Just noticed this is on sale on Switch also for $8 and change. Anyone try to Swifch version? Curious how it performs compared to PC.
Disgaree! I agree with Tom! :) It’s pretty dull, and the difficulty curve is non-existent with the player expected to tailor the difficulty by adjusting a option (nee: graphics) slider!
However I keep meaning to go back to it as I have one achievement left for beating the end boss. But just because I’ve put myself through that torment, doesn’t mean I wish it upon others. So stay away @TurinTur! Play something else instead from the 10tons canon.
Which is the best example of the genre, in your opinion?
I usually value action games with
-good variety (in weapons, enemies, scenarios)
-good enemy design (are they interesting to fight?)
-good pace (does the game have high and lows in the action? or is it a pure horde mode?)
-good difficulty options (I don’t like games that are too hard or too easy!)
I bought it yesterday because of @kerzain and I will say it’s okay because discourse is crapping out totally here and erasing what I type every few seconds!
Edit: it was the only 10tons game I hadn’t bought on PC, so I can’t compare, but it’s a really nifty update on Crimsonland, I am thinking so far. No Neon Chrome, for sure.
I don’t think Tesla will please you: not much variety, some pacing issues early on already, enemies have been pretty stupid so far.
I think Neon Chrome is the best game they made: fitting almost everything you list, excepting there is no horde mode (although I think they added it in a DLC) and the game lacks probably variety of levels (only 4 environments if I remember, and boss battles are always the same).
But it’s got an amazing weapon feel, outstanding variety (at least to me) in the genre, allowing for quite a variety of builds across different runs. You will have seen all it has to offer in 15 or 20 hours, so it’s no Isaac/Dead Cells/whatever, but it’s a great ride still.
The best feature of Neon Chrome is something I didn’t know I needed: persistent destruction accross the level. When you have cleared a level and walk back through it and the chaos you perpetrated, it’s a wonderful if childish feeling.
Enemies don’t have to be ‘smart’, but they have to be different, that’s what makes you think every second what you should do in combat (this enemy throws a grenade, this one has a dash ability, this one fires a continuous laser, this jumps around, this one have a shield)
I think you misunderstood me with my horde mode comment. I was criticizing games with poor pace. Poor pace in this context are games that are too uniform, they are stuck in a single gear speed, usually they throw you a constant big horde of enemies and that’s it. A good game makes slight variations: here a big sudden horde, here a constant stream of moderate waves, here only a few but very tough enemies, etc.
I misunderstood the horde, but got you on the pacing front!
Tesla features non-stop waves of enemies, then you have almost cleared the level and there are 3 or 4 creatures running around you need to chase down to end it. Very stupid, in my opinion.
Neon Chrome is that wonderful prodigy of a game, varying paces, but also (and that’s awesome!) letting the player — to a point — manage the pace and difficulty herself, in the way you approach and progress through a level.
I can’t detail all the nifty design ideas in that game, but it’s really a work of wonder in my opinion. For instance, there is stealth. Hell you can even make a working stealth build if you wish. Or not only can you tell if you are running low on ammo by listening to your gun: you can also tell if an enemy is going to run out of ammo by the sound their own guns (assuming you can hear it amongst the cacophony ;)
Fuck (oh!) I love that game!
Sadly it looks like crap (they are using the same sort of assets across all their games, and it’s not pretty).
Ah, I should tell it’s build around “progression” as Tom calls it (or good grind), so if that aspect of unlocking stuff and getting stronger the more you play annoys you —although it’s balanced out by unlocking progressively harder difficulties— stay clear.
I loved Neon Chrome. Didn’t like Jydge. When I watched video of TvL it seemed to me that once you made the mech the first time, you’d seen everything there was…and I didn’t particularly like the “survive until you get the mech” aspect.
Oh look at this
I already had a pair of their games, lol.
Just a word to let it be known that the Switch version did away with the infamous graphics slider.
Maybe they also did that in the PC version?
Yeah, Jydge was a hard sell for me as well. Byt I think the trick is to approach is a set of Hardline Miami style challenges to which yoy bring yoyr choice of tools, chosen from among the arsenal you’ve ynlocked. Early on, it feels kind of limited and even dymb. But as yoy get into the harder levels, as you start having to flex the different kinds of loadoyts, as you experiment with the best ways to meet the challenges required to a clear a level…I think Jydge turns out to be a ynique application of 10tons’ twin-stick shootering. I really like Jydge.
Also, ha ha, in the fytyre, the letter y is always changed to the letter y. That’s not annoying.
-Tom
That was the problem for me. The challenge-style play isn’t what I wanted. Might be perfect for someone into that.
It’s still there on PC!
Also Jydge is fab. Its my favourite 10tons game, with Neon Chrome being second. Trying to do each level in 20 seconds, or whatever, for that badge thingy is great.
Ps the horde mode for Neon Chrome (‘Arena’ DLC) is more of a wave based thing, rather than a continuous stream. It’s not bad.
Which is totally fair, and I think one of the problems with Jydge. They don’t really do anything to set it up as anything other than a half-assed, scaled-down version of Neon Chrome pretending to evoke Judge Dredd. Which is pretty much what it is for about ten or fifteen really short levels. Eventually, you realize it’s something else entirely, but it would have been nice if 10ton told you that in the first place!
Hmm, I might be with you on that. I mean, yeah, Neon Chrome is aces, but there are a bazillion rogue-likes in that game space. But there aren’t many things like Jydge that squeeze so much content into teensy two-minute snippets of distilled gameplay.
-Tom
I definitely didn’t start as my favourite, but by the end it was firmly in pole position and I was left wanting more challenge types, more levels, more mobs, more unlocks,.more achievements etc.
It’s like Neon Chrome but with some actual ‘game design’, rather than letting a RNG do all the heavy lifting.
Edit and it doesnt have that classic problem of picking between. 3 guns that are 0.5% different from each other.
I tried both.
I can see why I was recommended Neon Chrome. With a bunch of weapons, special abilities and mods, and three classes to choose, there is a good amount of permutations. Enemy design was weak at first but I’m seeing now new (and more interesting) enemies after the first boss.
Add to this that it can be addictive upgrading little by little your character stats to do it better in the next run, and it seems a solid action game.
However it fails at the moment-to-moment action, which in the end it’s the most important part. Overall it’s ok, I will still play it more, but I see two issues:
-You carry a single weapon, not several, and the ammo is infinite. That means less fun having to pick the correct weapon for each enemy and situation, and a bit less of variety in the combat (yes, you change weapons as you find them, but it is much less frequent). You also don’t have usable items or anything that could spice up more the combat, just the primary fire of the weapon and your special ability
-Movement is eh. There is no sprint, or roll, or dash, nothing.
Jydge is an interesting one, how they have made a new game in the same world, reusing several art assets, and even some menus and powers, and almost the same type of game if you squint the eyes enough, but it feels different enough once you play. It’s an interesting pseudo Hotline Miami.
By increasing the damage a lot, made the enemies criminals that have patrols, having less enemies but more dangerous, putting hostages you have to rescue, and by putting set challenges in each level, they have made a more tactical game.
-Level design is suddenly more important, where are the hostages, where are the enemies, if this part is open area or a narrow corridor, it matters more.
-The mini stealth system, which already existed on Neon Chrome, gains more importance on Jydge. You can wait until a patrol pass hiding in the closet, kill first this guy on the bathroom without the others noticing, etc.
-The feature of wall destruction to open up new entrances is both easier (by default you make much more damage to the environment) and more important to the gameplay. It makes more sense here.
-The challenge system is nice, a decent way to replay the levels more and get something. Although maybe at some point it will turn frustrating.
The interesting point here is how Jydge don’t really fix the issues I saw in Neon Chrome, the movement is the same, and the one weapon with unlimited ammo is the same, but suddenly they have less importance if the game is more focused on the tactical part, in what order to kill the enemies, where to try to use stealth, recover the hostages in a minimum time, etc. The game focus is shifted from pure action to other fields so said flaws don’t apply anymore. It’s why Jydge seems the better designed game.
I have Leap of Fate on my drive. When it came out, it had no mid-save function, so I lost interest, but it is fixed now. So from a twin-stick shooter perspective, should I continue with LoF or this (TvL is now discounted on GOG) …
Sloppy
Leap of Fate over Tesla, Neon Chrome over Leap of Fate.
I played Neon Chrome some 4 or 5 hours until I got bored. Now I came back to Jydge that I had stopped until I had finished with the other one… and yeah it’s the better game.
-Better progression. It’s just simply spending money in buying the weapons and mods, so nothing revolutionary, but it feels better because you get concrete, singular new items for your character, instead of an impersonal “+5% damage” or “+3 to luck” that you get by buying stats in Neon Chrome.
-Better character customization. In NC, although optionally you can buy one item to start with it, you mostly get the mods you find at random every time, same as weapons. In Jydge (god the title is so bad) you really can define better your character archetype by selecting weapon, special, weapon mods, and 3-4 cyber mods, so you can synergize everything as a whole, which makes sense…
-Because with the more designed by hand levels and the medal system, some missions or some medals in specific will favor o even need a specific loadout, so the game gives you a real reason to use the system.
-I think there are also more mods than in NC opening up more gameplay styles, and some missions are more original, like one where you have just to survive against respawning waves of enemies for some time.
-Better hacking. In NC the hacker could open a few doors and boxes to get a bit more goodies, but the game would play exactly the same, in Jydge being a game with handcrafted levels and challenges, the hacking tool allow you to open up paths and shortcuts that allow you skip parts or get time medals.
-Better difficulty. There is a hardcore mode, but it doesn’t unlock after finishing the game, but after ending Act 1. And it isn’t simply more difficult because of enemies, the AI targets the hostages if they escape much more so suddenly that gameplay element is more relevant, there are different patrols, and it allows you to get again 3 medals in each map as Hardcore have 3 different medal challenges, giving you more reason to play it in a harder difficulty.