Neon Drive
An 80’s Love Letter That Just Falls Short
Don’t let my “Not Recommended” rating dissuade you - Neon Drive is the most intense, addicting, visually arresting rhythm game that I sadly cannot recommend outright to everyone. It’s at times like these that I wish I had a different option other than a simple “Yes/No” answer. This game is good - very good in fact - but it has problems that prevent it from being great. If you love rhythm games, challenging difficulties, or the 80’s aesthetic then you’ll probably love this game as much as I do. However, if not then don’t let this game be your introduction.
– Real player with 21.8 hrs in game
Read More: Best Great Soundtrack Arcade Games.
I had fun with this game but can’t recommend it due to issues that make the hard/insane difficulties far more difficult than they really need to be.
The plane level has a loop that basically doesn’t interact with the music at all, forcing you to just figure it out via trial and error.
The falling traffic section has cool music that doesn’t help you in any way. It’s just falling enough times to memorize a safe path through.
The Robot level has a series of hurdles that require the first jump made be well timed. There is no useful music for the first jump, in fact there’s a misleading series of notes that will get you killed if you use them. The following hurdles all have super useful notes to help, but this doesn’t matter if your first jumps timing is off, you’ll die on the later hurdles if it is. ((I guess it’s possible to ajdust your timing between hurdles, but that’s like, tasbot levels of reaction time. Not what rhythm games are about)) This problem exists on other levels, but it’s not as pronounced as it is in the robot level, due to its unique mechanics.
– Real player with 15.6 hrs in game
Hotline Miami
Awesome game if u are a maniac killer: great soundtracks + great gameplay + a simple storyline + too much blood + 2D Pixel graphics = Awesome Mix!
– Real player with 43.1 hrs in game
Read More: Best Great Soundtrack Top-Down Games.
Music is perfection, gameplay is solid, if a bit goofy at times, especially dealing with knocked down enemies and poorly placed doors that either block bullets, or don’t swing open all the way, blocking your spray. The story is enjoyable, but the music does most of the heavy lifting for setting the tone of the scene, which isn’t a bad thing, since every single track is a masterpiece.
The game runs alright for the most part, even on my potato of a pc, but the frame rate grinds to a halt on Push It, and if you’re on Mac, moving your cursor to the top of the screen opens your task bar, which freezes the game for a second, leading to some frustrating deaths.
– Real player with 28.3 hrs in game
Stereo Aereo
Stereo Aereo is a Guitar Hero ripoff where you control a car that has to skip between lanes of traffic (making it appear more like an endless runner), which somehow is how the developers think music is made.
It’s not very expensive and it plays okay (although the menu is almost impossible to navigate if you own a HOTAS or racing wheel because the devs didn’t bother testing the game on PC). The problem is that it’s just not as good as Guitar Hero, or any other music/rhythm game. So just play one of those if that’s your thing.
– Real player with 35.3 hrs in game
Read More: Best Great Soundtrack Singleplayer Games.
So if you’re into games like guitar hero or rock band then you will more than likely enjoy this, it’s just a lot smaller.
It’s not an amazing masterpiece but it’s a simple easy to play indie arcade game, it challenges your reaction skills and puts your rage meter to the test, but it is fun with a cool 80s soundtrack that keeps you rocking.
Graphics
No problems graphics wise, the cutscenes are cartoony and the gameplay looks great and all blend in nicely together to give it that retro space look from the 80s
– Real player with 9.8 hrs in game
Trials of the Blood Dragon
Okay here’s the deal.
There are much better trials games and MUCH better platformer games.
If you haven’t already extensively played and enjoyed previous trials games, leave and come back to this review when you have.
Okay now assuming you are a trials veteran, here is what to expect. This is coming from someone who has 150+ hours played.
The story mode will be completed in about 2-3 hours.
This consists of a collection of 26 levels, which are a mashup of some beginner tracks, a couple jetpack skill games, a couple minecart skill games, some trials tracks with a grappling hook, and some platforming levels with truly terrible controls/physics.
– Real player with 189.0 hrs in game
First off, I’ve played Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon and all of the Trials games.
The story is just not believable, not even to a 10 year old kid. There are a few jokes here and there but none of them are very funny.
If you’re expecting a game like Trials Evolution or Trials Fusion, you’d most likely be disappointed. The game-play is just not what you would expect from a Trials game. Half of the time you’ll be playing as one of the kids in a 2D ‘run and shoot’ game and other half, you’ll be playing in a 2.5D mode in Trials game-play with a few twists, I’m trying not to spoil too much. If you’re a fan of the previous Trials games, then chances are that you won’t be liking it at all.
– Real player with 30.7 hrs in game
Double Dragon: Neon
A fun, absurdist beat ‘em up with some glaringly rough edges. Neon is one of the better beat ‘em ups out there, peppered with jokes lampooning its own franchise as well as the ’80s in general, counterbalanced by some irritatingly sloppy pieces. Namely all its cutscenes, ending, and 8 company logos being unskippable. Since so much of the humor is based on novelty, there are a lot of diminishing returns that just aren’t designed for these drawn out, repeat viewings… which the game is centered around with a stat-grinding system.
– Real player with 20.0 hrs in game
I’ve read and heard many criticisms about this game and do not quite understand them. I will try and address them and give my opinion as to why this is probably one of the top three Double Dragon games.
**Graphics:
Solid art design, although some of the enemies are a bit more cartoony than previous DD designs, the colors, backgrounds, animations and effects are pretty solid. The game mixes 3D models with the occasional 2D background object, The alley level is particularly nice. Varied environments and enemies with vibrant colors.
– Real player with 17.4 hrs in game
Far Cry 3 - Blood Dragon
grant bought me this game for my 3rd birthday and i just recently learned to type so thank grant for the game goodnight
– Real player with 13.4 hrs in game
better then the actual far cry 3
(gottem)
– Real player with 11.1 hrs in game
NCradle: An 80s Synth Adventure
Very fun, if short game with a great soundtrack.
– Real player with 1.3 hrs in game
Technotron Defense
Lots to love! Price is excellent! Some annoying things to watch out for but not a dealbreaker.
Pros:
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Synthwave theme!! Takes Tower Defense to a retro future place!
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Price ($1 or less) is excellent!
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Graphics are simple yet look cool. The paths are grids.
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Music is great!
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Variety of towers and support buildings.
Campaigns get harder and harder. There are some tricks to passing the last few levels. You can buy and sell Tesla towers for a profit. That also helps once you get into Trials.
– Real player with 63.9 hrs in game
Decent simple tower defense game, with a fun aesthetic. A few key elements are not explained at all (such as how to build a detector) but with enough clicking around I found everything. There are a few waves I wasn’t able to solve with towers alone, but manipulating the pathing mid-wave beat them. It took around 6 hours to get though all of the missions.
The Trials mode pits you against unlimited waves in a randomly generated map. It sounds cool in theory, but there’s no score at the end so you don’t have a way to compare plays. This one feels like a wasted potential.
– Real player with 9.4 hrs in game
198X
Just finished this amazing little game. My total playthrough was just under 4 hours, but that’s just the time you need to play through the game to completion. To ace the minigames and get all the achievements, you’d need to put in double or triple that. I’m not a massive achievement hunter, so I’ll take my 4 hours and bow out gracefully.
Without spoiling this game too much, it’s a story that many of us who grew up in the 70s and 80s know all too well. We were kids at a point where the technology curve was a sheer cliff. Only the minds of kids could comprehend the changes, and the adults were left standing. Those of us who yearned for sci-fi worlds of AI and Robots, space travel, dungeon delving were utterly misunderstood by our parents and told to stop daydreaming… And then came computers.. Suddenly you didn’t just read about it in the comics or (if you were lucky) books… Now you could actually go there! Just a 5 minute tape load, or a 10p inserted into an arcade machine was all that separated you from the mundane world of impending nuclear war, urban decay, hyperinflation and riots. Suddenly you were in another world, escapism at the time when we needed escapism the most. And this game tells that story, through the eyes of someone living through it, experiencing the loneliness of constantly looking out at the horizon and thinking “This can’t be all there is! There must be more!”. A chance walk, a turn, and suddenly you find yourself surrounded by portals into other worlds, and you have a handful of keys to the portals in your pocket.
– Real player with 3.9 hrs in game
198X takes an arcade game time capsule from the 1980s and brings it to life through superb pixel art, awesome music, and amazing story-telling. Sure, it might be short overall, with completion time anywhere around 1.5-2 hours estimated, but the experience is quite a blast.
Take a trip down memory lane with very (and I mean very) forgiving retro-style (look, feel, the whole deal) arcade games recreated with so much love and attention found within this title. The game recreates five different styles of games with a really unique and fun gameplay element in each one, so no wonder this game claims to not just be this or that, in its really enticing trailer.
– Real player with 2.3 hrs in game
Crossing Souls
Crossing Souls was such a weird experience. When I’ve seen the screenshots, I’ve fallen in love with the game. When I started playing, I loved the music, it’s really outstanding. But the more I played, the less I enjoyed.
Tehcnically the game is somewhat lacking. Weird control scheme with mouse and keyboard, no ability to rebind, and basically no visual settings. The game is played in a pseudo-3D environment with sprites, that makes depth perception hard at points. For platforming you need to check your shadow, and at points it’s just silly to jump over lasers. And it’s just simply horrible at the penultimate boss.
– Real player with 15.6 hrs in game
I am not 100% sure why I feel the need to write a review for this game, but I do, do here it is.
The setting, theme, music, cutscenes, collectibles- all good. They very successfully capture the mid-80s aesthetic in a fun, tongue-in-cheek manner. I particularly like how the cutscences play like an old, slightly worn out VHS recording, complete with wear lines and slight audio skipping. The art style isn’t really to my liking, but it certainly fits the time period and all in all the feel of the game is great, and the major reason (besides stubborness) that I finished it.
– Real player with 12.3 hrs in game