Neon City Riders

I backed Neon City Riders on Kickstarter because it looked like a game with potential. Turns out it was worth it. Riders can be tough at times and it doesn't hold your hand on where you need to go. It's all about discovery like the old days. I did get a little frustrated at times trying to find the next location, but I got there over time. This is somewhat a metroidvania style game as you can go back to previous locations to find items that you will use to purchase costumes and a few drones. You have four powers that you unlock from defeating certain enemies in the game. After that you can use those powers to discover the paths to the big bosses. Those are the only upgrades you will ever get in the game. This has no RPG type elements with leveling or anything. When you get hurt you have three food/drink slots to recover lost health. You can only carry three items through the whole game, but everything is only five coins each and when killing regular enemies, they drop a coin. It was fun to play and get through it all and there were some challenges on the way. Like bosses I usually died at least once on each one and then I got the pattern down on how to beat them. The most frustrating thing in the game though and almost made me quit was the damn poison areas that would reverse your controls. Now having this happen say fighting a boss or enemy in many games it's not to big of deal. No, this game doesn't do that. It makes whole areas poisoned so you go through multiple screens with reverse controls. There were moments where I had to have a missile follow me to destroy a wall and I had to open a get by deflecting stuff shot at me and then go back and forth on some visible and invisible platforms. It was some of the most frustrating rinse and repeat crap I ever dealt with. I'm glad my stubbornness stuck through it and beat the game but please don't do large sections of games like this again. I never saw any bugs except if I alt+tab to desktop and then go back into the game it would run like crap and I would have to restart the whole game. After two times I never did it again, so it wasn't really an issue. Overall, the game was well made and ran great. Mecha Studios did a fantastic job, and I can't wait to see what they have planned next. This is a game well worth picking up and helping support the devs on creating something new.