14 DAY TRIAL // End of the week, what do we want to do? Relax of course, and relaxing to some (many) is playing a video game. This week, Softpedia is happy to present a retro-style shoot-'em-up title for Mac by Freeverse called Neon Tango. A demo is already available for immediate download.
Players launch their cyberships into battle against the forces of chaos across 50 stages of bitmapped treachery overflowing with glowing enemies and pulsating bosses. Conceived with a gorgeous minimalism, Neon Tango licks the shoot-em-up genre down to its chewy abstract center.
The game is all about bouncing the right shot off a wall or your enemies as you charge up your cannon to inflict massive damage through energy blasts. Did you play Prince of Persia Sands of Time? Well, if you haven't that's ok, because Neon Tango also allows you to dodge your enemies by stopping time, only this time, you can activate your hyper thrusters to get ahead of them as well.
"If Chuck Norris had his action removed and hot-glued onto Jack Bauer, and then Mr. Bauer was blended into a protein shake, it would be called "The Neon Tango" and? it would be Delicious!!!," says freeverse.com.
You can customize your own character (up to eight pilots can be created for use in the game). Just use different photos of you for each and every one of them. But why would you make eight such players with no one to see and know who you are? This is where the leaderboard comes in. You can associate a photo with a high score and show off to let the world know you mean business.
Leaderboard sections are divided by five difficulty levels (trivial is the lowest, diabolical is of course the highest) and by game modes, which include: survival (score high without losing a life), fast score (manage to set the highest score on one level without losing more than two lives), or fast level (time trial of course, again with just three lives).
You also have the option to choose a more classical gameplay style (campaign), by simply starting off at level one and trying to finish the game with one go (not necessarily one life, which is practically impossible anyway).
Apple themselves recommend that you play this "old school bad guy blasting," so why don't you start off with downloading the free demo to see if it's worth the buy.
