As I suspected, my previous experiences with first person platformers (SEUM, Cyberhook, A Story About My Uncle etc.) have severely undermined Neon White for me.
The biggest thing is the lack of any way to carry over momentum. It lacks some passive power that would allow that. There are stretches that are slowed down too much for my liking, and that would be fine if at any point, even after beating the game, there existed a way to go through these stages faster. Moving out of water or slowing down during a jump is honestly disheartening. This is why my favorite stretch of it is when you get the ultimate ability at the end of the game, I zoomed through each stage like crazy.
There are, admittedly, levels like this scattered throughout every mission. So the issue really is inconsistency. When I see water or bombs during a level: real shit. When I see that I have to fall a lot or go through a lot of rooms: I sleep. I simply do not understand why you don't accelerate further while falling.
Same goes for the writing. Lots of the humor is referential, some more up my alley, some less, some more in-touch, some less. It pushes a little too much into the modern meme references, so the moments where it falls flat are easier to point out and the cringe stings a bit harder. The memes about the 50-year-old guy in a suit clapping make themselves. But I don't think it's as bad as some people make it out to be, there's some creative setups and some good character work. It's all tied into a really blasé plot, and I think that drags it down towards the negative side the most.
Without the novelty of the gameplay, I come out of Neon White largely unsatisfied. In-between the best stages, there just wasn't much to grab onto for me. The promise of a better time on global or friends leaderboards is meaningless when I know I could do the same for so many other titles with a, quite frankly, better movement system.
The biggest thing is the lack of any way to carry over momentum. It lacks some passive power that would allow that. There are stretches that are slowed down too much for my liking, and that would be fine if at any point, even after beating the game, there existed a way to go through these stages faster. Moving out of water or slowing down during a jump is honestly disheartening. This is why my favorite stretch of it is when you get the ultimate ability at the end of the game, I zoomed through each stage like crazy.
There are, admittedly, levels like this scattered throughout every mission. So the issue really is inconsistency. When I see water or bombs during a level: real shit. When I see that I have to fall a lot or go through a lot of rooms: I sleep. I simply do not understand why you don't accelerate further while falling.
Same goes for the writing. Lots of the humor is referential, some more up my alley, some less, some more in-touch, some less. It pushes a little too much into the modern meme references, so the moments where it falls flat are easier to point out and the cringe stings a bit harder. The memes about the 50-year-old guy in a suit clapping make themselves. But I don't think it's as bad as some people make it out to be, there's some creative setups and some good character work. It's all tied into a really blasé plot, and I think that drags it down towards the negative side the most.
Without the novelty of the gameplay, I come out of Neon White largely unsatisfied. In-between the best stages, there just wasn't much to grab onto for me. The promise of a better time on global or friends leaderboards is meaningless when I know I could do the same for so many other titles with a, quite frankly, better movement system.