As fun as Neon White could often be, I ended up being frustrated by it in equally frequent measures. To get it out of the way; Neon White is mostly super leet and epic to play the whole way through, especially if you respond well to its MLG pace along with its hype to always gotta go fast. The level designs are often epic baconsauce, stanning the speed you're pushed to go further and further with. Not only that, but it's addictive to go beyond being a n00b until you get the Ace medal on each level.
This is what makes some of the snoozefest (relative to the rest of the game) levels and boss fights especially rage-inducing when you come across them, reorienting the flow in a mid way. Along with some levels that felt real 💀 by reusing older challenges nearly beat-by-beat, mainly like around the middle third of the game, it feels like the design was stretched out a bit too much at 96 levels. But when most of it hits, it hits, excusing the lame stuff elsewhere in the game.
What doesn't hit is the cringe piled onto a perfectly good game. You play as the titular Neon White, a bad dude with amnesia who doesn't afraid of anything, forced to pwn demons to gain the privilege of temporarily staying in Heaven, running across Neon Yellow (your bro no homo), Neon Violet (the psycho e-girl who's also lol so randum xD) (the only one I responded positively to and I'd let her kill me), Neon Red (the tsundere baddie who's clearly into you), and Neon Green (the crazy murder dude that really makes you go "um... did he just do that???"). It's nearly-impossible to get invested in any of it despite the rare few Crowning Moments of Awesome. The often-hammy voice acting doesn't own, and wouldn't be much of an issue if the characters had dialog or writing worth giving a shit about.
Not only do they not, but there's even an insane amount of meme-filled, tongue-in-cheek, Joss Whedon-esque writing that plagues much of the interactions and story developments. It's weird, badly written, insufferable, and distracting. It comes off like a justification for the gameplay as well as the aesthetic, when I would much rather have just played these nearly 100 levels without the bad writing doing its best to make it harder to get through. Yes, it does let off the gas pedal with the memes and the like by around Chapter 7, nearly stopping altogether from the next one on. But it's almost too little too late with such a bad impression up until then. From top to bottom, the story, characterization, and overall writing simply needed to not be as bad as it was here in order to be compelling; no memes would have been a good start.
Thankfully, there is a part of the game that doesn't require you to play the story - the level rushes. Playing all of a character's themed levels (which at least do well to match the kind of personality each of the characters are), playing through all the story levels, or doing the same but with only the Dominion card (the rocket launcher card you unlock by the final third) back-to-back-to-back is its own thrill. Even the maddening Hell versions where any death means you must restart from the very beginning.
If you have skill issues like me however, not only is the difficulty curve on something like this immense, but you're probably somewhat worn out on the gameplay by this point. Especially when you also frequently run across the lesser levels in constantly restarting; that puts a damper on the excitement somewhat. Another irritating problem also highlights itself here, with the floaty airtime you get making it remarkably difficult to judge if you've overshot or not with a jump. Combine that with getting too close to a surface's edge meaning that the game simply won't register your jump at all, and a number of deaths will end up being extremely frustrating, especially in something as high-pressure as the Hell rushes.
Still, there is a good game in there. If you only look at the main crux of the game and most of its levels, there's a lot of fun to be had throughout its runtime, and you will definitely feel cool after racing through a level and getting an Ace medal. Even with some faults, it's pretty fun! It's just too bad it had to come with a story. There's a nice attempt buried within the writing, but none of it lands, which sucks, because it'd make coming back to the meat of the game more enticing. Still, what's there as far as the non-story side of it goes is rather good, so even though it's a wash for me, if you can stomach its cringe, you'll find plenty to like.
This is what makes some of the snoozefest (relative to the rest of the game) levels and boss fights especially rage-inducing when you come across them, reorienting the flow in a mid way. Along with some levels that felt real 💀 by reusing older challenges nearly beat-by-beat, mainly like around the middle third of the game, it feels like the design was stretched out a bit too much at 96 levels. But when most of it hits, it hits, excusing the lame stuff elsewhere in the game.
What doesn't hit is the cringe piled onto a perfectly good game. You play as the titular Neon White, a bad dude with amnesia who doesn't afraid of anything, forced to pwn demons to gain the privilege of temporarily staying in Heaven, running across Neon Yellow (your bro no homo), Neon Violet (the psycho e-girl who's also lol so randum xD) (the only one I responded positively to and I'd let her kill me), Neon Red (the tsundere baddie who's clearly into you), and Neon Green (the crazy murder dude that really makes you go "um... did he just do that???"). It's nearly-impossible to get invested in any of it despite the rare few Crowning Moments of Awesome. The often-hammy voice acting doesn't own, and wouldn't be much of an issue if the characters had dialog or writing worth giving a shit about.
Not only do they not, but there's even an insane amount of meme-filled, tongue-in-cheek, Joss Whedon-esque writing that plagues much of the interactions and story developments. It's weird, badly written, insufferable, and distracting. It comes off like a justification for the gameplay as well as the aesthetic, when I would much rather have just played these nearly 100 levels without the bad writing doing its best to make it harder to get through. Yes, it does let off the gas pedal with the memes and the like by around Chapter 7, nearly stopping altogether from the next one on. But it's almost too little too late with such a bad impression up until then. From top to bottom, the story, characterization, and overall writing simply needed to not be as bad as it was here in order to be compelling; no memes would have been a good start.
Thankfully, there is a part of the game that doesn't require you to play the story - the level rushes. Playing all of a character's themed levels (which at least do well to match the kind of personality each of the characters are), playing through all the story levels, or doing the same but with only the Dominion card (the rocket launcher card you unlock by the final third) back-to-back-to-back is its own thrill. Even the maddening Hell versions where any death means you must restart from the very beginning.
If you have skill issues like me however, not only is the difficulty curve on something like this immense, but you're probably somewhat worn out on the gameplay by this point. Especially when you also frequently run across the lesser levels in constantly restarting; that puts a damper on the excitement somewhat. Another irritating problem also highlights itself here, with the floaty airtime you get making it remarkably difficult to judge if you've overshot or not with a jump. Combine that with getting too close to a surface's edge meaning that the game simply won't register your jump at all, and a number of deaths will end up being extremely frustrating, especially in something as high-pressure as the Hell rushes.
Still, there is a good game in there. If you only look at the main crux of the game and most of its levels, there's a lot of fun to be had throughout its runtime, and you will definitely feel cool after racing through a level and getting an Ace medal. Even with some faults, it's pretty fun! It's just too bad it had to come with a story. There's a nice attempt buried within the writing, but none of it lands, which sucks, because it'd make coming back to the meat of the game more enticing. Still, what's there as far as the non-story side of it goes is rather good, so even though it's a wash for me, if you can stomach its cringe, you'll find plenty to like.