main mechanics are jumping, shooting, and trying to complete within a level in hopes of getting through it as fast as possible. I have seen games like this before and they’re amusing but nothing outrageously amazing that you would name your child after it.
This isn’t one of those games.
Neon White allows you to believe that it’s simple, but then it starts sprinkling on heavy amounts of story, personality, and depth. Before you know it, the game will have you needing to replay levels to get better times to unlock more of the game. And there is even more to it.
So, put on that crucifix, kiss your loved one goodbye, and let’s rise and get this holy rolling review going.
Heaven is very competitive
Imagine if the film Hunger Games was based in heaven. That’s the story of this game. You’re a dead killer who has been granted a final chance to prove they are worthy of heaven and God’s love. But you know it ain’t easy to get in the good graces of God. To make it even more complicated, you aren’t the only one granted a final chance – you have a whole team of Neons (the name of the killers in heaven) fighting for one spot of holiness.
To be that one chosen to enjoy eternal life instead of damnation, you must get through speed-run levels, kill an X number of demons, and outperform the other Neons before they outperform you.
The story is ridiculous, entertaining, and funny, and contains a sprinkle of sadness. The latter might have been magnified thanks to my binge-re-watching of Dead Like Me recently, as it puts me in the mood to feel sorry for dead people, but that’s another review for another day.
Anyway, Neon White is really good. The story does start stale, but as more characters get added to the storyline, the main character starts to develop quite well as bits and pieces of his memory are mentioned through the side characters introduced. It’s a slow burn of a tale with a slow burn in character development. It’s kind of like how the first season of West World was, as you were unsure where this was all going, but as the pieces start slowly coming together the bigger picture eventually starts revealing itself. Those types of storytelling methods are amazingly memorable and entertaining, as is the case for Neon White. I enjoyed the quiet build of the narrative and the thick nature and method of the characters being shaped as the story moved along. It worked well.
Speedy gameplay
Well, ‘as fast as you want to go’ should be the real heading for this section. The gameplay for this speed runner is smoother than a bowling ball. I’m not sure I have ever enjoyed a speedrunner shooter, but here we are. It’s easy to control the speed of running, fun to master the skills that come with it, and rewarding when replayed. I’ll take that trio any day with speed-running shooters.
Starting with controls, they are simple, even when the game starts to introduce new weapons and methods (the same) to traverse the short levels. When I first began the game, it did throw me for a loop with jumping and timing. The controls were very pointed with their intentions and demanded I hit the right button at the right time to get where I needed to go. Early on, I failed so many times trying to time jumps or make it from ledge to ledge without killing my chances at a good time. I almost, almost, gave up after about 30 minutes into playing the game, as it felt like the game was nothing more than a poorly put-together set of uninteresting game mechanics, especially when stagnant enemies were thrown into the mix.
Thankfully, I buckled down and forced myself to keep going, and I couldn’t be happier that I did. The controls clicked around the one-hour mark of playing and I could see how the running, jumping, shooting, and collecting all worked together. The fluid motion of the controls mixed in with the intentional placement of enemies to keep the gameplay flowing only needed my patience to get me where I finally understood the brilliance of Neon White’s design. Once that happened, it was pure delight.
The controls were natural. It was like Chuck Yaeger breaking the sound barrier where all the chaos that came before while ramping up the plane’s speed now made sense and everything felt calm. The game became more than just controls, it became an internal competition against myself where I kept pushing and pushing until I did my absolute best. It was weird how well this game settled in and how comforting it felt when I didn’t have to think about the controls and could concentrate on finding the quickest pattern to completion. I’ve never experienced a feeling like this for a speedrunner shooter. At this point, I understood what Ben felt.
Card sharking the strategy
The controls weren’t on their own when it came to being well-designed, as the power-ups and weapons helped to take the game even further and allowed the maps to become slowly more complicated. The power-ups and weapons took the mechanics to another level, as you could gain cards that provided you with more firepower to take down baddies, aside from your sword, and use those same cards to gain abilities to make your strategy even more intentional when executed. For example, and this one threw me for a loop at the beginning, I gained a rifle card during the latter half of the first mission, which granted me a power weapon. This weapon could easily take down bigger demons in the game quickly, which was fantastic in comparison to the handgun card (it’s bullets and not a sword – a huge upgrade). The rifle also allowed me to barrel into baddies and quickly get through obstacles, such as giant red doors. This card changed the complexity of the game immensely, as that quick brutish barrel helped me to smoothly keep going around levels, and thus, helped me to find different methods of level completion. That is a helluva dual purpose and a good way to introduce the options and ability to do more with one single item.
The introduction to multi-purpose items like the rifle card helps feed into the strongest part of the game which is developing the best strategy to navigate a complicated landscape in the quickest time. The more options you can get to craft the strategy, the more personal and likable the speedrunner experience is going to be. And this single shift in gameplay with multi-purpose cards made the game so much more than I expected. It upped the speed of running and gave me a purpose to think a bit deeper about how to get through a level. Best of all, it kept me interested. I can’t say that most games of this type can hold my attention long, but this one did, and that was very much helped because of these multi-purpose items.
Counting Down
If strategy and cards/power-ups didn’t give you enough of a push to play this game, Neon White also throws in a reason to get better and replay levels. Well, it gives you multiple reasons.
The first big reason is that when you finally get beyond the first set of levels in the first mission, you are sent to heaven, which opens the game up to the notion that you must work to unlock the next mission. And by ‘work’, I mean that you must achieve gold medals during levels that will bring down a stat called a rank level. That rank level starts at 99 and requires you to get to a certain lower rank to move on to the next mission. For example, to unlock mission two, you have to lower your rank to 92. The only way to do that is to be incredibly gifted at gaining gold medals for completing levels quickly. If you haven’t figured it out yet, the rank is the number of levels you play through. That is a lot of levels. Anyway, this provides extra motivation to go back and improve times.
Improving times is a good thing, especially as you get better at the game and start to grasp the motion and how to use power-ups properly. At no point, even when I was frustrated, did I feel like this was a chore. I can only say that about a handful of games of this type. Sayonara Wild Hearts was fast and fun and had me wanting to get top-tier scores on every level. Neon White works the same way, where the gameplay is fluid and fun so that it doesn’t feel like overbearing and unnecessary work to replay a level for a better rank. It’s interesting how thin of a line there is between a game like this and another game of this type that I wouldn’t play ever again. I’m glad it fell on the right side.
Other bits of fun had in replaying levels also included finding the secret presents hidden on each level. These presents present a good challenge when acquiring them, as they’re usually methodically placed in very inaccessible parts of a level. Once acquired, the story allows you to give presents to other Neons, which can change the complexity of the story just slightly. Regardless, it’s a neat add-on and added motivation to keep the completed levels fresh and fun.
And that’s the gameplay, at least as much as I want to reveal, in a nutshell. The gameplay is simple in its grounded intentions, where it just wants you to dispose of all the demons on a level while finding the quickest and best way to get to the end. Not groundbreaking in its core design, but still fun, especially when you get the controls under your belt. The real cheese to this sandwich is how Angel Matrix uses power-ups to create deep strategy, how they expand the world through story and options, and how all of it combined connects so solidly with the user that they don’t know they’re replaying the game over and over again.
Certainly solid stuff.
On that note, let’s wrap this review up.
Conclusion
Neon White from developer Angel Matrix and publisher Annapurna Interactive is a unique and fluid speed-running shooter that uses gameplay elements methodically to create a game filled with strategy and fun.
