Neon Chrome, aside from being an extremely strange colour, is a top down fast paced shooter set in a cyber-punk future. Taking control of a series of mentally controlled soldiers, your mission is to ascend the corporate tower block of Neon Chrome, and kill the overseer of the company. To do this, you take control of a series of human drones, to storm successive floors of the tower and attempt to reach the top. Every five floors, you gain a new elevator straight up to function as checkpoints.
Playing as a cross between hotline Miami and a modern shooter such as COD, the fast moving combat flows smoothly as you run through the levels, dodging bullets and breaking through walls. The main goal is to get to the elevator at the end of the level, but there are several extras. Cash and power are scattered throughout the level, as well as upgrades to your weapons and equipment. Cash is fairly straight forward, being used to upgrade your characters stats in between runs, and can also be used at vending machines to buy power. Power charges up your secondary attack, which be one of several powerful weapons.
There are many weapons, which can be classed into several groups. There are SMG’s, rifles, shotguns and bolt action rifles. There are different classes for each gun, such as ion (strong against robots) and plasma (strong against organics). There are also different levels, with a gun being more powerful the later in the game you get it. upgrades to your equipment come from large booths which give you a choice of 3 upgrades to select. For most runs you start off with 3 slots,with one filled, but more slots can be bought and leveled up as you progress through the game.
Every time you start a new run you get the opportunity to choose from 1 of 3 randomly created characters. Characters vary in their weapon load out, name and class. The class of a character can significantly affect game play by deciding what your starting upgrade is as well as altering your stats. A hacker may be slightly weaker but has the ability to hack small crates to gain more money and power that is not available to other classes. Hackers also have a small quad copter equipped with a gun which will try and flank the enemy to give you a helping hand.
Personally my favourite class is the sniper, which is a weak but mobile class with a nano suit which will render you invisible when in shadows. While this is supposed to let you take out a few enemy’s then disappear back into shadows to escape the enemies gaze, I eventually end up with a high powered shotgun stealth attacking enemy after enemy, gaming the mechanics to maximum affect.
There are a wide range of enemies, each with different move sets and mechanics. Human soldiers are the hard hitters, with most having either shotguns or assault rifles. There are also some with rockets launchers or rail guns, both weapons that can one-shot you if you aren’t careful. Finally to round out the human enemies are the crowd control troops, carrying a hard shield that stops bullets and either a baton or pistol. On the robot side of the defending army, there are spider droids that, whilst being weak, can easily swarm up on you. There are also more powerful forms of the spider droid, that when killed splits into two small but fast spiders which can wreck a snipers day. There are small laser droids, which spin around in circles and chase after the player when spotted. There are also small rockets that, as before spin in circles until they spot the player, where they will then track after the player, trying to explode them.
Bosses come every 5 levels and must be defeated to unlock the next save elevator. Instead of just being powerful goons, such as in other games, these bosses present a difficult challenge, calling on the player to utilize their previous skills in new scenarios. One of the bosses is a large spider machine that has a devastating AoE attack, forcing the player to trigger this attack, get out of the way and then jump in and deal a bit of damage whilst it recharges its attacks.
An unusual boss fight forces the player to navigate through a series of rooms whilst lasers flit on and off, with a few goons running around to help. This boss fight is interesting for me as it eschews the primary mechanic of the game, shooting, for another often underused mechanic, reaction-based movement. Having a big gun wont help against this boss, learning the patterns and hopping through laser grids will. It forces the player to acknowledge other mechanics that they can now use more effectively in later levels.
As well as main bosses at the end of each floor set, there are also mini-bosses scattered throughout the floors. They can range from an enemy with an extremely strong force field shield, to one which gives all enemies in range a healing boost, to a particularly evil one which doubles all of the enemies stats. This might seem too bad until it is put up the evil purple spider from earlier, which now instead of splitting into two weak spiders, splits into 4 fairly powerful spiders, which can really muck up your day if you aren’t careful.
Power ups can sometimes be found in crates, and can provide the player with a significant boost in the fight. Power-ups can take the form of unlimited energy for a period of time, in which case the correct procedure is to run willy-dilly through the level, firing off your secondary as fast as your right mouse button can be clicked. Other powers ups can include a significant healing factor for a period, weird vampire abilities or piercing rounds, which can be a significant boon. Piercing rounds can rip through weak walls like they are made of paper, go through several enemies at a time, and even get through the previously impervious shields of the riot control dudes, shredding them like a cat shreds, well … everything.
Some floors will have locked off sections, forcing up to hunt through the level for a key card to continue on. Sometimes it may be the exit that is blocked off, sometimes a haul of loot or maybe a mini level of high-powered enemies. Most of the time the key will unlock a door on that level, but sometimes an enemy will drop a yellow key, which is not always able to be used on that level. Yellow doors are scattered around the higher floors and will lock off a single item, maybe an upgrade point, maybe a new gun, or even just a bit of health. These doors give the player a difficult choice to make, a sweet gun now or the possibility of a health pack later after a particularly hard level? Yellow doors will sometimes have nothing behind them, so always make sure to check before spending a valuable key.
Neon chrome is a fun fast paced action shooter that mixes the standard grind of shooters with quick reaction based movement, whilst mixing in a multi-level grind without making it a slog. The successive run of characters you play as gives you the ability to experiment with different play styles whilst still keeping your upgrades intact. ??While I have not been able to test the co-op portion it promises to be a fun and fast paced jaunt with a friend through mountains of enemies.
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