Neon Inferno on PS5 ignites with a combustible blend of retro run-and-gun intensity and gallery-shooter depth. Set in a dystopian New York City in 2055, you play as Angelo Morano or Mariana Vitti – assassins for a crime syndicate known as The Family – navigating a war-torn metropolis where every bullet counts.
From the start, the game’s dual-plane combat grabs you: enemies appear both in the foreground and the background, pushing you to constantly shift your focus. Holding a button enables you to aim into the deeper plane, and that mechanic doesn’t feel gimmicky – it enhances the strategy by forcing decisions on whether to deal with immediate threats or those lurking further back. On top of that, you can deflect certain green projectiles with your blade, entering a slow-motion bullet-time mode during which you can redirect shots with precision. Pulling this off in the heat of major encounters – especially boss fights – brings a satisfying weight to your maneuvers and rewards timing and reflexes.
Neon Inferno’s level design leans into variety rather than repetition. Between standard run-and-gun corridors, you’ll hop on motorcycles or jet-skis, navigate vertical structures, dodge explosions, and confront towering bosses. These shifts in pacing help keep the adrenaline high without tiring you out – the action feels tailored to feel fresh across its stages.
Progression is lean but meaningful. After each mission, you’re graded and awarded cash. You then spend that in a small shop to buy limited-ammo weapons, shield upgrades, or melee enhancements. While you don’t get a huge arsenal, the options demand careful use – scarcity forces strategy rather than button-mashing. Moreover, replaying missions in “Repetition” mode helps you optimize how you spend and what tactics you use, giving extra life to the game beyond a single run.
The difficulty curve is classic arcade fare: there’s no health regeneration, checkpoint placement can feel punishing, and some of the harder modes demand pattern memorization to survive. But the game calibrates this finely. Even in normal mode, death forces you to learn rather than rage-quit, and the inclusion of multiple difficulty tiers – including a brutal one-credit “Arcade” mode – means it caters to both newcomers and veterans.
Visually and sonically, Neon Inferno is a showpiece. The pixel art is richly detailed: fluid player animations, parallax backgrounds, neon lighting, and explosion effects all contribute to a neon-lit, cyberpunk city that feels alive. The soundtrack pulls equally from retro synthwave, rock, and even operatic touches, creating a dynamic audio backdrop that elevates both quiet moments and all-out firefights.
Controls on PS5 feel tight and responsive. Movement, shooting, aiming into depth, deflecting – it all maps intuitively to the DualSense, and we never felt held back by clunky inputs. But there is a caveat: while the core gameplay loop works well, some of the optional weapons in the shop are prohibitively expensive, and their limited ammo makes them difficult to justify except in very specific situations.
Running solo, Neon Inferno is already a potent dose of arcade action; adding a second player in local co-op doubles the intensity. When two assassins take on the horde, bullet-time moments, deflections, and cross-plane coordination become even more thrilling – though it can get hectic, and screen clutter occasionally makes it hard to track exactly where threats are coming from.
Still, there are a couple of places where Neon Inferno doesn’t quite stick the landing. Its campaign is on the short side; you can finish it in a relatively brief session if you don’t die too much. And while the replay and arcade modes add value, the lack of online multiplayer or more persistent progression might leave some players wanting more.
In sum, Neon Inferno for PS5 is a bold and stylish modern arcade shooter. Zenovia Interactive and Retroware have crafted something that honors the classics while building its own identity: fast, tactical, and visually dazzling. It may not be the deepest game out there, but for anyone craving a lean, powerful hit of run-and-gun action, it’s a burning neon dream worth diving into.
Score: 8.2/10
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