Neon White Review: FPS, platform, visual novel, masterpiece

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neon white review fps, platform, visual novel, masterpiece 1
neon white review fps, platform, visual novel, masterpiece 1

An FPS that is also a platformer, visual novel and speedrunning game immersed in an imaginary vaporwave and which winks at the first Suda51. Unmissable.

 

Ben Esposito is certainly one of the most eclectic and visionary figures in the current gaming industry. After the irreverent Donut County published by Annapurna Interactive in 2018, Esposito and in fact returns to the scene with the madman Neon Whites chizophrenic FPS platform published by the same Californian publisher and developed together with the newborn Neon Matrix (by the way, the Donut County review is a click away). Neon White is one of the craziest, most anarchic and experimental experiences ever daughter of a concept that makes immediacy and depth its key elements.

We are talking, in no uncertain terms, about one of the most interesting and successful independent video games of recent years. Despite a passage within a Nintendo Direct and an appearance during this year’s Summer Game Fest, the impression is that Neon White has lacked an effective communication capable of making the public really understand its incredible playful offer. and it is a real shame because that of Neon Matrix is ​​absolute one of the highest peaks touched by the medium during this first half of 2022.

Devils in Heaven

What happens if you mix an old school FPS, a platformer, a Suda51 visual novel and try to make a speedrun out of it? Neon White, here’s what happens. The most classic of video games impossible to summarize correctly in words, because the more you try to explain the concept, the more absurd and incomprehensible it seems. What we witness is the story of White, a young murderer who died and was summoned to Heaven by the souls of believers to to cleanse the Garden of Eden of the demons who repeatedly assault its gates.

neon white review fps, platform, visual novel, masterpiece 1
neon white review fps, platform, visual novel, masterpiece 1

However, do not think of an act of magnanimous benevolence of the Most High, but of a competition between criminal souls held over ten days, the winner of which gets a prize a pass to live a year in Paradise before returning to confront the other criminals. In the face of eternal bliss.

White is not alone: ​​in this Eden he is joined by old companions of adventure of whom unfortunately he has no memory (apparently one of the side effects of death is amnesia in the afterlife). Red, Yellow, Violet and the mysterious Green compete side by side for safety in front of a jubilant audience of faithful repelled by their impure souls. The challenge is whoever exterminates the most enemies in the so-called ten days of judgment, and the race takes place in short stages to be crossed in the shortest possible time.

If Neon White had been a traditional FPS, it would have been enough to simply arm and riddle with shots the bodies of the demons scattered around each area, but since Ben Esposito doesn’t like trivial things, here comes the extreme platforming and the crazy. race against time. Each stage must be cleaned of enemies thanks to the weapons that are insidetools that are depicted in the form of playing cards and that for that they can be “discarded” in order to activate their side effectwhich allows White to perform acrobatic movements with which to cross the levels in the shortest possible time. When you pick up a gun you can then use it to shoot enemies, but if you decide to discard it you will immediately double jump into the air. The same goes for rifles that turn into the ability to shoot very fast in a straight line, for machine guns that allow you to crash quickly to the ground destroying enemies and obstacles, or for heavy machine guns that turn into devices capable of damaging area targets both act as thrusters for White.

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And this is only the beginning. This simple but ingenious insight makes each level of Neon White a continuous race against time in an attempt to improve his own record on the course, in such a way as to obtain the ace medals to then be able to climb the hierarchies of souls and obtain advantages in the competition.

Like visual novels, but with guns

The gameplay loop is so well refined, varied and adrenaline-pumping that it becomes a source of extreme addiction, but what has been described so far is only half of the game’s offer. Once you have registered a useful time to advance to the next stage, in fact, it will be possible to replay each level in order to find the gift hidden inside. At this point the user is called to think about the conformation of the stage and the weapons and skills scattered in the areas, to use them in a different and creative way in extreme platforming sessions. In short, to reach the position of the various gifts you have to change your approach to each painting, thus also increasing the replayability of the title. But exactly, what are gifts for?

It is easy to say: each day of competition is divided between the raids in the haunted areas of Eden and the classic visual novel phaseswhere it will be possible to spend time together with the other protagonists of the story.

In these phases we will be able to redistribute the gifts among the various supporting actors, thus deepening White’s relationship with each of them through unique dialogues and secondary missions. The whole is aimed at discover the hidden sides of the personality of each of the characters and shed light on the mysterious criminal past which White seems to have shared with them. The whole game has also been localized in Italian, although the quality of the translation itself is not particularly brilliant.

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It is precisely in these phases that the true soul of the game comes out, which underneath its wonderfully conceived gameplay hides the desire and the need to communicate something. Neon White is in fact a title that speaks mainly of second chances, of regrets and remorse and it does so by hiding a nostalgic and in some ways almost solemn note behind dialogues that are a little foul-mouthed and imbued with an over-the-top comedy.

White is a derelict at the head of a gang of derelicts; Yellow a young man with his head in the clouds ready to give his life for his friends; Red the classic femme fatale addicted to adrenaline and unable to truly love; Violet is a lonely and disturbed teenager who has spent the years of her emotional formation creating bombs and slaughtering people.

Each of the characters has a painful story behind them, which is only hidden behind a brash mask: their true character emerges from the details of what could seem trivially written dialogues and in a somewhat typified way. Not so, and indeed Neon White is loaded with all the clichés typical of 90s anime narrative precisely to ensure that those same stereotypes can effectively tell what the narrative wants to convey.

It is worth spending a few words on the aforementioned secondary missions: these are hyper-technical gameplay sections built around specific rules. Each supporting actor has his own specific assignments, built in the image and likeness of their personality.

Let’s take some practical examples: Yellow is the classic person who first shoots and then asks “who goes there”, and his optional missions revolve around the fact that the weapons are not discardable but must be used exclusively to hit; Red is shrewd and elusive, so his activities are focused on the secondary effects of the tools and must be completed without firing a single shot; Violet, for her part, is the most classic of tsundere and her thorny personality translates into stages in which platforming is pushed to the maximum difficulty: floors, ceilings and walls are in fact covered with spikes and touching them means dying instantly. . Apparently it is bonus content almost an end in itself (and, in part, it is), but in reality it is a gimmick that allows those characters to tell about themselves without necessarily resorting to words. A gem of great class.

Like Suda 51, but vaporwave

The same bipartition that exists between “action” gameplay and narrative sections also exists with regard to the aesthetics of the game. Beyond the small technical miracle made by the Neon Matrix team that allows Neon White to run at a constant 60fps even on Nintendo Switch, in fact, one of the crown jewels of the game is its stylistic representation, which mixes different influences more or less declared.

On the one hand there are the infinite references to the beginnings of Suda51, with the narrative sections that take place on backdrops that closely resemble the atmosphere of that forgotten jewel of The Silver Case. To such an extent that in certain situations the best way to describe Neon White is perhaps to define it as a “Killer7 on amphetamines“. On the other hand, however, the action sections of the gameplay develop within neoclassical architectures, set in ethereal and boundless spaces made of streams and clouds. The whole thing is so wonderfully low-poly that it takes on the shape of what could be a Windows 95 dream. Neon White manages to mix vaporwave at the same time (seriously, some glimpses seem to be taken by weight from the covers of telepath), anime and quotes from a lot of Japanese videogame production of the PlayStation era, all in a musical setting composed of machin3G1rl that mixes drum and bass, industrial, jungle and breakbeat, creating a mix that is both euphoric and nostalgic at the same time.

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In short, Ben Esposito and Neon Matrix have succeeded in the difficult task of giving real coherence to a series of very different influences and quotes.however, making them converge within a unique work, which has a lot of personality to sell.

 

Neon White
Neon WhiteNintendo Switch Analyzed VersionNeon White is therefore an absolutely unmissable video game, capable of putting in parallel a very precise, frenetic and totally skill-based gameplay and a narrative that embraces stereotypes to use them as a picklock with which to dig into the human soul. But here, as much as one can try to dissect its content in words, your best bet is to give Neon White a chance and grab the pad, because between a rocket jump, a double jump and a deliberately over the top dialogue you might come across a video game you didn’t think you needed, but from which it will be increasingly difficult to break away. Neon White is a title that mixes a long series of aesthetic inspirations ranging from vaporwave to Suda51’s debut visual novel, passing through an imaginary 90s anime. All linked together by brilliant and over the top finds. An impossible work on paper, but Ben Esposito and NEon Matrix don’t care and develop it anyway. A success on all fronts, no doubt about it.