1. Normally, I got along w/ developers who decide to stylize their game names in all-caps but I'm not in the mood for it today. I am going to write it as NEON STRUCT just once and be done w/ it. This game will be called Neon Struct henceforth. I don't care.
2. Neon Struct is a stealth game and I feel obliged to let you all know I don't like this kind of game all that much. There is an inherent design flaw built into the genre which has not yet been fixed while maintaining its so-called purity as a stealth game. The two most common methods of encouraging stealth w/o things turning into an action game at points are to make being discovered be an automatic game-over or grading you at the end of each level docking points for killing people, which is essentially just scolding you for not playing the game correctly. Neither of these are all too appealing to me. Again, I don't care.
3. The latter method is used in Neon Struct and, you know what, it's done extremely well. It's generally clear if you are in cover or visible. If you alert a guard, you almost always have some chance to get away undetected and just running while letting alarms go off is still a viable option if it comes to it. As you progress, you get a variety of cool tools to get out of the more difficult situations. You will be able to get through most of these levels w/ only a little trial and error if you are okay w/ receiving a low grade on it.
4. I actually finished it despite not liking the whole sneak around and wait style of gameplay. I did this because it looks cool, sounds cool and the story is pretty cool too.
5. Graphically, this is the low-poly w/ good anti-aliasing look that is pretty common in 3D indie games these days. The art style here reminds me a lot of the pre-rendered cut scenes in Flashback and Neon Struct seems to cop a lot of its vibe from that moody 90s platformer in terms of sound as well.
6. It is fittingly silent for most of the stealth segments. The only sounds are environmental and I find there is something inherently pleasing about trying to tease the sound of enemy footsteps from your own. It is just how you might imagine situations such as Neon Struct puts you in sounding in real life, breathlessly quiet. These long segments of silence are broken when you are discovered and
some 80s action flick chase music pops on. This works really well too.
7. Story sections are soundtracked by 80s-inflected synth music usually blaring from little radios you can turn on and off. It's a small touch but it's one of those details that makes a world seem a little more real. The music is by a group called The Home Conversion and it'd be a mistake not to check them out even if you don't wind up playing this game.
8. At the start of the game, you are dropped into your first mission which functions as a brief tutorial as well. From here you find you are a secret agent in a very wired-in world. Your goal is to do all the secret agent stuff your secret agent boss tells you to do. Neon Struct plays it straight enough early on but pretty soon you
start to get the inkling that some of the business you're getting
involved in is kinda fucked up. This is where the story gets good. You
wind up double crossed and in intrigue up to your eyeballs. There is a
tendency toward melodrama but everything stays relatively
believable here.
9. I found some levels got a bit samey-looking area to area and you can get lost for this reason. There will be endless hallways of indistinct doors at times and it just gets a bit frustrating to accidentally re-visit and area you've already been to. To be fair, this is true to life as far as how real buildings are designed but we're playing a video game here. Just give each area different colored rugs for God's sake.
10. I found myself going through levels using the the de-facto easy mode of just taking out every single guard I saw, which became kind of tedious after a while. Not gonna lie: I ended up dropping the in-game difficulty settings to expedite my way through the game. The easiest mode is basically the walking-sim version
where you can just run completely amok w/o a care in the world. The next level up lets you sneak right in front of guards as long as you're slightly careful which considerably cuts down the amount of time you have to sit and do nothing. Normal mode is normal. Higher difficulties you just spend a lot of time getting insta-killed by guards.
11. This might be a pet peeve but there are little collectables hidden throughout the levels and they are frequently in the hardest to get spots. I found it really, really annoying to painstakingly bip and bop past a set of guards only find that what was at the end of my travels was non-essential. Some people might like this. There's no accounting for taste.
12. There's a few story beats you can change through your actions--or, rather, the ending of the game changes slightly--but the main reason you might play through Neon Struct more than once is to simply try to do better. This is where those grades come into play. Also, the hidden collectables. As mentioned, the game plays out fairly but if you are going to find absolutely everything without getting detected, you are going to have to play through a few times to learn the lay of the land.
13. Neon Struct is a spy thriller with a stealth game built into it. The genres are a natural match and Minor Key Games do well playing the various elements off each other. The game uses this dynamic to builds an impressively complete world during its relatively short playtime and will certainly strike a chord w/ fans of either genre. I liked its presentation and story so much that I really enjoyed it despite not liking its style of gameplay. I probably shouldn't dwell so much on this point but, you know what, I don't care.
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