Neon White is a 2022 speedrunning FPS-platformer developed by Angel Matrix, which is, from what I gather, a loose collective of independent developers. With an anime artstyle featuring Cowboy Bebop voice actor Steve Blum, Neon White is focused on getting the player obsessed with running each of its small levels as fast as possible. You play as Neon White, a soul taken from Hell to help Heaven with its demon problem. White has little memory of his past life, and his relationships with other Neons form a sort of social game in-between missions. Red is the femme fatal, Violet a sociopathic opportunist, Yellow a himbo. It's all very anime, but I found the plot to be rather charming. White gets his missions from a cigar-chomping cat named Mikey, who is actually an angel whose appearance is different for every Neon viewing him (Yellow sees John Cena). While some of the dialogue is a little cringey, I found it to be mostly humorous. What really motivates you in Neon White is mastering all of its different abilities in order to blitz through its numerous levels. Instead of weapons, you have gun cards that have specific movement abilities you can use. For example, the machine gun shoots rapidly, but you can burn it to utilize a ground pound that destroys enemies while launching you toward the earth at top speed. My favorite is the shotgun, which allows you to transform into a flaming ball that can travel upward. The sniper rifle has a dash ability, the pistol has a double jump, and the assault rifle's secondary fire shoots an explosive grenade that you can use to blast through doors or propel yourself higher. The levels are heavenly mazes full of drops through the clouds, propelling pathways of water, and occasional traps that you have to trigger at full speed. Each run-through awards you with either a bronze, silver, gold, or ace medal depending on how fast you completed the level.
The thrill of mastering a level kept me playing Neon White longer and longer each session. I've never been a fan of conventional platformers, but the first-person perspective and movement mechanics taken from shooters like Unreal Tournament and Doom Eternal really clicked for me. I love this game, and I think it will really appeal to fans of retro shooters, even though the shooting is perfunctory and not the focus. It's well-worth the fifteen bucks or so it is on Steam, but I played through it on Game Pass. So far Neon White is my game of the year (even though it's from 2022).
I haven't played Call of Duty since the original Modern Warfare. Modern Warfare 3 just got added to Game Pass, so I thought I'd give it a try. Call of Duty is like three different multiplayer games now. There's the traditional Counterstrike deathmatch, a zombie-killing scavenger hunt, and Warzone, which I guess is a battle royale like Fortnite. Only the OG interests me, and I found it to be pretty fun, provided you play in a big-enough map. Departures is great and has plenty of space to move around, while many of the other maps are little deathtraps that remind me of Pool Day in Counter-Strike. Get a kill, die, respawn, die again, get a kill, die, etc... It also doesn't help that many Call of Duty players don't play the objective. The community also hasn't improved since the days of yesteryear. As gaming junk-food, I think Call of Duty is perfectly serviceable. I don't know about playing 70 bucks for a "new" game every year, however.
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