Neon Blood

The year is 2053 and Alex McCoin is our protagonist - a hard-boiled cop who was once the best in Viridis but is now a shadow of his former self. His implants are damaged by drug abuse, his migraines are frequent and the police force, who once looked up to him, sigh at the liability he has become. When a series of murders of scientists from the cyberwear company NilCorp occur, he becomes embroiled in a chain of events that will not only change his future, but that of all the city's residents. We'll encounter everything from super hackers and mutants to cyber cops and rat people - all shaped to resemble works like Bladerunner and Cyberpunk 2077, stumbling along insecurely, not really knowing which way to go.

When I watched the trailers for Neon Blood, I was immediately very interested. The game looked stylish, fast and exciting. I expected an action game with detective elements set in a dystopian cyberpunk future. What we got was something completely different, about half of what I thought. It's an action game that's neat at times, but it's not fast-paced or exciting at all. It is, however, set in a dystopian future and contains some elements reminiscent of detective work. In the trailers we saw fast-paced fights with cool effects, but in the game it was instead turn-based battles and quicktime events. It was not at all what I thought it would be, plain and simple. But was what we got good?

It was a rather mixed bag. At times I have a lot of fun with the game, mostly running around the streets of Viridis and being struck by how cool the neon-lit, dirty and run-down world that Chaotic Brain has built is. The style is quite unique with characters rendered in 2D pixels with a 3D world as a backdrop. Occasionally and especially in motion, the game is really neat and the lighting is particularly beautiful. I wish they'd made more of that instead of setting most of the game in boring back alleys, run-down bars, sewers and desert towns. Unfortunately, it's far from pretty all the time. Sometimes you choose to zoom in way too much on the characters and you can barely see what they represent because they are reduced to bloated and sticky pixels instead. During some short parts of the game we are also treated to some incredibly nicely drawn cutscenes but they are far too short and are over and done with before you can register what happened.

Initially, I giggled a bit at the proportions of our protagonist too. He has very short arms and I get a bit of a T-rex vibe instead of tough hard-nosed cop. I learned to live with that over the course of the game, but I don't understand how the developers couldn't have seen it and fixed it themselves. This is the case with several things in the game and I'm pretty sure that Chaotic Brain had bigger plans for the game that the small studio was not able to realize. As mentioned earlier, we get some missions where we have to use our police skills to find clues. This is done by scanning the environment with our cybernetic eye implants and things of interest light up with a bright blue glow. I don't know how many times I've had to suffer through the exact same puzzle. From start to finish, almost all we do as police is scan our surroundings, follow the bright blue details and press a few buttons to move on. It's never difficult or tricky and requires no thought whatsoever. At times it becomes awkward and unclear, but never in a way that would help make the puzzle elements of the game more interesting. These moments become mere annoyances. There is another puzzle in the game that you do in the exact same way twice, and there it became clear that there was not enough time spent in development.

Turn-based battles are another extremely common activity you have during the three to four hours you play Neon Blood. I've never been particularly fond of turn-based action and even less so in this game. It's a simple system where you score damage points based on dice rolls. You can attack or choose to heal yourself. Early on, you get a skill called "headshot" and that's all you need until the credits roll. The game's battles are really boring and completely lacking in oomph and any kind of difficulty. The main character's stats are constantly upgraded so that none of the opponents offer any real resistance - not even the game's final boss. It's over in a matter of minutes and I didn't die once during the game. If you choose to rest such an essential part of an action game on turn-based battles, you have to introduce more depth than we get here.

Then there's the story, the biggest disappointment in my opinion. It's as if they haven't really been able to decide what direction or tone the game should have. One moment it's gritty, dark and dirty, but then the slapstick jokes pile up and the rather nice sci-fi scented chiptune music is replaced by something you might find in a sci-fi series directed by the Disney Channel. Sure, there's room for both elements in a story but neither are done well enough. The story is rushed and in the limited running time we reach an end before there is any climax or crescendo. Shrugs define both the narrative technique and the story as a whole. It's also filled with clichés, characters we've seen fifty times before and things that have been done countless times before - not least in Cyberpunk 2077.

But still, I wouldn't say the game is all that bad. It may be rather thin and far too light, but when the world is so beautiful and overflowing with Easter eggs and homages to other cyberpunk classics, it still makes for a rather enjoyable journey. Neon Blood's short running time is an advantage because there is not enough content and ideas to fill more hours of entertainment. However, I wish Chaotic Brain had chosen to give the story more weight and a darker tone. They never managed to capture me and it feels like they themselves were lost and didn't really know in which direction they wanted to take the adventure.