NEO XYX Collectors Edition

Yey I finally had an hour on NEO XYX last night:

   
Collectors Edition With Preorder T-Shirt

  Testing on the R#7

Firstly the packaging is great, stunning artwork and a really nice manual - I was a bit worried about this after seeing the pamplet you got with Redux. NGDEVTEAM have pulled together a professional product that would put quite a few official releases to shame.
Initial impressions of the game are very good, graphically it reminds me of a lost Toaplan episode and the graphics are lush with some beautiful sprites and well designed, over the top bosses. I like the simple shooting system too, one button activates the smart bomb (an impressive animation that's a nod to Tatsujin) and the other your main weapon. I must say don't play this using a pad unless you have to the game comes alive with a stick, I cannot get the D-Pad to recreate the twitching my of shmup style of play. There's well balanced and forgiving medal-style chaining system for when you get past playing for survival, did I mention the game is hard from the beginning? Well it is a stern challenge I managed to clear level 1 without dying on about my last credit of the 1st gameplay session. I like my shmups like this, I feel can get stuck into a challenging game and the sense of achievement was brilliant. I found myself shouting "YES" when I threaded my way through level 1 and finally took that boss down.
The default options for screen orientation are a bit weird in anything other than tate but you can tweak some of them to your heart's content.
So yes my verdict of the this fun and accomplished shmup is good, it feels like a solid Batsugun era shmup and more importantly like Fast Striker this is no Euroshmup. NGDevTeam have set a new benchmark to challenge themselves with, if their goal was to make quality Japanese-Style shooters I think they have achieved this.

I can't wait to see what they've got up their sleeves next.

Video in the pipline.