ShapeNeon Chaos Review

"Pew Pew Busy"

Campaign

February 25, 2024 at 8:02pm
By Jason Stettner

I love myself a good twin stick shooter, it’s actually surprisingly one of my favorite genres and I wish we had more options out there. So every time I see one of these pop up I jump on the opportunity to take a look at them. Here we have ShapeNeon Chaos which is a bit of a chaotic naming convention, one that actually fits the gameplay fairly well.

Modes wise I’d say this one covers the basics. It has a standard level area where you’re just trying to survive with the regular set of lives one would expect from this type of game. There’s also a time attack to see how far you can go from one life. Past that another for using slow motion instead of bombs and another about your score.

It’s an interesting setup, giving you the modes one might expect alongside a little bit of slow motion action which is intriguing. That’s the core focus on this one and I really didn’t expect anything past that.

Gameplay

This is an area where I do feel this game does struggle a tad. I found the screen far too busy to properly see what was going on. The backdrop is honestly atrocious for this type of game. I couldn’t tell things apart and that was very distracting. I was constantly getting destroyed by shapes I didn’t even have a chance to visualize while playing.

That was annoying. Aside from that while playing on Xbox I had to hold RT alongside the sticks to shoot and it just doesn’t make any sense why that was the case. It’s a weird mechanic. I do also wish there was something a bit more intensive for the music driving this one. I believe that with a smoother, less busy backdrop that I’d really consider this a very strong entry in the genre.

It really does pick-up one you start getting to a few minutes in as the madness and chaos starts. It’s a shame that it feels like a chore to build-up to that point. On Xbox Series X it looks like we’re getting 1080p at 60fps, the interface really isn’t too sharp.

The Conclusion

ShapeNeon Chaos delivers some solid standard twin stick shooter modes while its backdrop is far too busy, distracting from the chaos in the forefront. That’s a shame as I quite like the core setup of this game. I’m always looking for more twin stick shooters so it’s a shame when I see one with great potential that is let down by something that was easily avoidable.

It was so hard to differentiate between shapes and the backdrop that it really messed with my focus. This made it really hard on the eyes and I have to ponder why that decision was made. It has the right modes, the right style and it just misses in a couple key areas for me. I’d really like to see this iterated upon, there’s something here.

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ShapeNeon Chaos Review on Xbox Series X
Review Code Provided by ID@Xbox

Rating Overall: 5.8