When 10tons announced that they’d be following up their twin-stick action shooter JYDGE with a game called Tesla vs Lovecraft, I had my doubts as to the quality of this outing. The game retains the basic framework of a twin-stick shooter, but with horde-based level design and a hokey Sci-Fi vs Dark Fantasy motif featuring two early 20th Century historical figures. At first, this premise didn’t convince me that this game would be worth my time. However, after sinking dozens of hours into it I can tell you that Tesla vs. Lovecraft is an immensely satisfying package with tight controls and a mission design that lends itself beautifully to short or long play sessions.
The game kicks off with you taking the role of Nikola Tesla showing off a machine that produces energy through lightning, when you are suddenly accosted by HP Lovecraft for some reason. Monsters start rising out of the ground and burn your lab down, provoking you to whip out a comprehensive arsenal of guns and start smokin’ fools left and right. Each mission has a set number of enemies and your lone objective for each mission is to murder everything until there is nothing left to murderize.
Ammo-based guns are available for you to pick up around the map as you shoot, dodge, and weave through massive waves of enemies. You’ll find Tommy Guns, Double-Barreled Shotguns, and revolvers to start out. In later levels, you can acquire some pulp sci-fi weapons that shoot electricity projectiles as well as secondary weapons that carry a whole new subset of properties. These secondary items can really help in a pinch when you find yourself in the middle of a reload and a bunch of monsters are in your grill. Many of these are explosive weapons, so using them to clear out monsters is quite gratifying and effortless if you are struggling to thin the herds advancing towards you.
In a cool nod to the teleporting man myth, you also can blink through herds and behind walls to give Nikola some distance and acquire bonuses often placed there. While this all seems like an overwhelming number of concepts to grasp, playing Tesla vs Lovecraft is easy to understand and very tight in terms of movement. You never once feel like a maneuver is too difficult to pull off even if an enormous number of enemies are breathing down your neck. I could teleport through clouted spaces of enemies (if the teleporter wasn’t on cooldown) many times and knew that if I died, it was because I messed something up. There are levels that are certainly more difficult than others, but I didn’t ever feel like my deaths were due to a flaw in the game.
While Tesla vs Lovecraft is simple to grasp, there is a deceiving amount of depth to this game. Apart from the weapons, you will also earn experience during each level that allows you to select a perk every time you kill enough monsters. You have the expected movement speed boosts and damage increases; but you can also acquire bonuses like ricocheting bullets, extra projectiles per shot, and poison ammo. You will also be able to access permanent upgrades, such as an increase to Mech armor, once you accumulated enough Aether crystals by completing missions. These don’t really come into play until your second and third playthrough of the story, where the difficulty ramps up in a massive way. You can also try your hand at Endless mode which also lets you increase the number of monsters in the field at one time. This can go up to as high as 600 and it’s absolutely comical to see the screen get completely flooded with enemies.
While it certainly isn’t revolutionary, for $14.99 Tesla vs. Lovecraft supplies a huge massive amount of levels and engrossing gameplay that remains fun for hours on end. I would highly recommend picking this game up on Switch, since this is an experience you can find yourself playing for 5 minutes or 5 hours at a time.
Rating: 8/10
Check Out the Tesla Vs Lovecraft Trailer:
Tesla vs Lovecraft is available for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PC, and Mac via Steam.
Nintendo Switch Review
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Overall Score - 8/108/10
Colin's enthusiasm for games knows no bounds. He enjoys discussing what other people love about their favorite games and is continually in awe of the medium's ability to captivate.
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