Neon Chrome

It is kind of game, to which you return to in your 800 games library, when you "dont have anything to play". No strings attached, just nice dual stick shooter (though its keyboard and mouse for me). There are different playstyles you can engage - more cautious with sniping, camouflage, energy shield. Or more of a shoot first, ask questions later. Nicely done rouge-like part. When you die, you keep credits which you can permanently improve character, or give it a next run boost. There is a good balance between grind and fun. You do notice when you repeat lower floors that you got some resources extra, but game doesnt require that, its mostly about skills and luck in pickups, as well as some decisions along the road.

After nearly 100 hours of play, I can safely say that this is a brilliant game. It's a fun, fast paced shooter but tactics are just as important as eye-hand coordination. Lots of different weapons, abilities and and power-ups give this rogue-like great replayability: it's fun to experiment with different combinations and each weapon or enhancement requires a slightly different style of play. Graphics are good, interface and controls are clear and simple. Cool cyber-punk / synthwave aesthetics and music. Difficulty is just right, enough to keep you on your toes but not too much as to frustrate you. Each time you beat the game and defeat the Overseer, you can choose to start again with higher difficulty. I definitely recommend this game, it's great for casual short sessions as well as for entire afternoons of play, trying to beat your record and get to the next Overseer level.

I will be comparing this game to Jydge a lot in this review because they are very similar. I played Jydge before this and noticed a lot of reviews on it mentioned Neon Chrome. Since I was so disappointed by Jydge, I decided to try this... and, my god, is it better! It's just like Jydge but without all of the forced grinding that makes that game unbearably annoying after the second act. No going back to perform "stupid tricks" (Complete without being seen! Complete in 5 seconds! Complete whilst standing on one leg!) in order to unlock the next level. You just stay alive and kill things. That's enough to progress the story, as it should be. Background music is very important in a game like this and, though not as hard-hitting as the music in Jydge, it's perfect for Neon Chrome and really sets the mood. That, mixed with the nonstop action and mayhem, makes for one great experience.

Pros: Haunting and beautiful cyber-80's soundtrack (that unfortunately gets very repetitive) Really cool gameplay with different variety of guns Just a barrel of monkeys, a crazy and fun game that's just fun to sit down and play Just looks cool Cons: "Completely destructible environment" is NOT true. There are some walls you can't break because they're not the "thin walls" therefor the environment is not completely destructible. This was a big let down for me since I was actually hoping for "Completely destructible environment" as the game mentions in its description Extremely repetitive and awful GRIND gameplay wears me down as the player. Sure the levels are procedurally generated, but how many times can I walk down the same or similar bullet and explosion filled hallway with maybe a door there, or maybe a box here, but all the same things in a slightly different position over and over again? Major cons: As the difficulty increases, the enemies appear to move in a more "antsy" kind of way. Remember playing Perfect Dark on N64? Remember when the difficulty increased, the enemies would do these really silly and unrealistic maneuvers that no soldier would ever do in real life? Like a side hip thrust that sends them flying 3 feet sideways but it just looks like an embarrassingly bad dance move and it somehow works as a dodge for anything you sent at them? Do you remember getting annoyed by that? I feel the same way about this game. The reason I feel this way is that in the higher difficulties, the enemies start to somehow spin around and dance around and hug the edge of my line of fire so that no matter where I aim, they somehow automatically become much more difficult to hit. It just seems really cheap to me, and ruins my game when the spider bot is running circles around me, and you just know somehow that someone had to program that extremely annoying behavior into the game because it seemed like a "good" way to make it more difficult. That's just annoying.