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| Title | Tesla vs Lovecraft |
| Developer | 10tons Ltd |
| Publisher | 10tons Ltd |
| Release Date | January 26, 2018 |
| Genre | Arena Shooter |
| Platform | PC |
| Age Rating | N/A |
| Official Website | |
10tons Ltd releases a lot of good action games like Jydge and Crimsonland. This time, they made a game about the fight between two historical characters, scientist Nikola Tesla and famous horror writer H.P. Lovecraft. Lovecraft considers Tesla’s scientific discoveries dangerous and decides to unleash waves of supernatural monsters to stop him. You control Tesla and you have to stop Lovecraft from destroying the city and the world. How epic is this supernatural battle?
Tesla fights waves of monsters in the city of Arkham and must rely on a set of advanced weapons to defeat his foes. Guns, shotguns, rifles, and energy weapons will help to neutralize the threat posed by Lovecraft’s army. You will also be able to rely on temporary abilities that can be picked up on the ground, like Thunderbolt, Nova, or Aether Disk. Those powers are generally very effective and have a limited number of uses. When you gather enough experience, you level up and are able to choose between two “perks” chosen randomly. Some will increase the amount of damage you can inflict, other will make you shoot faster or help you to regenerate your life; all will be needed to increase your odds of surviving.
It is important to note that your level is reset every time you start a new area. Fortunately, the game also offers permanent upgrades that can be purchased with crystals. Crystals are unlocked by killing a high number of monsters from a species, or by picking them when they appear in the area. Crystals only appear on the ground after beating the game for the first time, so getting crystals will first be rather hard for the player. But those crystals are worth it as they can allow you to teleport more often, start a level with a random perk, and get different helpful bonuses. This element of the gameplay will be key in the player’s experience, as the game will look a bit harder at the beginning, but will get gradually easier the more you play. Playing more will allow you to kill more monsters, pick more crystals, and make your fights more simple.
Some players might be frustrated by this incentive to grind levels again and again to get more power, but this is also what makes the game rewarding. Maps are generally small, and each area can be completed quickly after a few minutes of fighting. Learning to pick the right upgrades, teleport yourself at the right moment, and choose the best weapons will be decisive factors in winning. You want to collect the pieces of the tesla-mech as fast as possible in every game. The machine, with it’s own health and two powerful Gatling guns, can only be used for a short time, but deals massive amounts of damage and can get you out of a tight situation if needed. The mech is also not a once-per-level thing. If you can gather the pieces again, you can use the mech again. Environments may look a bit repetitive, but fit the supernatural atmosphere of the game as they generally look like dark districts from a town set in the 19th century. The music conveys a feeling of darkness and fantasy that fits the theme of the game.
The game features three difficulty modes, and if you want to complete the story of the game, you will have to play all of them. The final act of the battle between Tesla and Lovecraft is set at the end of the last difficulty mode, which means you will have to completely beat the two previous modes to access it. Fortunately, this should not take too long and I was able to complete the story after 20 hours of gameplay. A survival mode with endless waves of monsters and a local co-op mode are available and increase the replay value of the game. Since the game only requires a DX9 compatible graphics card and a 2 GHz CPU, it should run on most modern computers. I would recommend the game to anyone looking for a frenetic shooter with thousands of monsters to kill. The only negative point of this game might be its repetitive nature, but it is hard to blame it for that due to the nature of its gameplay and the genre of the game. Sold at the price of $14.99 on Steam, Tesla vs Lovecraft is worth your time and money.
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Review copy provided by the developer.
