As this year’s console release cycle gets further and further into my rear view, I have to ask – where are the exclusives? When the Xbox Series X was announced, if someone had told me the first game I was going to play on it was Tetris, I probably would’ve smacked them. As of this writing, Tesla Force is only the third next-gen release that I’ve been able to play on my shiny new console, and on the surface, it looks a lot like Tesla vs. Lovecraft. For those of you who are lost in the time warp that is 2020, that game came out two years ago. With this release, 10tons Ltd. took a detour and managed to produce a product that is a step back from the previous entry.

To call this game a simple cash-in is a bit of a disservice since it has some noteworthy changes, but most of it didn’t jive with me as it should have. There is a big shift by changing from a traditional shmup to more of a rogue-lite than the previous game, making each new run its own thing instead of having a set path from start to finish. While I enjoy the rogue-lite genre, this game lacks that spark that encourages you to keep jumping in after each failure.

Much like the previous game, you jump into the often mechanized shoes of Tesla, Lovecraft himself, or one of the other two less interesting supporting characters to fight off waves of evil beings while completing randomized objectives on levels that are really enjoyable. At first. You still spend your time collecting crystals to upgrade your character of choice, which has a vast set of options strewn out among weapons, buffs, and the normal options you’d come to expect. The problem here is that the game is downright unforgiving when it comes to throwing hundreds, and I do mean hundreds of enemies at you at a time, much like playing Smash TV on a speedball consisting of meth, Red Bull, and a carton of Five Hour Energies. After the first few levels that are at a respectable difficulty, it just ramps up to the point that you’ll get boxed in and killed before you have time to think, losing all progress and getting dropped off in the hub area to spend your crystal currency.

The menus that house the upgrades are clear as to what effect each upgrade has, but is a bit cumbersome when it comes to navigating and honestly, has too many options in too many places. This left me not only struggling with which upgrade to throw points into, but kicking myself once I realized I had better abilities and options just a few steps to my right under a slightly different terminal. The upgrades themselves range from being slightly game-changing (for a level or two) to being somewhat meaningless, but regardless of where I plunked down my hard-earned glowing bits, I always felt like I was underpowered unless I was in the always a joy to control mech suit. I had a few runs that really felt like I was given the best combination of drops, perks, and such that I really thought I was going to make it to the end, only to be screwed over by boxing myself in at the wrong time. While these runs happen, they are few and far between, usually dropping the same mediocre weapons or buffs time and time again. As of this writing, I’ve only been able to make it about five to six areas deep, despite having a number of the upgrades pumped to the max, and honestly, I don’t think I have it in me to push myself to grind out all of them.

The game looks and performs just as well as it did in the original entry, but there are some rather annoying technical issues that really discouraged me from playing when I only had a few free minutes to spare. The game offers the option to save and quit mid-run, which seems to save your crystals and currency; however, when I attempted to continue the game later on, I was locked into looking at the map with no option to proceed, and the button prompts at the bottom of the screen were non-responsive. After a few minutes of fumbling around, I was only able to quit out to the menu and start a brand new run. This even popped up as an issue during regular play when I was transitioning between levels.

If you are struggling with finding games to play now that we’ve all busted through the ridiculously low number of exclusives that have released in the past month along with the next generation of consoles, Tesla Force is something to play, but some strange design choices and technical bugs make this a slightly less enjoyable experience than it’s predecessor.

6 out of 10

Pros

• 4 Player Co-Op
• More of What Made the Original Great…

Cons

• … More of What Needed Work on the Original Game
• Some Technical Issues
• The Faux-Save Mechanic

Tesla Force was developed and published by 10tons Ltd. It was released on PC, PS4, PS5, X1, and XSX. The game was provided to us for review on XSX. If you’d like to see more of Tesla Force, check out the official site.

 

Here at GBG we use a rating method that you are more than likely familiar with – a scale of 1 to 10. For clarification, we intend on using the entire scale: 1-4 is something you should probably avoid paying for; 5-7 is something that is worth playing, but probably not at full price; 8-10 is a great title that you can feel confident about buying. If you have any questions or comments about how we rate a game, please let us know.

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