We’ve been here before. No, not the fact that Dust & Neon is a former Switch exclusive making its way to new formats, but rather the concept of robots in the wild west. Both 1994’s Wild Guns and the popular SteamWorld series use this premise, along with the occasional episode of Futurama – all of which owe everything to 1973’s West World. However, when it comes to randomised twin-stick shooting featuring saloon-dwelling robots, it can proudly proclaim “first!”
Let’s dive into those randomise, Roguelike, features. Dust & Neon’s hub takes the form of a rickety exile where upgrades, perks, skill boosting tonics and new weapons can be purchased before picking a randomly generated mission from a quest board. These vary from train heists to bomb disposal. A handful of different ‘seek and destroy’ missions fill the rest of the pool. Missions are ranked in difficulty and bestow rewards upon completion. Fail a mission, however, and all your loot is dropped. There’s no redo – missions must be started afresh after emerging from the exile’s cloning machine.
Every location on the map is governed by a boss, and to flush ‘em out, you’re going to have to reach certain ranks by levelling up. Bosses are tricky, with some firing projectiles in hypnotic patterns, and if you fail at turning them into scrap, they go back into hiding – requiring more missions to be completed until they reappear on the map once more.
Doffing its cap to Borderlands, even the catchily named weapons are randomly generated, with each featuring several stats that can wildly vary. You may find a ridiculously powerful sniper rifle, only to then note it has terrible accuracy and can only carry three bullets. On the upshot, you can get lucky and find a quad-shotgun or a revolver that’s both powerful and accurate. In a unique twist, weapons must be reloaded manually, requiring you to tap ‘X’ once for each bullet. This may sound like a hindrance, but it ends up being quite intuitive. Rhythmic, too.
Only one of each weapon type can be carried at once, so upon discovering a weapon chest mid-battle, the choice is given to swap or scrap for cash – with cash used to buy new guns at the exile.
It seems the developers tried to avoid some of the mistakes the cyberpunk top-down shooter The Ascent made. Ammo litters the dusty environments – which are often illuminated by glowing neon crystals – and the cover system actually works. Our robo-cowpoke can roll and slide into cover as well, giving them sufficient manoeuvrability. Moreover, killing enemies feels good. Guns have a lot of recoil, accompanied by punchy sound effects and the familiar chime of falling bullet casings.
Our hero makes humorous quips upon clearing areas, and as they’re merely presented via speech bubbles, they don’t irritate despite being recycled endlessly.
It’s the sense of progression that makes Dust & Neon a joy to play. The skill tree features both offence and defence skills, and these can be purchased every few missions. Increasing walking speed for the first time really made a difference; some other upgrades are less noticeable. Guns can be made cheaper to purchase, the frequency of Legendary weapons increased, and later it’s possible to buy back dropped weapons. Visually it’s appealing enough, with this being one of the less obvious Switch to Xbox/PS4 conversions thanks to the soft lighting and particle effects. Mission outskirts do look a little barren, however – Dust & Neon favours clear readability instead of intricate detail.
Easily the biggest downside here is that repetition does creep in. Sliding over to the mission board and seeing yet another two straightforward train heist missions and a ‘destroy the toxic barrels’ quest on the agenda did provoke an audible sigh. In the game’s defence, it does mix things up a little by introducing key cards, shielded enemies, and a few other new ideas later. I can’t fault it in most areas that matter the most – the precision of the shooting, fluidity of character movement, rapid sense of progression, and satisfaction of taking down bosses all carry it over the occasional bump or dusty patch.
David Marquardt Studios’ Dust & Neon out now on PS5 and Xbox Series, published by Rogue Games. It first launched on Switch and PC earlier this year.