Neon White Review

ign.com:

A brash blend of lightning-quick platforming, fast and frantic combat, and a peculiar, card-based resource system, Neon White is a slick and special speedrunning FPS that’s simple to understand but hard to put down. Think Doom Eternal’s platforming sections, only replace the grim hellscapes with the floating architecture of an abstract heaven and you’re part of the way there. Add a little of Trials HD trying to ride the perfect route over the corpse of Mirror’s Edge and you’ll be even closer. With its precise and elegant controls and its uncanny ability to make even an average shooter player feel lithe and lethal it’s extremely easy to get lured into Neon White’s loop, even if the story stitching it all together immediately overstays its welcome.

Neon White’s oddball premise – which sees sinners plucked from purgatory to serve as parkour pest-exterminators, clearing out a demon infestation in heaven as part of an annual contest where the winner gets to remain there – certainly sounds interesting on paper. In practice, however, it makes a large portion of Neon White a young adult visual novel where a bunch of brightly-coloured, dead millennials reminisce about their past lives and argue a bunch. I do appreciate the effort to slow down and add context to the 12 chapters and 97 levels developer Angel Matrix has built here – rather than just machine-gunning them directly into our veins non-stop, that is – but overall Neon White’s slightly over-assertive blend of pop-punk Christianity and off-brand anime didn’t grab me. You can fast-forward through it, but it’s always there.

This makes for a lot of chat to wade through outside of the otherwise impeccable puzzle platforming, delivered by a cast of goths, gym bros, and