Neon Wars

Posted by oddbob on October 26, 2006 · Lovingly Filed Under Other peoples games 
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Neon Wars is a deceptive little cookie of a game, from a cursory glance you’d be easily fooled into believing it to be your bog standard average Geometry Wars style clone, but people of Bizarre Creations, look away now there is nothing to see here. Yes, it may have those wonderful glowing vectors that you lay claim to creating, it may be *shock* an arena shooter, but in practice its quite, quite a different beast indeed and shares less in common with Huge Euge’s creations than most of the other games doing the rounds on these interwebs we call our digital home.

It could also, quite possibly, be Neon Wars biggest mistake. But more of that later.

Shooters instinct tells me, the first thing you do upon being presented with an arena shooter is to go and hunt out the dual stick options and calibrate your sticks, well, if I were you I wouldn’t waste your time because there is no such option in Neon Wars… and this is where the game sets itself apart from the crowd. Its not a dual stick shooter, in fact - aside from a bomb button which produces various different pretty and deadly particle effects - you don’t have to shoot at all. You see, Neon Wars isn’t really a shooter at all - it just looks like one. The core basis of Neon Wars I’d be happier calling a “dodge em up” and much to my surprise, it turned out pretty fun despite some early reservations about it.

The game has two main segments, the level based game and the main feature, the zone game and I must confess that I found the level challenges a bit dull, not coma inducing dull by any means, but certainly not enough to retain my interests for too long (plus I cleared through them all in no time whatsoever) whereas the zone segments were far more fun and its clearly obvious why this is the main section of the game pushed (and the one showcased in the demo I believe). Once I’d gotten over the initial “hang on, I don’t have to fire” culture shock I’d happily thrown away a few hours to the game and enjoyed it thoroughly…which is all I can ever really ask for from a game.

Now, the problem I believe Neon Wars may find itself up against is what Neon Wars is by design. Its use of heavy particle effects and general look will adhere it straight away to the shmup crowd whilst the control scheme will doubtlessly alienate a fair few of them (”A shooter where you don’t get to shoot? Pifff”) whilst attracting the more “casual” crowd…but will a particle blaze be what the casual crowd is after?

Of course, in an ideal world this shouldn’t even be an issue - Neon Wars is, after all, just a bloody game and you either like it or you don’t, but I’ve ranted about this not too long ago and won’t inflict that upon you twice in a week… but by placing itself on the fence in such a manner may well work against it in the long run. If the hardcore mob don’t want your game and the casual mob feel its too hardcore looking for them then the developers may find themselves hitting a wall faster than something fast that hits walls.

I guess the main thing you have to do with Neon Wars is to switch off any preconceptions of what you feel it should be and enjoy it for what it is, a nice, mindless piece of fun that burns your eyelids in a lovely manner. Wether its $20 worth of mindless fun, I’m still not too sure - but unlike the recently released Polarity (with its carefully chosen and slightly misleading review quotes), Neon Wars contains no time limits, no DRM and a full zone for you to play through so at no point are you being held hostage by Macrovision for your purchase. Which is a good thing indeed, never quite sure why Indie publishers feel the need to go in for such invasive copy protection schemes… but thats for another day and not for this review.

You can find an alternate view on Neon Wars over at Bills excellent site: The2Bears and with thanks to Rich of Reflected/Blitwise for firing over a copy to go under the Gibber microscope.

Send in the lawyers...no wait, the other one...

Anyone seen Kraftwerk?

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Speak your brains

9 Responses to “Neon Wars”

  1. the2bears on October 26th, 2006 5:13 am

    I’ve been known to be wrong as well, you’ve convinced me that I should give the game some more time.

    Bill

  2. oddbob on October 26th, 2006 5:39 am

    Well, I’ve had a bit longer to get to grips with it than most in fairness - if you’d have read my initial reactions you may have fallen off your chair laughing at how similar they were to your review, Bill :D

    Having just dug out my reply: “Some sort of mutant Pacman meets Geometry Wars lovechild that got hidden at the back of the wardrobe.” was the best I could muster from the early build ;)

    I dunno, so much about the game that I really shouldn’t like (based on what I normally enjoy) and somewhere down the line it just clicked and I ended up liking it.

    I think perhaps its the ambience of it makes a nice contrast from the normal frenzied shooters I go for.

    I’m willing to accept I may be totally off my rocker on this one, mind.

  3. Richard Phipps on October 26th, 2006 8:51 am

    Thanks for the review Bob. That was pretty insightful and I have no complaints. :)

    As you’ve said it’s not trying to be Geometry Wars for the PC else we would have made it a dual stick shooter. I do believe that more mouse controlled games are a good thing.

    You may be right about the looks putting off casual players. But we decided from the beginning to make a game that everyone could play using a mouse (not just the casual market), that’s why there are 5 difficulty levels so people of all different skills could hopefully play it and enjoy it.

    Even if people don’t buy it, I hope they enjoy playing the free zone. :)

  4. Pacman on October 30th, 2006 2:27 pm

    if you are into Pacman you shall check out this pacman website where you can play pacman, ms.pacman and more :-)

  5. oddbob on October 30th, 2006 10:19 pm

    Ppppht, no PacLand.

  6. Richard Phipps on October 31st, 2006 4:03 pm

    I’ve been spammed! :o

  7. oddbob on October 31st, 2006 9:57 pm

    Maybe Pacman hunts out bunnies?

    Maybe the ghosts are the ghosts of Bunnies long past?

    What if its all just a crazy dream and none of us really exist? :O

  8. Richard Phipps on November 3rd, 2006 12:16 pm

    Are you eating those pacman pills again??

  9. oddbob on November 3rd, 2006 10:14 pm

    Ssssh, I told the missus it was pizza ;)

    btw:

    http://www.stillwater-rock.com/forum/comments.php?DiscussionID=1956&page=1#Item_3

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