Twin-stick shooter developer 10tons sets the genre back 15 years

I almost like the idea of what they did for separating enemy density from difficulty - would be cool if you could scale between more but weaker enemies and fewer but tougher ones to shake things up.

As a side note, I always loved the way the Silent Hill games handled difficulty, allowing you to set combat and puzzle difficulty settings discretely. I wish more games did stuff like that.

Reminds me of System Shock!

Great review but, blimey, that last paragraph came out of nowhere.

Whoa, I do not remember the difficulty being that granular in System Shock. That’s kind of awesome.

I’ve not played it yet but I think I’d be stuck on that screen for a long time before spending the rest of the game wondering whether I got the balance right!

Latest patch is out, here are the changes:

Changes
French language added! (thanks to Christophe Pallarès for translation)
Gauss Assault Rifle’s damage doubled
Crystal timer removed, you can collect as many as you want, as often you want!
Crystals now available in first plane (after first play through)
Green crystals added, they are worth double the normal crystals
Perk shuffle fixed, should no longer offer the same perks
Gameplay options added
Maximum Monster count is set by default to minimum (150), which can be upped to 600 for personal enjoyment
Camera view distance setting removed
Survival’s maximum monster count can no longer changed.
First weapon now drops earlier
Weapon lock functionality added (R for keyboard, B/X for Gamepad). It prevents you from accidentally collecting weapons.
Fixed graphical glitches
Difficulty in Normal Plane is increased
Difficulty in Aether and Eldritch Planes is decreased
Minigun sounds should no longer loop while game is paused
Fixed mismatch in Survival score display
Medikits no longer heal dead players
Higher Education quest fixed
Option to turn off screen shake

Interesting to see that the default monster count has been upped to 150. Maybe you just played it too early Mr. Chick.

Tom keeps playing Early Access games in disguise. What happened to principles?!

As someone who sucks at games and still likes to see all of the games I bought, I personally love developers who don’t tie unique rewards and benefits to playing/winning at higher difficulties and give a great deal of control over difficult.

But again, I suck ass at games. I’m looking for hand holding and participation trophies!

Likewise. I can sympathize with the idea that creators should have a recommendation as to the optimal way to experience the game they intended, but I would rather experience the game in a way that’s enjoyable to me than be prodded into playing under settings that make the game enraging.

I dunno guys… with single player games, the whole point is to create a challenge for players to overcome. If you can make the challenge non-existent, then what’s the point of playing? You just want to watch things splatter? Difficulty levels are fine, but this is something else and I think Tom is right to call it out.

There’s “challenge” and there’s “functionally impossible for me to progress beyond.” I bought the game, let me play it on my terms, man.

Now look, I’ll admit: twinstick shooters, a little like top-down SHMUPs, are, I think, in part made because of their difficulty. Me buying into that genre makes about as much sense as me going to the movies and spending money on a Paul Thomas Anderson movie; I’m just not onboard with what they’re trying to create in the first place (as much as the name/theme of this particular game might amuse me).

But as a general rule? I’m very okay with a game having highly player-customizable difficulty that doesn’t punish folks playing through on lower difficulties by locking content away from them.

I literally had to “hire” friends out to beat some of my games for me back in the day by bribing them with my mom’s infamously delicious baked sandwiches just so I could get all the stuff in them (cars in Burnout, weapons in FFX, etc.).

It;s kinda like locking out modding/cheating in singleplayer games. It literally can’t have any effect on anyone else how I choose to enjoy my games, or not enjoy them. What’s the big deal in doing so?

Not every game is for every gamer.

If you enjoy twin stick shooting, it should be pretty clear that it’s a skill-based endeavor. You need to increase your skill to progress. There are typically patterns, weapons, and situations you can exploit to beat the game. Learning these things is kinda the whole point of playing videogames… it’s the crucial second to second gameplay that makes a game great or crap because you can love it or leave it. If the game is properly designed, you don’t need to go find some sliders to muck with that because the developers took the time to muck with it for you and made sure the scenario was winnable, provided you increase your skill as the game requires.

Now, if you approach videogames like they’re some kind of thrill ride or movie, then you’re really not interested in videogames IMO. You just want to push buttons and twirl sticks while someone tells you a story and frankly, you’ll get much better stories elsewhere. The thrill ride part? You’ll get some cool ones in some games, but again, without challenge it’ll feel hollow and unearned upon completion.

I realize you may not agree with me, but that’s how I’m always going to see it. This isn’t a hobby built around telling stories while pushing buttons, at least I don’t think it should be. It should fundamentally be something a lot more than that, and from the first days I walked into an arcade in the 70’s, it’s been that for me. Games that rip that part out or muck with it in bad ways like this one does should be called out for it.

Again, not saying games can’t have difficulty switches in them, but they should still be balanced by the developer for that mode. Nex Machina is an excellent example of how to do it right.

I do suspect we see the point of videogames in a fundamentally different way and am happy to agree to disagree with that wall of abject madness above ;-) <3

No, see, skill doesn’t change that fast. This is why I like games with meta-progression. I get stronger little by little so I can get further than before.

That’s where difficulty comes in, though. Again, Nex Machina, people. Play it. :)

Good developers understand that skill progression takes time, so they design such that you can build it while you progress, as I think you agree they should! In this particular genre, that comes with increasing/decreasing numbers of enemies and bullets. It also comes through the enemy designs you throw at players. Putting in a slider for that makes zero sense (good call @tomchick!) because it means they couldn’t be bothered to balance it for multiple skill levels of player. If I’m misunderstanding Tom’s point, I apologize.

I fundamentally disagree that challenge is the point of videogames, or even should be a priority, because in my experience it’s very difficult to hit and sustain a curve where it’s just enough to be enjoyable without becoming unpleasant and either requiring repetition to the point of extreme frustration or simply blocking forward progress.

It is certainly pleasurable when managed, but compared to the other things gaming can offer me and the enormous detriment that unfair or spiky difficulty is to my experience, just not worth it.

I agree that not every game (or even most) are for everyone, but I believe it is generally a good thing to offer the ability to tweak things to reach a wider audience.

I didn’t say challenge is the point of videogames. Read this again, please. I didn’t think it was that nuanced.

The point is that moment to moment gameplay that you become better at as you play. How enjoyable that is for you will determine how much you enjoy the game. You will WANT to invest in that and be better at it because it’s so much fun! (Sorry @tomchick.) If there’s no challenge, that moment to moment play often becomes hollow and pointless exactly as Tom seems to indicate in his review by calling out this slider.

When I was writing reviews, I always went in looking for the heart of the game. What was it that the game seemed built around and how well did it execute on that? That’s the fundamental question I was trying to answer. Sure, graphics, technical issues, sound, story, those things could influence the final score, but they were all part of the whole that brought it all together. By the time I was done playing and ready to write, I knew what it was that made that game great or not so great at its core. I purposefully went looking for that and it’s mostly found in the moment to moment things you do in the game, with all those other things adding or subtracting from its totality if they got in the way of that.

You did, though. you literally said that just one post up from the one you’re quoting.

OK, yeah. I guess I did say it that way. I should have explained it better than that in the first post. Sorry. I do think there needs to be challenge in single player games that is managed by the developer to give you goals.

I don’t think the issue here is about whether games should let you put them on easy mode, it’s that the option is a) in the graphics menu, b) is too fine-grained, c) has an inconsistent effect on difficulty from level to level, and d) directly competes with the named difficulty setting.

There’s nothing wrong with a game having an “easy” mode and players using it. There is something wrong with playing on “Very Hard” but changing some seemingly unrelated option to make that mode as easy as the “easy” mode. It’s along the same lines as a game-breaking exploit. Some people say “don’t do that then” but if I’m going to have to come up with all kinds of “house rules” to make the game meaningful why am I paying a game designer? Making those rules and enforcing them is literally their job.

I’m in between here – offering multiple difficulty levels (including “no-challenge tourist”) is great, as is exposing cheat menus, provided they are clearly labeled as such. But I still want the developer to draw a line in the sand and say “This is our intended experience, designed and playtested to the best of our ability to offer the best experience possible.” Actually, does the enemy count slider have a clearly marked default? If so, I’d be fine with just treating it as a cheat option and ignoring it (though it’s still dumb to put it in the graphics options).

I do largely play games for the challenge, and will generally keep the difficulty on normal or hard, but I agree with @ArmandoPenblade that there’s no reason to wall off content from people who don’t want that experience. An achievement or a different ending screen for playing on a higher difficulty is fine, but locking entire levels away isn’t.