(Review) NeuroVoider
You want options? We’ll give you options! We’ll give you so many options that your head will spin! There is so much loot in NeuroVoider that the ability to completely upgrade or change your character after playing a level is nuts. That’s especially true if you’re playing in coop and you take most of the upgrades thinking that the loot shared (or just not caring). By the way, the loot is not shared, so don’t be that guy! It’s all smooth going and there’s not too much to dislike about this twin-stick game. Let’s get down to the nitty-gritty.
With what seems to be the norm here lately, NeuroVoider is a Roguelike with robots and all sorts of weapons and armor options and a lot of things to dodge. What stands out the most to me here are the options. There are three main “classes” to play with here: Dash, Rampage and Fortress. Dash is your fast-moving melee-mostly robot that can be pretty awesome, but is a little rough for me to use currently. Due to NeuroVoider being a bit of a bullet-hell, melee doesn’t work to well for me since I just tend to eat all of the bullets… all of them. That being said, there are some really cool melee options to enjoy. I especially love the ones that explode when you swing them. Not only are they flashy, but they’re pretty damaging to boot (as one could imagine). They use up a lot more energy than the others so your chance of overheating is higher, but that’s the price you pay for looking awesome!
Rampage has been my go-to option since it’s more of a “shoot a lot of flashy things while having some good mobility”. It’s hard not to like it. You could classify it as the middle of the road option, but since it can’t use melee weapons or rockets, there’s more of a feeling that the difference in class here is not because of what it can do, but because of what it can’t. It really does feel like a completely separate class, but in the end, I’m not too sure how I feel about how that difference is accomplished. I still enjoy playing as a Rampage and probably would stick with it if it wasn’t for the third option.
Fortress has been more of a recent love for me. The shield doesn’t really shine for me much, but it gives you high defense and a sweet opportunity to use rockets and they are glorious! I mean really glorious! Rockets are my favorite weapon because of all the carnage you can do at once. However, this is where the game really starts to teach you what is possible and what you really shouldn’t do if you’re running solo.
Fortress taught me that rockets are awesome. Fortress also taught me that two different types of rockets are even better. I played with a slow-moving massive damage rocket (Mini Nuke I believe) and a “faster” single missile. That worked well for the longest time. I was clearing out levels without a care in the world and even accomplished this on multiplayer too! However, then the bosses came and ended my dream of rocketing myself to victory. The boss stages don’t have enough room to benefit from the “fire and forget” method. While a slow and powerful weapon is great, you need something faster when you get to a boss. The basic rocket is fast enough when you have room, but the boss stages aren’t large enough to play without speed. You’ll need gear with speed or a weapon with some faster bullet/laser spray.
Most of the game is pretty balanced and works well with almost any setup that you’ll pick. As stated above, there are a ton of options if and when you want to change them (at the end of the level). That being said, NeuroVoider is still a bullet hell game at times and can get pretty rough. Bosses aside (because we already covered that), most of the game is pretty easy if you take your time. Then you encounter the timed levels. These aren’t much of a problem if you’ve picked a balanced setup of weapons. However, if you were contemplating using my fun-tastic rocket setup above, this doesn’t work well. My build was for a slow methodical walk through the levels making sure everything was cleared before I got there. This doesn’t work out when you don’t have the time to properly utilize that method. You can essentially create a build that ends up being your own downfall. This is unfortunate. It’s nice that there is level variety, but no one setup can carry you through the game (which is good, but still sad for me).
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