Neon White is, in essence, as close as you can get to a perfect game as humanly possible.

I'm gonna get this out of the way first because it's the only knock on the game to any extent at all: yes, the writing is kinda cringe. I didn't have a problem with it, but after looking through almost 20 pages of reviews every single negative review but one fixated on the *dialogue* over everything else; granted, that was a total of 4 reviews out of hundreds, but still. If you are too much of a stick in the mud to deal with some admittedly fairly cringe-y, early-2000s anime dub style writing then maybe you should learn to hit the "skip dialogue" button and just enjoy the game for what it is.

The core gameplay loop of Neon White is an addicting moment-to-moment challenge of finding the fastest and most efficient way to kill every enemy in a gigantic level using Soul Cards. What are Soul Cards? Essentially, they function as traditional FPS weapons (pistols, shotguns, rocket launchers, etc.) but have a unique effect when you discard them, throwing away a charge of the weapon in exchange for a movement ability that will help you traverse the level or kill enemies. The game shines once you get through the first few worlds where you're still learning the basic cards and you start to be presented with open-ended challenges that can be completed in multiple different ways.

The secondary gameplay loop then becomes trying to improve your times more and more to unlock new levels. Each level has 5 tiers of times: bronze, silver, gold, ace, and the "developer" time. The game doesn't gate you too hard; you'll only need to get gold on a few levels per tier in order to unlock the next tier of levels. If you've got any bit of speedrunning DNA in you, though, you won't be satisfied until you've unlocked that final secret tier of times on every level like me. The drive to improve and discover new shortcuts beyond what the game shows you after you've unlocked the silver medal keeps you playing for hours trying to squeeze tenths, hundredths, or even thousandths of a second off your times.

Extra unlockables like side stories and the level rush mode (where you complete sets of levels all in a row) keep you coming back to older levels over and over again, and the extremely difficult single-life "hell rush" mode that forces you to complete the entire game without dying is a capstone to an incredible experience. There's so much to do and global and friends list leaderboards have kept me coming back for weeks trying to maintain my top scores throughout the game.

This hasn't even touched on the extremely clean visuals, the fantastic voice acting performances from Steve Blum and the ensemble cast, the absurdly good soundtrack from Machine Girl that spans almost 2 and a half hours of original music, or even the slick UI present throughout the game. The presentation is incredible and only adds to what is one of the singular most addicting gameplay loops in recent memory, rivaled only by similar arcade-style games like Tony Hawk's Pro Skater. Neon White is an addicting, pulse-pounding, eye-catching spectacle of a game that everyone should try at least once in their lives. At its incredibly low price, too, you'd have to make a hell of an excuse to not give it a go.

EDIT: Updating to say vote this for GOTY.