Watching All Six Stage Bosses in NEON INFERNO Back to Back: Combat That Switches Between Foreground and Background, and the Design Choices the Commentator Praised

The protagonist is Angelo, an assassin for a criminal organization, who takes out rival factions on the orders of the organization's "Don." The game has six stages, each structured so that you clear fights against regular enemies before taking on the boss.

In addition to his gun, Angelo has a slash attack that can deflect green bullets. According to the commentator, deflected bullets are powerful and become a handy means of attack once you get used to them, making them something worth actively going for in boss fights.

The first boss is Tatsuya Oda, a yakuza lieutenant. In the first phase, you target the turret on the armored vehicle Oda is riding in while watching out for yakuza on motorcycles coming from the left and right.

The commentator singles out the concept of foreground and background as the game's signature system. You fight by switching which plane you shoot at depending on the situation. In this scene, you need to aim at the background to hit the armored vehicle and at the foreground to hit the yakuza on motorcycles.

The two come with different constraints. In the foreground you can shoot while moving, but, as in classic games, you can only fire in eight directions. This calls for techniques unique to single-stick shooters, such as movement lock and aim lock. When shooting the background, on the other hand, you can aim anywhere you like with the reticle, but you come to a complete stop and are left defenseless. The commentator says that juggling these two is one of the real pleasures of the game's combat.

In the second phase, an airstrike blows the armor off the vehicle, leading to a direct showdown with Oda. When Oda leaps into the background, the commentator lines up the reticle, shoots him down, and defeats him.

Storming a nightclub, the protagonist goes after yakuza underboss Jazz Sakai, again on the Don's orders. Sakai is a melee type who wields a beam saber and fires green bullets that can be deflected. Landing these takes a big chunk out of his health and shortens the fight, which the commentator says left a good impression.

Here the commentator shares their thoughts on the design of this reflection mechanic. Games with a retro look have become more common lately, but because the audience playing games has broadened so much, and given the economic realities of commercial releases, they tend to end up with difficulty design that feels "sleepy." In that respect, a design like this one, which leaves room for skilled play, lets many different groups of players share the same game without being split apart. The gist of the commentator's remarks is that, as a player, they took a liking to this seemingly unremarkable reflection mechanic.

In the second phase, a giant weapon bursts out of the night pool and various weapons attack the protagonist, but these are defeated as well.

The protagonist goes to an opera house to assassinate a troublesome politician, but the politician is protected by a round barrier, and the protagonist ends up fighting the bodyguards.

This fight includes segments where you attack the background, and civilian flying cars sometimes pass through it. The commentator was careful not to hit them by mistake. Regarding the fact that the game lets you shoot civilians dead, the commentator praises it as a stylish touch with the feel of classic games. When the enemy moved into the background, they briefly held their fire and defeated the bodyguards without catching any civilians in the crossfire.

In the motorcycle chase after the fleeing politician, you attack him while scattering the New York Police Department (NYPD). The politician fights back with what the commentator calls "a magic gun like in FFT," so you dodge his attacks by switching lanes.

Looking at the road, the commentator says that playing GeoGuessr has made them think "the center line is yellow, so this is the Americas." They joke that this is obvious given the NYPD shows up, but that it's reassuring to know their center-line knowledge will apparently still hold up in 2055.

Partway through, an NYPD helicopter appears overhead, but the commentator deflects every one of its shots back and sinks it in one go. After that, the NYPD disappears, and they focus solely on the politician, defeating Senator Stevenson.

When Vector, one of the organization's own, is captured by the NYPD, the protagonist goes to rescue him at the Don's request. Here the NYPD's "multipurpose humanoid decisive battle weapon" appears. Of the fight against this large boss in the background, the commentator says it personally reminds them of the final boss of Yoshi's Island. Since the core-like part in the center clearly looks like the weak point, they concentrate their background fire on it.

On difficulty, the commentator notes that although they're playing on HARD, the attacks are well telegraphed and the windows for dodging are relatively generous, so they consider it on the easier side for the genre. That said, since the game puts particular effort into its visual presentation, they feel this amount of leeway strikes just the right balance.

In the second form, Inspector Helena Voss, who was piloting the machine, emerges. Helena displays a variety of gimmicks, such as wrapping herself in flames to become invincible and moving back and forth between the foreground and background. One of her big attacks has her spinning at high speed while spraying bullets that land on points arranged in a grid. The commentator likens this to the systematic magic in The Irregular at Magic High School, speculating that perhaps dividing the space into regions improves targeting efficiency.

After the big attack, you're trapped in a confined space while she fires aimed green bullets at you. Judging that deflecting every one of them would rack up a lot of damage, the commentator aims and lands them. After that, they whittle her down and defeat Helena.

Next, the protagonist is sent into the NYPD's headquarters. The setup is that Vector, whom he had supposedly rescued, has betrayed the organization and switched to the NYPD's side, so the protagonist has come to eliminate him. The commentator explains that this is because it would be socially damaging if Vector testified about the organization's crimes. Then Helena, who was supposedly defeated last time, reappears burning for revenge. The commentator grumbles that it feels like the organization is going to conveniently work them for the rest of their life, but shrugs it off, saying that's probably just how things go now that the gang war is heating up. After the mechs Helena controls are destroyed, she herself appears, but, perhaps because she's just recovered from her injuries, as the commentator puts it, she's whittled down in an instant.

It's then revealed that the previous mission itself was a trap. The protagonist is detained by the NYPD but escapes, learns the truth, and vows revenge on the Don. The Don, too, buckling under the pressure of the war between organizations, turns out to be someone who sells his underlings out to the NYPD.

The final stretch is a gauntlet against the bodyguards protecting the Don. The commentator uses the "flame rounds" picked up along the way to save time. The flame rounds deal quite high damage, destroying the humanoid opening-act boss and four dragon heads one after another, until all that's left is to pound on the main body remaining in the background. However, the flame rounds can only be loaded 25 at a time, and they start running out at this point, so from then on the commentator has to chip away with regular bullets.

On this point, the commentator observes, noting that the same was true of the Dragon Quest game they recently played, that one-versus-many fights tend to be extremely tough only at the very start. They felt it was good design to allow limited consumable items to be slotted in there, as it creates strategic interest.

The organization's boss, Don Venatori, is the game's final boss. The commentator says that while the protagonist probably owes the Don for taking him in, the organization was rotten from the top down after all, so this is where it ends, and heads into the fight.

The Don moves much like the protagonist, making heavy use of shooting, double jumps, rolls, and so on. The commentator interprets this as perhaps expressing a relationship close to that of master and apprentice or parent and child, even though it isn't directly mentioned in the story. They note that similar presentation was used in games such as Nine Sols, and say that even knowing it's a cliché, seeing this kind of careful interplay between gameplay and story somehow makes them think it's nice.

The commentator also adds that although the video mainly covers only the boss fights, there are cutscenes for each event as well. With Don Venatori defeated, the protagonist takes revenge on the man who raised him and sets out on a new life.

Finally, the commentator sums up the game as a fun experience packed with the developers' attention to detail, from its world rendered in careful pixel art, to its compact yet satisfying classic arcade-style game systems, to its distinctive bosses and quintessential motorcycle chase scene.