Hello everyone, we've been thrilled to see your early reactions to Neon Inferno! Most of you seem to be loving the game! That said, we've come across a couple cogent critiques about the game's difficulty balance (on its lower difficulties), about its ranking and shop system, and about certain QoL features which players have requested. With this first patch, we've taken steps to rectify these (and more).
The most important changes...
Performance is vastly improved especially on certain older platforms; those new versions will go live soon, pending each platform's internal certification process
GunSlingers has rebalanced its prices such that weapon upgrades are cheaper and easier to get on all difficulties (except Arcade Mode)
The bonuses and penalties after each mission are now much less punitive
Standard Crosshair speed increased about 15%; Fast Crosshair speed increased slightly as well
Fast Crosshair default toggle option now available
More checkpoints on Novice and Medium difficulties:
("Heat of the Night") Checkpoint at Tatsuya Oda's second phase, only on Novice difficulty
("A Fatal Overture") Checkpoint between the Pangaea Elite fight and the following chase sequence
("Night of the Hunters") Checkpoints between the 3 minibosses in the Flooded City sequence
("Every Hour Wounds...") Checkpoint during the helicopter sequence at the start of Mission VI, right before the Pangaea Dragonfly miniboss fight
("Every Hour Wounds...") Checkpoint in the corporate tower lobby on Medium difficulty (Novice difficulty already had one here)
Hard difficulty and Arcade Mode remain as is.
In-stage HUD timer option now available (and more feedback on stage timings is now available in the results screen after each mission)
Mash-fire exploit has been patched out (both visually and mechanically) and the player's default auto-fire rate increased ~15% to compensate
Fixed egregious bug where equipped weapons sometimes got lost upon game-over or upon restarting from a checkpoint (instead of resetting to their state at the most recent checkpoint)
We've rebalanced the Novice and Medium difficulties to better match player expectations! Below is the complete list of changes. More may come in Patch #2 after we read your reactions (and that second patch will likely also contain a new Score Attack mode), but we wanted to release Patch #1 asap within the launch discount window
And some smaller changes...
Difficulty Rebalancing
Almost all of these apply only to the Novice and Medium difficulties. Hard difficulty and Arcade Mode remain mostly unchanged.
(Novice and Medium) The player now deals 15% more damage to larger enemies on Novice difficulty and 7.5% more damage on Medium difficulty
(Novice, Medium, and Hard) In co-op, missions now pay out 2x the money in Novice and Medium difficulties; 1.5x on Hard difficulty. (Single-player and Arcade Mode have no multipliers)
(Novice and Medium) Weapon equips now give 1.5x ammo, only on Novice and Medium difficulties
(All difficulties) NYPD Gunner Drones now fire slightly slower bullets, and (if on Hard difficulty or Arcade Mode) their harmful explosions upon death are slightly smaller; also, drones' hurtboxes are now slightly smaller
(All difficulties) Flame Shot debuffed by 20%
(Novice and Medium) ("Heat of the Night") Vs. Tatsuya Oda: removed Yakuza motorcyclists on Novice difficulty; reduced turrets to one on Medium difficulty, instead of two
(Novice and Medium) ("Baptised in Flame") NYPD Destroyer miniboss: NYPD Robodogs no longer spawn from the sides of the screen on Novice and Medium difficulties
(Novice and Medium) ("Baptised in Flame") Pavilion Hotel, upper lounge: removed a couple enemies on Medium difficulty, a couple more on Novice difficulty
(All difficulties) ("Baptised in Flame") Vs. Helena Vos: mech's shoulder cannon attack is now easier to dodge on all difficulties (lower ones moreso than higher ones)
(Novice) ("A Fatal Overture") L train: removed a couple enemies on Novice difficulty
(Novice and Medium) ("A Fatal Overture") Flying cars sequence: removed a couple FG officers on Medium difficulty, a couple more on Novice difficulty
(Novice) ("A Fatal Overture") Outer Manhattan rooftops: removed a couple enemies, only on Novice difficulty
(Novice and Medium) ("A Fatal Overture") Opera Modern rafters: NYPD officers no longer have shields on Novice or Medium difficulties; also removed a couple enemies on Novice difficulty
(Novice) ("A Fatal Overture") Vs. Pangaea Elite: he now only fires green parry-able missiles on Novice difficulty
(Novice and Medium) ("A Fatal Overture") Vs. Pangaea Elite: fake clones no longer fire BG bullets on Novice and Medium difficulties
(Novice and Medium): ("One to the Heart") Metropolitan Lounge: removed a couple enemies on Medium difficulty, a couple more on Novice difficulty
(Novice): ("One to the Heart") 54 Linden, stairways: removed a couple enemies on Novice difficulty
(Medium) ("Night of the Hunters") Flooded West Village: Pangaea Airship no longer performs its homing projectile attack on Medium difficulty, only its bomb hatch attack, as was previously the case on Novice difficulty
(Novice and Medium) ("Night of the Hunters") NYPD safehouse, entrance: small doors in BG now only spawn officers once on Novice and Medium difficulties, not infinitely
(Novice and Medium) ("Night of the Hunters") Vs. Helena Vos (II): Flaming floor panels now only appear on Medium difficulty; electrified floor panels now only appear on Hard and Arcade difficulties; no more hazardous panels on Novice difficulty
(Novice and Medium) ("Every Hour Wounds...") Helicopter escape: officers now throw bombs 25% as often on Novice difficulty, and 50% as often on Medium difficulty
(Medium) ("Every Hour Wounds...") Pangaea Tower, exterior and lobby: NYPD Robodogs no longer spawn from the sides of the screen on Medium difficulty (in addition to Novice difficulty, as was already the case previously)
Minor Features
Save / load menu: you can now change the difficulty of an existing savefile, and the "delete file" option is now triple-gated instead of double-gated
Aim lock / Position lock: there is now a toggle option for these to auto-fire, instead of having to simultaneously hold down Lock + FG Shoot like in the later Contras
Pause menu: "Return to mission select" now provides the option to return to the GunSlingers store as well (restoring your wallet and inventory to their state at your last save point)
Minor Bugfixes
CRT filter: fixed misaligned scanlines on certain resolutions
54 Linden, stairways: fixed bug where the farthest background texture would sometimes position itself in the wrong place and reveal an empty skybox behind
Helicopter escape: fixed bug where, very occasionally, the landing gear transition wouldn't work properly and you'd be sent plummeting to your death
Pavilion Hotel, lobby: fixed bug where, very occasionally, the spider-mech miniboss wouldn't appear and the game would let you proceed without fighting him
Flooded Airship: fixed soft-lock if the player defeats the Pangaea Airship before its healthbar appears
Achievements: fixed issue where these could be falsely earned via the debug menu
NYPD Walker: fixed bug where its fireballs sometimes wouldn't hurt Yakuza enemies
NYPD Walker: fixed bug where Walker only received a reflection from one direction of its flamethrower's sweep, and not the other
Thanks for reading, and have fun with the game!
Sri Kankanahalli
Creative director, Zenovia Interactive
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