I wanna start by saying that this game comes about as close to my perfect aesthetic as I've ever seen, really the only other thing that comes close is Mirror's Edge. This is a personal thing that has made me instantly fall in love with the environments in this game and particularly the early levels which feel like the devs took images from my brain as I fall asleep listening to drum and bass and turned it into my dream game. In terms of visuals its an easy 5 stars from me, the reflective blue glass oceans, sheen white surfaces and vibrant skies are a treat on the eyes.
I do wish the game has more video quality options to really crank it up in high fidelity however one of the benefits of this game is that its very accessible on lower end hardware so if your PC is trash its still worth getting this game.
So the game is about running time trial levels and using cards, cards act as equipable weapons and also discarding them allows your character to perform advanced manouvres like dashing, slamming, grappling hook shot etc. It's less of an FPS and moreso a puzzle game where you manage the resources of a level. At first glance a lot of reviewers notice that movement is VERY floaty, you jump fairly high and the gravity is quite low so you saunter down gracefully, this might seem to clash with the fast pased movement and indeed some reviewers noted their displeasure at this but it's necessary for a couple of reasons: firstly it means you can make mid air shots and turns with more time and precision and secondly it adds value to the movement mechanics where you slam and dash; it makes you think about using resources to bypass the low gravity and finish levels quicker vs keeping those resources for a later part of a level and descending more slowly. So if you are put off by floaty movement I would advise to stick with it, you'll have opportunities to really hammer down great vertical distances as the game progresses.
The gameplay loop really clicked for me and I felt determined to Ace every level and collect all the in game gifts which are scattered around. Some may criticise the game for it's linearlity and convenient placement of cards but you can really see what a delicate balancing act it is to have a game offer enough freedom to go outside the levels intended path to get a better time when you need to gain at least some gold medals to progress the game at all. Being able to stick to a path and still progress the story is essential and in that sense sticking to the linear levels is probably how a lot of people who don't necessarily find value in the challenge might decide to complete the game and for them they need a way to still enjoy the story content, it would be a bad idea to lock the story behind more lateral soeedrunning knowledge.
That said the game does offer a selection of hints which show the player small time saving skips to get the ranks they need to progress which I think is a nice touch that teaches the player to think strategically about the level design and encourages the player to find their own methods of time saves. For people like me who want to keep optimising our runs and pathing theres a lot of oppertunity to take different approaches to levels and really master the mechanics of the game. It's a hard balancing act and I think the game does a good job of being easy enough so that casual players can see all the content whilst offering something more for determined players.
Throughout the levels you can find gifts that you can give to characters that advance a Persona-esque social link system, this is a great way of tying the story to the gameplay whilst offering some nice downtime to speak to characters. However in Persona where spending time with people was meaningful and lead to interesting side stories most of the dialogue here is meaningless and usually involes the characters getting up to some zany antics like pranking other characters or being horny or something pointless, nobody really learns anything and even well into the late game these extra dialogues don't advance the plot in any meaningful way, it's mostly just a distraction and a way to show off the characters quirks and their personalities, which wouldn't be an issue if they were interspersed with more meaningful events but as it stands theres too much dicking around. There are also a few challenge levels specific to each character which is nice and the main story beats are unlocked through snippets of memories where the player character recalls something plot specfic.
FYI it should briefly be mentioned that completing these gift interactions does change the outcome of the game.
The Player character, Neon White, has amensia and is picking up the pieces to his past. He is sent to heaven as an assassin to fight demons on gods behalf and earn his place in the afterlife where meets Neon Yellow, Violet and Red and they're all a bit cagey in letting him in on what happened to them in a past life. In terms of story content I wanna keep this spoiler free but it's a bit of a hit and miss, the characters have their own personalities and the voice acting in this game is very good but the dialogue is not great. You can tell the writers went to great effort to make the character interactions have a bit of personality and banter to them but quite frankly that's all they have, it's quite frustrating at times because the character interactions serve as quite good emotional beats for White and it is heart warming to see these characters get along but the plot is so contrived. There is at least 3 macguffins and bullshit rules that get invented on the spot for the sole purpose of wrapping up the story. The whole plot really needed some work, I think the characters could have had the same emotional impact that they have without so much extraneous dialogue and the plot could have been given more context and consideration.
I don't want to come out of this review making it seem like the issue with the plot is too detrimental to the overall game experience but it can't be ignored when it serves as the players motivation for completing the levels. I wouldn't say that the story should be excluded and in fact I'm happy that the game gives the player the oppertunity to chill out between chapters and hang out with the homies, rather I think there are some aspects of the story which needed a bit more completion and tidying up, I think a dlc with more levels and a compact side story would be hugely welcome.
Before I finish I just want to comment on the music briefly, it's superb. Composed by Machine Girl its an absoloute joy to listen to in game and outside of the game, I highly reccommend checking out the soundtrack on Machine Girl's bandcamp because it's a top notch collection of breaks, dnb and indsutrial sounds.
Overall I was really impressed with Neon White and I'm going to keep playing it, post-game there are a number of difficult challenge runs and you can go back and try to beat the developer score levels that make the game worth replaying. If you're looking for a visually stimulating, fast-paced first person game with a hint of puzzle solving and platforming then this is definerely worth a look.
I do wish the game has more video quality options to really crank it up in high fidelity however one of the benefits of this game is that its very accessible on lower end hardware so if your PC is trash its still worth getting this game.
So the game is about running time trial levels and using cards, cards act as equipable weapons and also discarding them allows your character to perform advanced manouvres like dashing, slamming, grappling hook shot etc. It's less of an FPS and moreso a puzzle game where you manage the resources of a level. At first glance a lot of reviewers notice that movement is VERY floaty, you jump fairly high and the gravity is quite low so you saunter down gracefully, this might seem to clash with the fast pased movement and indeed some reviewers noted their displeasure at this but it's necessary for a couple of reasons: firstly it means you can make mid air shots and turns with more time and precision and secondly it adds value to the movement mechanics where you slam and dash; it makes you think about using resources to bypass the low gravity and finish levels quicker vs keeping those resources for a later part of a level and descending more slowly. So if you are put off by floaty movement I would advise to stick with it, you'll have opportunities to really hammer down great vertical distances as the game progresses.
The gameplay loop really clicked for me and I felt determined to Ace every level and collect all the in game gifts which are scattered around. Some may criticise the game for it's linearlity and convenient placement of cards but you can really see what a delicate balancing act it is to have a game offer enough freedom to go outside the levels intended path to get a better time when you need to gain at least some gold medals to progress the game at all. Being able to stick to a path and still progress the story is essential and in that sense sticking to the linear levels is probably how a lot of people who don't necessarily find value in the challenge might decide to complete the game and for them they need a way to still enjoy the story content, it would be a bad idea to lock the story behind more lateral soeedrunning knowledge.
That said the game does offer a selection of hints which show the player small time saving skips to get the ranks they need to progress which I think is a nice touch that teaches the player to think strategically about the level design and encourages the player to find their own methods of time saves. For people like me who want to keep optimising our runs and pathing theres a lot of oppertunity to take different approaches to levels and really master the mechanics of the game. It's a hard balancing act and I think the game does a good job of being easy enough so that casual players can see all the content whilst offering something more for determined players.
Throughout the levels you can find gifts that you can give to characters that advance a Persona-esque social link system, this is a great way of tying the story to the gameplay whilst offering some nice downtime to speak to characters. However in Persona where spending time with people was meaningful and lead to interesting side stories most of the dialogue here is meaningless and usually involes the characters getting up to some zany antics like pranking other characters or being horny or something pointless, nobody really learns anything and even well into the late game these extra dialogues don't advance the plot in any meaningful way, it's mostly just a distraction and a way to show off the characters quirks and their personalities, which wouldn't be an issue if they were interspersed with more meaningful events but as it stands theres too much dicking around. There are also a few challenge levels specific to each character which is nice and the main story beats are unlocked through snippets of memories where the player character recalls something plot specfic.
FYI it should briefly be mentioned that completing these gift interactions does change the outcome of the game.
The Player character, Neon White, has amensia and is picking up the pieces to his past. He is sent to heaven as an assassin to fight demons on gods behalf and earn his place in the afterlife where meets Neon Yellow, Violet and Red and they're all a bit cagey in letting him in on what happened to them in a past life. In terms of story content I wanna keep this spoiler free but it's a bit of a hit and miss, the characters have their own personalities and the voice acting in this game is very good but the dialogue is not great. You can tell the writers went to great effort to make the character interactions have a bit of personality and banter to them but quite frankly that's all they have, it's quite frustrating at times because the character interactions serve as quite good emotional beats for White and it is heart warming to see these characters get along but the plot is so contrived. There is at least 3 macguffins and bullshit rules that get invented on the spot for the sole purpose of wrapping up the story. The whole plot really needed some work, I think the characters could have had the same emotional impact that they have without so much extraneous dialogue and the plot could have been given more context and consideration.
I don't want to come out of this review making it seem like the issue with the plot is too detrimental to the overall game experience but it can't be ignored when it serves as the players motivation for completing the levels. I wouldn't say that the story should be excluded and in fact I'm happy that the game gives the player the oppertunity to chill out between chapters and hang out with the homies, rather I think there are some aspects of the story which needed a bit more completion and tidying up, I think a dlc with more levels and a compact side story would be hugely welcome.
Before I finish I just want to comment on the music briefly, it's superb. Composed by Machine Girl its an absoloute joy to listen to in game and outside of the game, I highly reccommend checking out the soundtrack on Machine Girl's bandcamp because it's a top notch collection of breaks, dnb and indsutrial sounds.
Overall I was really impressed with Neon White and I'm going to keep playing it, post-game there are a number of difficult challenge runs and you can go back and try to beat the developer score levels that make the game worth replaying. If you're looking for a visually stimulating, fast-paced first person game with a hint of puzzle solving and platforming then this is definerely worth a look.
Fortayee
1 year ago