Fatigue is definitely starting to set in among avid indie gamers as dozens upon dozens of nostalgia-driven budget titles hoping to emulate the NES and SNES eras are thrust onto virtual store shelves each week. While that’s not to downplay the amazing pixel art or gameplay direction of some of these releases—games like Punch Club, Celeste, Stardew Valley, and The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth definitely deserve their spots in the annals of gaming history—it’s undoubtedly difficult to separate the digital wheat from the chaff at this point. With that in mind, while Neon City Riders feels like a celebration of all things 16-bit, questionable design decisions and tedious gameplay loops often drag the experience down and evoke all too well the pains of early-90s gaming.

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Cyberpunk 2065

Set in the dystopian cyberpunk hell that is the latter half of the twenty-first century, Neon City Riders tasks Rick, a hockey mask-wearing vigilante, with tracking down and defeating four crime lords and restoring peace to the far-future metropolis. It’s not a terribly inventive story, though it offers just enough incentive to keep exploring the game’s highly detailed and fleshed-out pixel art environments.

In fact, the visuals seem to be the main draw here. Sure, seen one neon-drenched vaporwave pixel art rendering, seen ‘em all, but Neon City Riders’ environments are so dense and brimming with color and intrigue that exploration becomes a reward in and of itself. From dilapidated junkyards to slime-green toxic bogs to glitzy ultraviolet downtown streets, the game’s art is absolutely fantastic and stands out even in a market that sees new faux-retro titles pop up almost hourly.

Capped Combat

Unfortunately, while the art and visual direction may be great, the same can’t exactly be said about some aspects of the gameplay. A button-mashing beat-em-up somewhat akin to old-school titles like Double Dragon or River City Ransom, Neon City Riders feels like it was built on a solid foundation. However, not long after the tutorial, the experience devolves into a slog of repetitive combat and endless sections of trial and error and backtracking.

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This is mostly due to one fatal flaw: while the tutorial teases a bunch of vital abilities, explains how to use them, and culminates in an epic boss fight, it pulls a Symphony of the Night and strips all of these powers away, leaving the player character without crucial tools like a dash, block, and perry. A vast majority of the game’s story then revolves around re-collecting these powers, but the combat feels totally gimped as a result. Though this is a tortured comparison, it’s a bit like if Dark Souls didn’t feature any meaningful gear, weapon, or stat upgrades and instead has players questing for things like the dodge roll skill or the ability to use a shield. Sure, these games aren’t exactly analogous, but, as any veteran Souls player would know, the games’ core movement and combat abilities are what make it so appealing, and stripping most of them away would turn enemy engagements into a tedious mess—and that’s exactly what Neon City Riders’ early game feels like.

Lost In The City

via: bromiodev.itch.io

At times, the game is also very obtuse about the direction it wants the player to take. There’s something to be said about demanding a player forge their own direction organically, but, when more than half of the city is partitioned off with barriers which can only be passed via a specific ability, advancing in the story sometimes feels like trial and error. While we maintain that exploring the various environments the first time around can be a joy, repeatedly backtracking and keeping an eye open for all the nooks and crannies you may have initially missed is feels like a chore. This is an issue which could easily be amended via a more distinctive map marker or some sort of compass system.

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Finally, while the game could likely be described as quote-unquote “NES hard,” the difficulty level largely feels artificial, as the player rarely feels equipped to deal with most threats. Health is tough to keep without the aid of any of the abilities teased in the tutorial, and a plethora of one-hit-kill obstacles will have most players giving up long before they’ve seen the main mission through. Perhaps this was a deliberate homage to the tough-as-nails game design often seen in the games of yesteryear, but it feels more like an oversight.

Should You Take The Ride?

With all that said, Neon City Riders isn’t a bad game by any means. It is just severely hampered by some puzzling mechanics and design flaws. While the titular city itself may be oozing with personality and neon allure, wading through the game’s main quest feels far too cumbersome. It could, by all means, be a fun time for the ridiculously skilled or incredibly patient, but we can’t help but feel that a majority of gamers won’t put the time in to overcome the early-game difficulty curve.

A Nintendo Switch copy of Neon City Riders was provided to TheGamer for this review. Neon City Riders is available now for PC, PS4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch.

Neon City Riders

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