I love Jydge. I love Neon Chrome. I love Tesla vs Lovecraft. I just flat-out love 10tons and their ability to consistently make the bestI love Jydge. I love Neon Chrome. I love Tesla vs Lovecraft. I just flat-out love 10tons and their ability to consistently make the best twin-stick shooter games out there. I just recently bought Tesla Force for the X-box One; the follow-up to 2018's Tesla vs Lovecraft and I can't say that I love or even like it half as much as the others. Tesla Force adds a few notable changes to the Tesla formula, but not enough to justify the 18 dollar cost on the Microsoft Marketplace. The revamped level progression through choice based mapping is the most obvious difference, but the ability to choose your route through each level lacks any sort of real gravity. For example: the new "strange encounter" which is a post level completion option that you can select has all the feel of the early narrative driven adventure games of the 80's, but it lacks any of the consequence that made those games so much fun. Granted this is just a small sub-level to the actual level played, but if the Devs decided to add this to the final product, then why not go all the way? The "strange encounters" could have added so much more to each run, for better or for worse, yet I never walked away from these encounters with anything other than a handful of crystals resulting from the correct choice, or some loss of HP due to a bad decision.
The level design feels a little too familiar to the first game, and the same applies to the various enemies you encounter as they are the same pawns, bruisers, and mini-bosses you fight in the first game. Remember the stationary tentacle monsters that dish out heavy damage from the 1st game? Well the same exact models are used in Tesla Force. The main bosses are changed fortunately, but even then I noticed that one boss was just a scaled up model of one of the normal pawn enemies (come on guys that's just lazy) that you fight each and every level. A vast majority of your weapons are exactly the same as well, aside from a few new additions that remind you how good you had it with the old guns (Jacob's stick anyone?) and the same goes for your abilities and percs. I will continue to play Tesla Force until I am absolutely bored with it just like I did with Tesla vs Lovecraft as the replay value for these games are fairly low, but this is due to the fact that 10tons is the undisputed king of top-down shooters and I can't find any games that compare in quality to play in the meantime.. Because of their monopolizing the twin-stick market, 10tons built a high standard, and Tesla Force falls quite short of the lofty precedent they have set for themselves. What is most disappointing is that it appears that the Devs wanted to take the game in a different direction based on the changes that are evident, but for whatever reason they held back.… Expand
