Neodori Forever

Genre: Arcade Racing

Players: 1

.

Review:

Neodori Forever, released in 2022 on PC, and ported to mobile devices and Nintendo Switch in 2023, is an Arcade-style Racing Game that aims to recapture the spirit of classic games in the genre like Sega’s Out Run.

To this end, Neodori Forever features colorful low-poly 3D visuals with a highly-pixelated look that definitely shouts “old-school”, though I would argue that the game leans too far in this direction, with the low-resolution visuals making it difficult to judge upcoming obstacles and turns. These visuals are backed by a suitably energetic synthesized soundtrack that works well enough for the game but isn’t especially memorable.

For the gameplay, players will be traveling at high speeds down a winding road, collecting coins, gas cans, and lightning bolts while avoiding traffic. The gas cans refill your fuel, which also doubles as your vehicle’s health, and the lightning bolts give players a speed boost at the push of a button. Not really sure what the coins do – there are cars you can unlock in this game, but it appears this only happens when you complete certain goals in the game.

All of this game’s courses are procedurally-generated, which potentially means that you have an endless amount of levels to play, but it also means that you’ll never be memorizing any of those levels to improve your times. The game also has cop cars that will attempt to bash into you if they catch you driving on the wrong side of the road.

In the end though, it all comes down to this – this game’s controls are pretty terrible. They’re fairly stiff when driving on a straight road, and taking a sharp turn on the road is an absolute nightmare. The game does have a “drift” button, but its use is never intuitive, and the game doesn’t do a good job indicating whether an upcoming turn will require its use, or whether trying to do so will result in you over-correcting and slamming into the side of the road, losing precious health.

Neodori Forever had a bit of a tough climb to carve out a niche on the Nintendo Switch eShop – not only is Out Run easily available for purchase on the shop for players looking for that retro-style Arcade Racing, but the notion of doing a modern take on the game is one that multiple others have already tried, such as Horizon Chase Turbo and its sequel. With other choices like those, I can’t see a good reason to bother with Neodori Forever.

tl;dr – Neodori Forever is a retro Arcade-style Racing game that aims to imitate classic games in the genre like Sega’s Out Run, complete with simple pixelated 3D visuals. Unfortunately, the controls in this game are pretty terrible, and it’s hard to recommend this game when you have multiple better options on the Nintendo Switch, including Out Run itself.

Grade: C-

^{You can support eShopperReviews on Patreon! Please click HERE to become a Sponsor!}

^{This month’s sponsors are Ben, Andy Miller, Exlene, Homer Simpin, Johannes, Francis Obst, Gabriel Coronado-Medina, Ilya Zverev, Jared Wark, Kristoffer Wulff, and Seth Christenfeld. Thank you for helping to keep the reviews coming!}