Making your main character’s official name be “unknown hacker” fails to accomplish any sort of reliability between the player and the game, and instead reinforces the idea that it’s just a placeholder. But you only get to complete them once, then they appear to be gone forever from any replays you do. The story of the Overseer’s history and how he got to be the King of the Neon Chrome building plays out during the initial campaign missions. Even if it was fighting against a GIANT BALL OF ENERGY, it would’ve at least been an original idea and not a copy. The game developers showed that they can make some neat metallic minions to throw at you, but didn’t go as far as they could with the boss ideas. Out of the mecha snake, robot spider, and space cruiser – you later fight a slightly bigger snake and have a slightly more complicated robot spider battle. Making the last two bosses reskins of the first three felt like a lazy cop-out. The boss fights of Neon Chrome step away from the standard approach of enemy firefights, but they’re too sparse and far between to have much of an impact on the game.
Mines and floor/wall turrets finish off the marathon of hazards nicely. They do just enough damage when you run into them to be an actual threat to your character, striking the right balance between “no problem at all” and “instant kill”. Heat laser traps are also an obstacle you’ll often come across. – they don’t notice you shooting holes in the wall, but they immediately spring into action as soon as you shoot someone. They allow to make shortcuts between different rooms, and ambush hostile forces from different angles. There’s limitless creative potential for challenge room ideas, yet it feels like the players only see a fraction of that here.ĭestructible walls add a feeling of tactical variety to the experience. The downside is that these parts of the game are too far in-between to be an effective element of their own. These sections are much more puzzle and environment oriented, helping to somewhat break up the combat-heavy main levels. Special challenge rooms are accessed via purple elevators that sometimes appear in Neon Chrome‘s levels. Things you would expect a dystopian sci-fi future setting, like that found in the Judge Dredd comics, is used here. The level layouts themselves play it safe when it comes to maintaining a consistent theme. No foreplay or distractions – you’re always jumping in immediately to shoot some bad guys straight up. As a game mode, it certainly gets to the point of what Neon Chrome is trying to do here. Sometimes it’s a straight dash from point A to point B, but mixed in with that is an extra objective of destroying a certain amount of orange server targets to make the green elevator room unlock. The main objective of most of the stages is getting from the blue elevator to the green elevator.
Neon Chrome‘s other classes needed more memorable attributes like that. The implementation of the camouflage device makes it so it only works while you’re standing still and away from direct view of the enemy. The only viable alternative I could make a strong argument for is the Assassin class, which comes equipped with an invisibility cloak. But the fact that there’s enough of a motive to going out of your way to try and get the Hacker class choice shows the imbalance between the available options. You can work around this by restarting the game again from the main menu, refreshing the given options in doing so. On the character selection screen, you get to pick from three randomly chosen classes and sometimes the Hacker isn’t there. It unlocks special containers, terminals, and doors during your game run. The only class that really matters is the Hacker. There are little suicide scouter robots that try and kamikaze you, spider robots that split into two miniturized versions of themselves once you kill the big one, and even balls of heat energy.
#JYDGE OR NEON CHROME FREE#
Robots are much more free in terms of their overall form though. As humanoids, they all have the same basic look – but change up their weapon loadouts the tougher of a level they are. Organics range from the basic foot soldier, to the heavily armored minigun wielding Commanders. The range of both of these enemy types is solid – taking vertical and horizontal approaches to the varieties. You play an unknown hacker that takes control of various supersoldier bodies, fighting through the Overseer’s personal army of organic and robot forces. The story of Neon Chrome takes place in a dystopian sci-fi future.
Unfortunately, the storyline felt too thin, making itself really only work as the backdrop for gameplay.
At a glance, Neon Chrome probably won’t blow your mind, but it was definitely a solid top-down shooter experience.