Neon White triggered a small hype on Steam in the middle of 2022, but is completely unknown in this country. Yet one of the best shooters of the year is hidden here
productions stands. Sure, Dying Light 2 was a huge success at the beginning of the year. But towards the end of the year, two long-awaited highlights were released with Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 and Warhammer 40,000: Darktide, but both games were plagued by massive technical shortcomings and caused long faces. For our Dani CoD MW2 was therefore the biggest disappointment of the year.
But luckily there”s still the indie sector, which had the best shooter ideas in 2022: crude humour in High on Life, rhythmic shooting in Metal Hellsinger – and then there”s Neon White, which you”ve probably never heard of. An anime speedrun FPS with visual novel dating sim elements, advertised by the developers with the slogan by freaks for freaks. It sounds quite strange, but it has 98 percent positive user ratings on Steam. And quite rightly so, as our test shows.
God is a Weeb
The story of Neon White sounds exciting and unique to begin with: you embody the assassin White, an overly cool and sarcastic anime emo guy who is rescued from hell by God himself together with his old team to do his dirty work.
Heaven is suffering from a demon invasion right now and a big reward is waiting for the contract killers: Whoever does the best job in the clean-up can stay in paradise afterwards. Doesn”t sound so bad, does it?
The story is indeed full of twists and interesting ideas, but they are quickly destroyed again. This is mainly due to the incredibly generic and clichéd characters, who are named after the colours of their hair: Red is a mysterious seductress, Violet a sadistic e-girl and Green the brutal villain.
There are some really good anime stories and visual novels with deep characters and dramatic plots – we”re thinking of Neon Genesis Evangelion or Doki Doki Literature Club, for example. And there are anime that are incredibly unpleasant to watch and immediately trigger foreign shame. The story part of Neon White unfortunately belongs to the latter.
The developers probably know this, too, and have included endless amounts of self-deprecating jokes in the dialogue. Unfortunately, these didn”t work on us once, but rather made the dialogue debacle even more obvious. At least you can skip all the conversations if you prefer to concentrate on the shooter part – because this is the true strength of Neon White, for which we gladly put up with the many extraneous moments of mud in the story.
Jump, shoot, die
Neon White is not a classic single-player shooter à la Doom or Call of Duty. Instead, the focus is on your speed, because you have to rush through almost 100 different levels in the best speedrun style, shoot all the demons and reach the end of the map. Depending on how fast you are, you will receive a bronze, silver, gold or ace medal at the end.
At first it sounds like a simple high-score hunt, but when you play it, it turns out to be an ingenious time-eater – even for speedrun sceptics. Because Neon White perfects its straightforward gameplay and excels in two important shooter disciplines.
The movement in the game not only works precisely at all times, but the weapon system makes it really ingenious. Each weapon is not only used to kill the demons, but can also be dropped by right-clicking to trigger a movement ability.
With the pistol, for example, you can perform a double jump, with the rifle you can sprint through the air and with the submachine gun you can land on the ground in a flash. Our personal favourite, however, is the rocket launcher, with which we can not only perform rocket jumps à la Quake 3, but also use it as a grappling hook when we drop it.
Adding to this is arguably the best level design we”ve seen in a shooter this year. Each map is designed from the ground up so that there are several different routes to the objective. The game initially guides you along an obvious path that is stats manageable later in the game with a little practice, even for shooter newbies.
Here you can often unlock a gold medal just with good timing, optimised running routes and a quick finger on the trigger. Once you”ve reached it, you”ll be shown some shortcuts that can be used to reach the coveted Ace Medal.
But it only gets really exciting when you start thinking for yourself and experimenting with your own shortcuts. The levels are much more open than they first appear.
We could have easily played through Neon White in five hours, but we found ourselves repeating completed maps again and again in order to improve our times by a few seconds or to try out possible shortcuts.
What may sound tedious to some was enormous fun for us. The feeling when you complete a two-minute level in under 30 seconds after numerous attempts and with a cool idea is priceless.
For whom is Neon White worthwhile?
Neon White is a very special, but also an incredibly cool shooter that quickly makes you feel incredibly cool yourself as you race through the stylish maps at breakneck speed.
You don”t have to be a speedrun fan to have fun with Neon White. And certainly not freaks, as the developers would have you believe – although freaks who have already spent hours striving for best times in other games like Trackmania or Super Meat Boy will certainly have a little more fun with it than the average gamer.
Only the fact that the story with its mixture of exaggerated drama, poorly written dialogue and unfunny self-irony doesn”t spark at all prevents a foray into higher rating regions – after all, half of the game is a story-heavy visual novel.
Editor”s conclusion
Just before Christmas, I chatted with Steffi and Dani about what we play between the holidays. My answer was: the same games as always. Games I hate but can”t get away from.
For years, I”ve spent a lot of my gaming time chasing some kind of reward mechanic, like ranking up in League of Legends and Hearthstone, or grinding my way through Fortnite and CoD MW2”s Battle Pass. The fact that playing itself isn”t that much fun, but only winning, somehow got me thinking.
With Neon White, I experienced the complete opposite. The gameplay is so simple, but so much fun. Even if I fall into the same abyss 50 times because I want to somehow manage that one impossible jump. Thanks to this test, I now have my first resolution for 2023: play more games that are really fun! And Neon White is definitely one of them.
