Neon Blight – Review
Follow Genre: Bullet Hell
Developer: Bleeding Tapes
Publisher: Freedom Games
Platform: PC
Tested on: PC

Neon Blight – Review

Site Score
5.0
Good: Fun and addictive gameplay, Loot heaven 
Bad: The amound of crashes, Bugs, Items not working 
User Score
0
(0 votes)
Click to vote
VN:F [1.9.22_1171]
Rating: 0.0/10 (0 votes cast)

Imagine the future with flying cars and laser weapons which will probably sound cool to most of you. But, what if there are even more issues then than there are now? In Neon Blight we follow the story of two cops that try to capture a criminal but end up in quite the pickle. It is up to you to discover what happened after that dreadful day. Initially, the game looked amazing and promising, but the many problems encountered during gameplay brought the score down from a really good game to a title that we are unsure to advise. 

Story 

Our story begins with officer Franko and officer Lara just enjoying their day, patrolling the skies of a cyberpunk city. Suddenly, they get a call for an incident where their fellow cops are in danger. Upon arriving, they find the bodies of said comrades and decide to split up so they can search the compound better. After a while, Franko returns with a rather big surprise: he captured Deathblade. This highly wanted criminal is the person behind this racket and must be locked up forever. Sadly, as with most high-ranking criminals, Deathblade had a trick up his sleeve and suddenly the game flashes to the current time. It’s fifteen years later and this whole introduction was a flashback. In the time between events, Lara has decided to quit the force and has opened up a small gun shop in the same city that she once watched over. However, her past is still haunting her, and it won’t be that easy to leave everything behind.  

The game’s introduction is really great, and after each completed mission, there is a small flashback that slowly fills in the events from fifteen years ago. Your life takes a new turn, and it is up to you to solve the old case and fix the problems that came along with it. The story will keep you interested, and while there is a lot of mystery at first, the pieces will slowly come together.  

Graphics 

Visually the game begins pretty strong but loses steam along the way. The dark cyberpunk alleyways lit with neon lighting are charming at first, but you’ll spend the most time in the city’s outskirts. There are a handful of different biomes and every one has its unique setting when it comes to its surroundings, but sadly the enemies remain identically the same for each location. It would have been really cool to have the recurring enemies adjust to their new setting and spice things up a bit with a bunch of different looks. During gunfights, you will have a lot going on, as the game is a bullet hell type. This means you will be dodging bullets to find a safe path between the gaps.

Sound  

Like the graphics, the sounds will help you stay in that cyberpunk aesthetic. It all starts with the pleasant background music that keeps you in the zone while you explore the many locations of the game. All guns have decent sound effects and it is actually a joy to collect different weapons and hear the different audio feedback that comes from them

Gameplay 

Neon Blight is a top-down bullet hell shooter where you go on an adventure to solve a case from years ago and run a gun shop in the process. The game starts with a short tutorial during your first call of the evening. After the incident is solved, the game takes you fifteen years in the future. Your character Lara has quit the force and has now opened her gun shop in the city. Getting guns legitimately is not easy in this town, and you will have to get them the hard way. Your neighbor comes in with the first tip on where you should head, and thus you decide to head out for some wares. 

Your real adventure starts on the outskirts of the city. This place is where civilization ends and the law of the strongest applies. Not only is this place filled with criminals and wildlife, but you’ll also encounter strange creatures named Blights. You fight your way through the many enemies and are sometimes greeted with new weapons, money, or keys. These keys can be used to grab a gun from vending machines and these machines can also drop upgrades as an extra added bonus. During your travels, you will find merchants to buy items from and you can sell these back in your store if you so desire. 

The map is quite large, but luckily each section is blocked off by toll booths. To pass these, you will have to pay a small fee once. This really keeps the player more focused on the starting area to get a good grip on reality and build up your funds. Once you get a feel for gaining income from both running your store and clearing the map, you will notice that the game is nice to explore and play. Around this time, you should have defeated your first boss. After this encounter, you will be tasked with taking down four more bosses in the world. These bosses all have their own unique style and feel like a fair challenge. 

The gunplay feels great and enjoyable, but what makes this game so unenjoyable is the fact that the game is fully released but feels like it is still in an early stage of its development. When we played the game, not only did we experience several game-breaking bugs, but the game itself died enough times that it became a serious nuisance. We had customers steal weapons from us, enemies getting stuck in places, and some weapons not working properly. On top of that, certain power-ups just didn’t do anything. If the developers step up their game and fix all the issues, then Neon Blight will be a really great title, but in its current state, it feels like a failed Kickstarter project.  

Conclusion 

Neon Blight is the equivalent of hooking up with a hot person at the club, only for it to look like an absolute abomination in the morning. We are not talking about the graphics or the sounds being bad, as these are pretty good. It’s just that the game is just riddled with bugs. On top of that, there were so many crashes that we almost went to the uninstall tab while we were still trying out the game. Neon Blight has a lot of potential: the gameplay is addictive, fun, and enjoyable, but it crashes every few minutes, making the game a tedious affair. If you can look past these annoyances, the game might still be worth looking into.

VN:F [1.9.22_1171]
Rating: 0.0/10 (0 votes cast)
VN:F [1.9.22_1171]
Rating: 0 (from 0 votes)
MC_JP


Never give up on a dream. It might be a long nightmare, but one day it will change into a beautiful reality - MC_JP 2014

No Comments

Leave a Reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.