This absurdly stylish side scroller feels like playing two different genres of retro shooter at the same time, and I love it

Two cyberpunk assassins holding guns — (Image credit: Zenovia Interactive)

Neon Inferno looks like a lot of new games that gleefully throw back to the golden age of the run and gun side scroller—delights like Blazing Chrome and Huntdown. Cyberpunk city, dirty cops, laser sword-wielding Yakuza, and just enough slugs to send 'em all to hell; it's all pretty by the numbers on the surface, but don't count it out even if you're worn out on the nostalgic aesthetics. Contra-style platforming is just one dimension on offer here.

If you've ever played Wild Guns or even Duck Hunt, you'll be familiar with the gallery shooter: arcadey games where you shoot into the screen at enemies as they pop in and out of the background. Contra has had levels like this in the past, but in Neon Inferno, you're both run-and-gunning and gallery shooting simultaneously: hold down the right bumper, and you swap your aim between the background and foreground. You might think this would get chaotic, and it does. Very quickly in fact, even in the 10-minute demo on Steam.

That said, Neon Inferno is more forgiving than you might expect from the genre. You can take a few hits and deflect certain color-coded bullets as they're about to collide with you; after doing so, you can trigger bullet time to get your bearings and send the deflected attack flying at an enemy for increased damage. It's the ideal way to make a tough-as-nails arcade game more accessible: it provides both a breather for newcomers and a novel tool for veterans to kill guys faster. Above all, it just rocks to kick an incoming rocket at a helicopter during a motorcycle chase on the highway; these are the things every videogame should be about.

Mercifully, there's also a host of difficulty options if you don't want to sink hours into clearing the game on a single credit. You can go through the whole game on arcade difficulty but with added checkpoints for a quicker clear, or tune down the difficulty if self-flagellation isn't your jam. Even on hard mode though, the game doesn't feel like it's out to get you the way a Cuphead or a Ghosts n' Goblins might (at least in the demo)—and the option of local co-op should let you offload any frustrations onto your nearest pal.

Justin first became enamored with PC gaming when World of Warcraft and Neverwinter Nights 2 rewired his brain as a wide-eyed kid. As time has passed, he's amassed a hefty backlog of retro shooters, CRPGs, and janky '90s esoterica. Whether he's extolling the virtues of Shenmue or troubleshooting some fiddly old MMO, it's hard to get his mind off games with more ambition than scruples. When he's not at his keyboard, he's probably birdwatching or daydreaming about a glorious comeback for real-time with pause combat. Any day now...

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