Tales Of The Neon Sea Free On Epic

Monday, I rounded up an E3 show in March as Xbox interviewed everyone and their mother. Tuesday, Taylor spoke of another convention being canceled. Wednesday, I spoke of a tribute to a wonderfully happy person, Sabine Schmitz. Then on Thursday, I changed how we are currently doing the Prime Gaming articles, pulling the focus from the loot and put that onto the games available through April. Also on Thursday, Taylor spoke of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt‘s next-generation update and when it is coming.

Onto what is available on the Epic Games Store this week, and a little bit about what is on next week too. This week it is Tales of the Neon Sea, a pixel-based adventure mimicking retro games of its kind about a gritty cyborg that at first glance you’d think is a private eye. The trouble I am having with it isn’t that setting, the art style, or any of that. I’m not fond of how slow and reluctant it is in my admittedly short time with. I’d prefer it to “get a move on” rather than plodding along then leaping and skipping.

Yes, I do understand that’s more of a pacing thing, a thing that arguably you need to be in the mood for. You’ve seen the war-shooter things. It starts with you in a helicopter or watching a helicopter being shot down, a bit of a crash, then we’re into the action. These games do that because it pulls you in and puts you into the action straight away, whereas Tales of the Neon Sea spends a good 5 minutes having you walk about in the prologue fetching bits and pieces. It is setting the tone where it seems to plateau as you stumble about the place collecting bits and pieces for the rather simple puzzles.

Does that mean it is bad then? No, I am just not the person that something like this is aimed at, since i am focused on getting something like this article done quickly. The tempered pacing is setting a wonderfully bleak and cyber-drenched future full of color and atmosphere that doesn’t click when you are injecting caffeine into your veins like hardcore drugs. If I wasn’t writing this article and if I wasn’t drinking enough coffee to down an elephant for a week, I’d probably enjoy Tales of the Neon Sea.

Tales of the Neon Sea is free on the Epic Games Store until the 8th of April. So, what is replacing it? Remember that 3 Out of 10 episodic-game-series that was free for quite a while last year? Well, now we’re getting the second season as a full slab of episodes in the chronology. For those entertained by it, this is great. However, I am about to go on a bit of a rant: Doing comedy in games is a death-wish.

I may not have minded 3 Out of 10 if I was covering it already when it released. Nevertheless, it was an optional thing. I avoided it as it looked to be a bit… Meh. It seemed to be in the American-style of comedy which is on the nose and over-done. See Friends, or Parks and Recreation for an example, neither of which I enjoy. As usual, send the hate mail to the usual address, it all gets ignored anyway. However, games do something that TV doesn’t, it lets you set the pacing in some places. So not only is it trying too hard, but it does it with awful timing.

This is putting aside what I can only assume from trailers and screenshots to be a mixed bag of mini-games between the unfunny scenes. I am left not wanting to cover next week.