If you’re going to take something as tried-and-true as the run ‘n’ gun sidescrolling shooter and try to give it a fresh, creative spin, you better really bring your A-game because that’s been done about a thousand times. Games like Contra, Metal Slug, Gunstar Heroes, and Sunset Riders are still regarded as some of the greatest games of the genre for good reason. But after playing Neon Inferno, I’m starting to think there might be a little more room on that short list after all.
The elevator pitch for Neon Inferno is simple, but effective. Basically, if you combine the smooth, effortless animation and large character sprites of a game like Metal Slug, with the fast platforming, intense gun blasting, and big boss fights of Contra, plus the gallery-style background shooting of Sunset Riders, and then you mix it all up into a beautiful Cyberpunk pie, then that’s the recipe here. And it absolutely works.
Neon Inferno Is A Brilliant Pixel Art Shooter
Neon Inferno takes place 30 years in the future on the streets of a New York City on the brink of collapse. Crime syndicates vie for supremacy and the corrupt NYPD are doing nothing but stoking the flames of conflict. It’s a neon-drenched dystopian near-future that echoes hints of Cyberpunk 2077, Robo Cop, Judge Dredd, and Blade Runner in all of the best ways.
Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that I was born in 1990, but I’ve always been a fan of this bright, bold, retrofuturistic style that’s all the rage right now. Marrying that with sharp, crisp pixel art just feeds me so directly it feels almost made for me in a lot of ways.
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For the most part, Neon Inferno plays how you’d expect a game in this genre to play, but there are some surprising wrinkles that help it feel innovative. For starters, all of the basics are here like being able to hold the right trigger to lock yourself in place so you can aim and shoot without moving, plus there’s of course a great dodge roll. By default it’s mapped to a shoulder button, but I remapped it to B in the settings which felt way more natural for me.
There’s a great amount of enemy variety on screen at any time forcing you to be quick and adaptive. They take cover, as you can as well, and attack with different types of weapons so you won’t be able to cheese the same methods over and over again for long. It’s not an easy game by any means and has some sharp difficulty spikes in a few stages, but thankfully a relatively generous checkpoint system paired with infinite lives make it more than manageable. Usually, it’s more of a test of patience than it is a hard skill check, which I definitely prefer.
The two main features that help Neon Inferno stand out are the background shooting mechanic and the bullet time parry. Throughout stages, enemies will not only appear on the same plane as you, but they can also pop up in the background of levels, requiring you to target that area separately.
When you get into big battles with large mechs raining down missiles, enemies popping in and out of cover taking shots, and more appearing in the background to try and take you out, there’s a lot to keep track of. At times, it can feel overwhelming, but thankfully the colors and animations on the bullets and projectiles make them easy to track and you can clearly tell where they’re going to hit when approaching from the back. This adds great layers (pun intended) of complexity and skill.
Neon Inferno Nails the Cyberpunk Aesthetic
The other main interesting feature is the ability to parry specific types of projectiles back at enemies. You can tap Y to parry a shot right back to where it came from, but if you hold down Y instead the game goes into super slow-motion and lets you alter the return path to hit other enemies instead. You can even send shots into the background to take out pesky enemies assailing you from a distance.
This parry mechanic also increases the damage of the return shot, so it’s a crucial system to master—especially in boss fights. Sometimes you’re so busy dodging attacks and hazards that you don’t have much time to actually fire back, so being able to return attacks to enemies instead can literally be a life saver. Especially on some of the fast-paced vehicle segments.
Overall the pacing is pretty solid in Neon Inferno, but as mentioned there are definitely some weird difficulty spikes sometimes just before a new checkpoint. If I’m only replaying one section over and over it’s not so bad, but when a checkpoint requires me to get through several screens of enemies and obstacles, it can get tedious. This is especially true for some of the multi-phase boss fights—although it’s certainly satisfying when you master that first phase so well you don’t even take damage.
I also am not a fan of the special weapon system at all. In games like Contra and Gunstar Heroes, you find power-ups littered around stages to supercharge your abilities and you get to pick and choose which guns are the best fit for a given scenario. Huntdown places weapons throughout stages as well and lets you have your default gun in addition to a special gun you can swap between. That’s the method I’d have preferred here.
Instead, in Neon Inferno, you can purchase a special weapon before a mission, but then in the mission once you switch to that special weapon, you must use up the entire special weapon before you can switch back to your default gun. On the one hand it does create strategy in terms of when to trigger (again, pun intended) the swap, but pragmatically it’s silly I can’t switch back and forth during a level and I’m forced to re-buy the gun if I want it again for the next stage.
Overall, Neon Inferno is a fantastic run ‘n’ gun shooter that’s dripping with style and gritty edge. The stages are beautifully designed, the art style is immediately impressive, and the gameplay is sharp and balanced. Even the soundtrack sets the tone perfectly with incredible synth rock music.
This isn’t the type of game to play if you’re looking for a quick and easy dash through some levels, as there is definitely some challenge to contend with here. Across the eight stages it took me about six hours playing solo to finish everything, but I imagine it would be even more fun and efficient to play co-op.
Platform: PC (reviewed on Steam Deck), PlayStation, Switch, and Xbox
Developer: Zenovia Interactive
Publisher: Retroware
Release Date: November 20, 2025
Price: $19.99
Score: 8/10
Disclosure: A representative on behalf of Retroware sent me an early download code for a digital copy of Neon Inferno on Steam for the purposes of this review.
