HIGH The meta-progress is a welcome addition

LOW The gameplay loop seems lessened

WTF An army of undead chickens is very playable

The Finnish team 10tons Ltd. entered the game scene with Crimsonland. It was a simple title, but the twin-stick controls were so tight it was clear that they had something special. Since the mid-2000s they’ve built a roster of works built on those solid foundations. Later, in 2018, 10tons delved into real-time strategy with Undead Horde. This was top-down strategy using twin-stick controls to steer a horde of undead to fight their enemies.

Undead Horde was addictive, and had wonderful forward momentum created by the fact that anything killed could then be resurrected to join the player’s army — anything from simple footman all the way up to end-level bosses. Now in 2023, Undead Horde 2: Necropolis is here, and brings with it changes that seem to have come at a cost.

The Necromancer from the first game is is back and the gameplay, at its core, is the same. The art style is also in line with its predecessor and the controls are similar — point the cursor to direct the horde and watch them engage in combat. The Necromancer itself can also cast spells and perform melee attacks. There’s a large map with multiple biomes, each with their own challenges and tricks, but new to Undead Horde 2 is a large hub world.

As levels are completed and items found, the hub grows in population. This also allows the player to invest any money they pick up during combat into upgrading their units and crafting new trinkets. This economy is a compelling reason to go back and revisit old levels — clearing them out helps power up the player, which then in turn expands the hub world even more. To tie into this, instead of resurrecting enemies, the Necromancer uses the dead bodies of fallen enemies as a pool of resources to bring back prescribed units.

All of the pieces are in place for a more rounded and polished experience, but the problem is that no longer being able to pick up fallen units and resurrect them on the fly robs it of both momentum and magic.

For example, in the original game, when a tough fight against a fierce enemy was over and my army was demolished, the upside was that I would bring that now-defeated enemy into my team to make up for the losses. In Undead Horde 2, that one boss enemy is now reduced to becoming a resource that I spend to get one or two of my regular troops back . This means sitting through a loading screen, going back to the hub, rebuilding the team and then heading back into battle as there are seldom enough dead on the battlefield to bring back a full cohort. The joy of toppling a tough foe and rolling ahead is now replaced by fewer surprises, pauses in the action and a return to base.

This shift ends up hamstringing Undead Horde 2’s flow — as much as I enjoyed it in the beginning, it soon began to feel like a chore and I’m sad to say that Undead Horde 2 is one of 10tons Ltd.’s few stumbles — it’s still addictive and sports their trademarked solid controls, but it’s sorely missing the infectious charm of their previous installment.

Rating: 6 out of 10

Disclosures: This game is developed by 10tons Ltd. and published by 10tons Ltd. It is currently available on XBO, XBX/S, PS4/PS5, Switch, PC and Mac.This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the XBX. Approximately 12 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was not completed. There are no multiplayer modes.

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is rated T and contains Violence and Blood. The rating seems a little high to me as the violence is cartoonish and everything feels very silly. Very young children might find the animal murder upsetting.

Colorblind Modes: Colorblind modes are present.   

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: This game offers subtitles. The subtitles cannot be altered and/or resized. In my view, the title appears to be fully playable and accessible without sound.

Remappable Controls: Yes, this game offers fully remappable controls.

The post Undead Horde 2: Necropolis Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH Using a fully-upgraded War Pigeon to wipe out two hundred monsters in a matter of seconds.

LOW Getting trapped by the Elder Polyp’s energy vortex again and again.

WTF Tesla’s Death Ray.

Settings don’t matter much in twin-stick shooters. Players want swarms of enemies, monstrous powerups, and (depending on their preference of foe) fountains of blood or showers of sparks. The why isn’t as important as the how, but a great setting can elevate a solid shooter to unexpected heights.

Tesla vs. Lovecraft has one of those fantastic settings, pitting the famous inventor and his arsenal of electrical weaponry against the abhorrent hordes that Lovecraft summons using his trusty Necronomicon. This leads to thirty levels of hectic action as fishmen, shoggoths, and a few other Mythos-inspired enemies attack in ceaseless hordes, forcing the player to test their reflexes to the point of exhaustion.

Smooth movement is vitally important for a great twin-stick shooter, and 10tons have done a brilliant job of developing one of the most agile systems for moving characters in top-down games. At the same time, they’ve built levels perfectly designed to utilize the mechanic.

Tesla is equipped with a teleportation backpack which allows the player to jump a set distance in their direction of movement with the press of a button, picking up any items that lay in their path. This keeps the game from becoming a slog built around surviving battles of attrition, as Tesla can warp right through hordes of enemies or across small gaps — even through walls. This frees the player up to take the fight directly to the enemy, knowing that there’s little chance of winding up cornered. Notably, the camera is agile enough to make sure that movement never becomes confusing, even when multiple players co-op on the same screen.

TvL’s arsenal is also well-designed. There’s a strong range of guns between wide-shooting and fast-firing, perfect for any playstyle. Impressively, they’re balanced enough that none of them seem particularly overpowered, and with the right perks everything but the starting pistol can be transformed into a formidable weapon. The player also has a ‘War Pigeon’ mech that they begin each level using. The Pigeon falls apart after a set amount of time or damage has be reached, and its parts scatter around the map. If the player collects all six pieces, they can unleash the mech again, giving them the chance to turn the tables on huge gluts of enemies.

TvL uses a Crimsonland-style upgrade system, meaning that Tesla starts each map at level 1, and quickly levels up by killing enemies. With each new level the player gets to choose between two random perks — everything from bonus damage, piercing ammo, and multiple barrels, as well as a host of ways to speed up Tesla’s movement. Success in any run is dependent to on the way players level up, and that’s as much down to luck as it is skill. Fortunately, the maps are only 1-2 minutes long, so a bad draw won’t annoy players for long before they get a chance to start again from scratch.

However, the one thing TvL botches is its upgrade system. In addition to the basic leveling-up that happens during each level, the player can collect crystals which unlock improvements — things like more teleport charges, a longer mech lifespan, a better chance at epic random perks, and so on. The problem is either that the upgrades are too expensive or the crystals are too rare. I made it through the entire game on all three difficulty levels and I never managed to unlock more than a quarter of the possible upgrades, suggesting that someone would need to spend dozens of hours to unlock everything by grinding the same levels over and over again. For a title that gets so much right, that’s a weird thing to ask of players.

Despite that bit of questionable design, Tesla vs Lovecraft is a delight thanks to its fast, tight action and its smart use of setting to push it over the top. As far as twin-stick shooters go, they don’t get much better than this.Rating: 8 out of 10

Disclosures: This game is developed and published by 10tons Ltd. It’s is available on the PC. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the PC. Approximately 15 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was completed. Two hours of play were spent in multiplayer modes.

Parents: This game was not reviewed by the ESRB, but is essentially a T and contains Blood And Gore, and Cartoon Violence. Do all of the enemies explode into bloody chunks? Yes – but not in a traumatic way. The enemies are scary cartoons, so it’s always fun to slaughter them, never traumatic. Even younger teens should be fine.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: I played most of the game on mute and noticed no significant issues. It’s fully accessible.

Remappable Controls: Yes, this game offers fully remappable controls.

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes available in the options.

The post Tesla Vs Lovecraft Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH Lining up the perfect bounce laser shot to liquefy three perps at once.

LOW Trying to figure out enemy sight range for ‘don’t get spotted’ challenges.

WTF The final boss ‘fight’.

There hasn’t been a good Judge Dredd or Robocop game since the 16-bit era, and Robocop had to team up with the Terminator to manage that one. These are two franchises absolutely begging for decent videogame representation, yet completely unable to get one. This is especially surprising considering that Dredd is actually owned by videogame developer Rebellion. Seeing this obvious void in the marketplace desperate for a product to fill it, 10tons developed JYDGE, a game perfectly crafted to sit at the exact midpoint between those two franchises.

In a futuristic megacity terrorized by lawbreakers, the police have a radical new concept in the war on crime – killer cyborgs loosely themed around the concept of ‘judging’ criminals, if that concept can indeed be stretched to the point where it includes blasting them to pieces with rocket launchers.

A top-down shooter loosely fitting into the Hotline Miami mold, JYDGE is built around small levels that can be raced through in roughly a minute with the player shooting foes, collecting evidence, and rescuing hostages across fourteen different missions. JYDGE‘s intriguing twist on the formula is putting the character in the skin of a monstrously powerful character and then giving them a world where they can freely wield that power freely in completely destructible environments.

Every one of JYDGE‘s stages is a warren of narrow hallways and locked doors. Players can zip through, blasting enemies apart and finding keys, or they can simply equip the right weapons and make their own path straight to the objectives, painting the walls with the internal organs of anyone unlucky enough to get in their way. In addition to its other charms, JYDGE is an extremely gory title that revels in the way enemies explode when hit with a wide arsenal of weapons. Even the Jydge itself is prone to exploding – fail a crucial mission objective and it self-destructs in the most gruesome way that the stylized graphics allow.

For a game with a relatively small number of levels, JYDGE does a great job of keeping players coming back by offering four completely different versions of each stage. As players increase the difficulty level, enemies don’t just get stronger and have their spawn points shuffled, although that happens as well. No, on higher difficulties the mission objectives change. The first time through, a player might have to save a group of hostages within 30 seconds, but on a subsequent visit they’ll have to kill everyone in the level while remaining unseen by the opposition.

The devs are incredibly fair with objectives, as well – players can chase them in any order they want, and once they’re unlocked, they stay that way. As such, while daring players can attempt to complete all three at once, it’s not a necessity. Thanks to this flexibility, all of the game’s objectives can be completed with a little determination.

JYDGE reinforces the appeal of completing these objectives by awarding medals that unlock more weapons and character upgrades. This is the basis for the central and most robust mechanic – the modular nature of the Jydge. Players can have up to four mods on their body and three on their gun simultaneously, as well as selecting the kind of bullets their gun fires. There are a dozen different options that can completely changing the way the game is played.

Based on their loadout, players can snipe through levels by shooting through walls, be near-impervious to bullets and club enemies to death, or they can slink through the shadows while picking off enemies that have no idea where the shots are coming from. Any kind of hybrid character is possible, and completely rearranging abilities is as easy as swapping mods around for ten seconds. The developers even go the extra mile and have the respec menus pop up whenever the player fails a mission – no need to drop back out to the mission selection screen, just change it up and jump right back into the mission without losing a step. Failure never feels like much of a punishment, and the huge variety of playstyles make it unparalleled in the art of luring players into ‘just one more try’.

JYDGE isn’t very long, but it’s incredibly wide, and its winking embrace of ’80s-style ultraviolence should charm both devotees of the franchises that inspired it and anyone who can appreciate a clever shooter. Rating: 9 out of 10

Disclosures: This game is developed and published by 10tons. It is currently available on PC and PS4. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the PS4. Approximately 6 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was completed. 1 hour of play was spent in multiplayer modes.

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is rated Teen and contains Violence and Blood. It’s crazy to me that this got a T rating, although I suppose that’s stylization once again tricking the ESRB into thinking something is much less objectionable than it actually is. This is game that entirely revolves around blowing people into bloody chunks. No matter how carefully it’s played, some of those people are going to be hostages and innocent bystanders. It’s unavoidable to the point that the plot hinges on it. Consider this one an M in disguise, please.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: You’ll be fine! There are no audio cues of note. I played most of the game without audio, and had no trouble at all. The only cue I noticed was the ‘ding’ of an elevator as reinforcement goons arrived, and I was surprised by them more than once while playing with audio turned off.

Remappable Controls: No, this game’s controls are not remappable.

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes available in the options.

The post Jydge Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.