Neon Inferno Review

For a game I randomly heard about and saw some trailers for. It turned out to be really fun and quite innovating. Thought it was just just going to be a fun Contra and Metal Slug style shooter featuring a male playable character who looks like Jin Kazama from Tekken and it was that plus throwing in it's own cool ideas.

While Neon Inferno is like the above mentioned games. There is also aspects that those games don't do. This is where the game will turn into Wild Guns where it sort of becomes a shooter where enemies are attacking you in the background while also being attacked from the foreground. It can create for a rather dynamic style of gameplay that this style of game hasn't seen that often.

One minute you might have enemies coming at you in the foreground but then you need to switch to aim mode and attack enemies in firing at you in the background while using cover.

You can shoot, duck and cover of course but there is also a melee attack that works double as a parry with green projectiles. You also have a double jump as well as a dedicated dodge roll making combat even more fast paced and dynamic.

Combat can feel very fast paced and intense due to enemies attack from the background and foreground, dealing with hazards, death pits, timing jumps as well melee attacks close by enemies and parrying projectiles.

One disappointing aspect of Neon Inferno is that the main weapon you'll get is the base pistol. No powerups of getting weapons like shotguns, rocket launchers, electricity guns or flamethrowers. It would've been nice if the game got me to wreck havoc with some powerful weapons from time to time and can help widdle away at the health of bosses or get past certain enemy hordes to get to them faster. You do get powerups at the shop inbetween missions but the best on is a shield that doubles HP and they can only be used once per level.

This leads to the difficulty and it's rather bizarre. For 4 out of the 6 levels, it feels well balanced and a solid challenge. Not having you do too much content upon death. However, this changes when doing the 4th level Baptism by Fire where there is are long enemy waves, bosses and dogs that will slowly but surely chip away at health and then doing it all again when dying since the checkpoints are so far apart. There is a lengthy phased boss fight that can take a lot of damage. You might've used your power up before fighting her too.

Level 6 is where you don't get access to the shop so no shield power up at the start and it ends with yet another phased boss fight that has double HP on normal.

I lowered to easy on both these levels. It's a shame the game couldn't get the "just right" feeling for the all the levels instead of 4 out of 6. Still, I'm glad they got it for most of the game.

Overall, I had a fun time with Neon Inferno, it brought some interesting innovation to the 2D run and gun style game with good controls and combat with multiple factors to account for. Just wished it had more weapons to use and less difficulty spikes on normal difficulty.