Neon White Review

Neon White is a tricky game to pigeon-hole. It's a first-person shooter. It's a twitch platformer. It's an adrenaline-fuelled speedrunner's nirvana. There are even cards in the mix (and who doesn't love cards?). One thing you can be sure of about Neon White, however, is that it's a singular, wonderful thing – a slab of raw, unadulterated gameplay that requires laser focus. It's an absolute delight.

Developer Angel Matrix's game takes place within the suspiciously pristine realm of Heaven, a sterile beach resort where condemned souls compete to dispatch demons for a chance to get into God's good graces, and earn a permanent place as champion. Haughty angels known as 'Believers' goad protagonist Neon White as he tackles a procession of missions, while angelic cats Gabby, Mikey, and Raz cater to your needs between chapters.

Meanwhile, White, afflicted with amnesia, is striving to make sense of his past and how fellow Neons Red, Violet, Yellow, and Green fit into all of this. “Hey, guess what? You died and God thinks you suck. Go kill some crap,” White's reluctant battle cry rings out from behind his alabaster oni mask, before he's flung headlong into a gauntlet of guns, katanas, demons, and cards – a gauntlet that requires precision and fast thinking, testing your ability to juggle combat and traversal without missing a beat.

The majority of Neon White's levels run to little over 30 seconds or a minute (although later stages run a bit longer), and each is a beautifully pure shot of first-person gunplay and acrobatics, with instant retries enabling you to take repeated stabs at shaving precious milliseconds off your time, in an effort to acquire those elusive 'Ace' medals. Gold simply isn't good enough. With each medal won, your 'insight' level grows, and you're granted hints at shortcuts and the ability to collect hidden gifts on subsequent runs as your reward.

Every level is suspended precariously above a bottomless abyss, missed jumps punished with a slow inexorable fall into the void. White moves at a blistering pace, so sharp reflexes are required to pick up the cards in your path, then deploy them exactly as they're meant to be deployed. Each card you collect has a dual purpose, so, its rudimentary role is that of a firearm, but its secondary use grants a vital parkour skill, tearing up and consuming the card in the process.

Playing those cards right is pivotal when it comes to executing an optimal run, and early on it can be as simple as using a yellow handgun card to perform a second jump and a blue sniper rifle card to pull off a darting dash forward. Before long, you're using the purple assault rifle card to set mines that blast open red doors or boost your jump skywards; blazing through the air like a fireball using a red shotgun card; and wielding green SMG cards to activate a downward stomp, like a rapidly descending cannonball.

Eventually, you'll be using a rocket launcher to rocket jump between mid-air plateaus, shooting out lines of wire to grapple between walls and ceilings, as well as stomping and smashing through red wooden doorways, evading deadly tripwires, and using exploding red barrels to boost your leaps, all (hopefully) without run-ending errors. It's frenetic, unbelievably gratifying stuff – the same kind of rewarding and addictive 'just one more go' gameplay you'd associate with RedLynx's infuriating but always enjoyable Trials series. Like those games, there's no time for such frivolous luxuries as blinking in your quest for perfection.

When you're not engaging in Neon White's sweaty-palmed race against the clock, certain junctures see White talking with the other sinners fighting for a place in Heaven, unravelling the mystery of his and the other Neons' past lives prior to their deaths, and, ultimately, it builds to a satisfying conclusion. It's another aspect of Angel Matrix's game that's been lavished with due care and attention, every story beat revealing more about White (whose voice is provided by the distinctive gruff tones of Steve Blum) and the motley band he ran with during his chequered past. It's good shit.

A mite frustrating it can be at times, and some stages rely a little too much on trial and error, but Neon White is nothing short of fantastic, even when you're butting up against a challenge that has you stumped – overcoming a tough level and bagging an Ace medal for your efforts is up there with some of the best, most rewarding feelings you can get out of a game. In simple terms, Neon White is a transcendent experience that ought to be relished, and its arrival on Xbox is something to be celebrated.