I prefer “empurchased.”
I’m consistently baffled by Tom’s insistence that game developers have to set the difficultly level rather than letting the player choose the difficulty level that is the most fun for their skill level.
Also baffled at Tom’s reluctance to ever turn the difficulty up from Too Easy to Hey, This is Fun! unless the game gives you some extrinsic reward for it. Science proves that intrinsic rewards make you happier!
I haven’t picked up Tesla yet, but it coming out prompted me to go back and play Crimsonland, and wow that game is still loads of fun.
One of the things I really like about Crimsonland is the way it pauses the action every minute or so to give you an upgrade option. That rhythm of being overwhelmed by action that gets interrupted by a decision to make works really well and I’m glad to see it in this game. Definitely need to get this. Thanks for the review, Tom!
I’m not entirely convinced that monster option in graphics isn’t a bug. Like, a debug feature that they accidentally left in.
When it comes to difficulty, this was one of the many things that N64 Goldeneye got so right – it didn’t just amp up the health of the baddies and reduce your ammo – they added additional mission objectives to each level!
So for me, it’s a question of how they add dificulty.
Am I the only one who sees Jydge and calls it Jidge?
You mean that’s not how you say it?
I agree. In this case “crank up the flood of monsters to Crimsonland levels” seems like a pretty good way to do it. But I think Tom’s right that it’s rather perverse to put this in the graphics options, though.
(And of course with Crimsonland, the difficulty was kind of random depending a lot on the weapons, perks, and other drops you happened to get. But it managed to still be a lot of fun at both ends of the difficulty curve.)
I was playing this last night and having a grand time trying to make progress on the Eldritch difficulty level, which is the hardest difficulty that unlocks for your third playthrough. I failed one of the levels a couple of times and thought, “Whee, this is fun, but it sure is tough! That’s Eldritch Difficulty for you! Better up my Tesla game!”
Then I realized I was getting 300+ monsters in play at once. I had the spawn slider set all the way up for taking screenshots for the review. I dialed it back down to 60 and immediately got past the level. Ugh.
-Tom
Not sure I follow, can the two settings work against each other? Like, dial difficulty down but crank monster density way up and vice versa?
The monster density isn’t technically a difficulty setting, but it affects the difficulty dramatically.
The game spawns monsters from spawn points and you beat the level after the designated number of monsters have been spawned and killed. When you first play through the levels, you’re playing at normal difficulty. When you beat the last boss, you can play through all the levels again at Aether difficulty. The type, number, and strength of the monsters is adjusted accordingly. Then when you beat the last boss on Aether, you can play through all the levels on Eldritch difficulty.
But there’s a slider in a submenu under the graphics options that determines when monsters stop spawning. It can be set anywhere between 60 and 400. When you have this turned up to 400, there are that many monsters in the level at once. It keeps spawning them until there are 400 out there, regardless of whether they’re frail ghoul spiders or the hulking big guys with a ton of hit points. But when you have it turned down to 60, or any number lower than 400, it stops the spawning sooner so you only have to deal with so many monsters. You kill a couple, it spawns a couple more, but there are never more than 60, or whatever number you set. In the review I posted, you can see screenshots of the same point in the same level with either setting.
This means any given “wave” of monsters coming out of a spawn point is determined by that slider. If I have it turned way up, a dozen monsters can get spit out of a spawn point, trapping me. If I have it turned way down, two or three dribble out and I can easily dodge between them. It basically determines how much empty (safe) space is on the map and how quickly killed monsters get replaced. And it’s a graphics option.
-Tom
This sounds like really bad design to me?
Which sucks, because they’re in top form with this game. They are patching out the view distance setting, so at least they realize that has gameplay implications.
But they still have this idea that the spawning slider should be in there for the sake of “fun”. Or, in their words for the latest patch, the slider “can be upped to 600 for personal enjoyment”. Alternatively, I could just play with one hand tied behind my back “for personal enjoyment”. Or imposing five second intervals where I don’t shoot “for personal enjoyment”. Or closing my eyes and seeing how far I can get “for personal enjoyment”. Sheesh.
See, this is what happens when you do things just for fun!
-Tom
Just curious, but if they took the same bar and moved it from graphic settings to the difficulty selection menu, then it wouldn’t bother you nearly as much, right?
Oh, it would still bother me. I just would have bothered sooner, because it would have been more immediately apparent. I hate “whee, do whatever you feel like doing!” difficulty settings no matter which options screen they’re on. That’s the developer opting out of tuning their game.
-Tom
Makes sense. It might have been cool if they had incorporated that into the difficulty setting, like each difficulty had a default position on the slider.
Was this game rushed? Did they have no budget with which to do testing? How is it possible that they see this is a viable design? Imagine Nuclear Throne with a variable number of enemies on screen. Or Mark of the Ninja. Or Thief…
Yep, with stars for clearing each difficulty, or a variable return rate on the resource you spend to advance, or separate leaderboards or achievements or something. But, yeah, it’s a great gameplay mechanic just left dangling.
-Tom
They ported all their catalog to Switch in record time. I think they like to put out a lot of games.