There is a sweet spot in the media we enjoy - whether it’s destroying big bad bosses in our favorite game or an unbelievable plot twist in a movie that blew our minds - where it just ‘clicks.’ Tesla Vs. Lovecraft ‘clicks’, but it does so at the exact moment that it begins to lose steam and fall apart, which is unfortunate because up to that point it feels like a pretty solid twin-stick shooter.
Tesla Vs. Lovecraft picks up with Tesla putting on an event showing off his latest invention. Unfortunately, the fun of the evening is cut short by Mr. Lovecraft, who summons evil fish-people from the Aether to destroy Tesla and the city (or the entire world, the scale he’s working on isn’t clear). It’s a weird premise but it feels more off the wall and fun than all too strange. However, there are a couple of instances where the voices didn’t match up with the subtitles on screen with completely different dialogue being spoken than what was read. This isn’t a big deal, since the game features so little voice acting, but happening so early on pulled me out pretty fast from what was happening around me.
Your goal as Tesla (or Teslas in Co-Op, where everyone is a different colored Tesla) is to shoot through wave after wave of Lovecraft’s creations with the help of different weapons, abilities, perks, and technology. The game starts slow but gains pace very well, with the first level giving you a basic pistol and explaining the shooting mechanics and each later level granting new guns, details on how to level up, how to use abilities, and more. The highlight of finishing the introductory levels is using the Mech suit for the first time - a walking tank that players collect pieces for throughout the level. Once all five pieces are gathered a player hits a button and transforms into a walking gun-machine. After taking enough damage, or about 30 seconds pass, the player will drop back down into their normal Tesla form. It’s a cool mechanic that makes a player feel like a complete powerhouse while it lasts.
After finishing the first few tutorial style stages, each round begins with Player 1 dropping down in Tesla’s Mech suit and blasting as many of the creepy-crawly bad guys as fast as they can for that 30-second window. The game always puts Player 1 in the mech suit at the start of each round, which is fun for Player 1, but in Co-Op can grate on other players who start without the Mech suit for no fault of their own. Once the initial Mech suit phase passes (or if you’re not Player 1), you use your pistol to blast as many of the Lovecraftian bad guys as possible while picking up the 5 pieces it takes to rebuild the Mech suit. The pieces are shared, so once they are all recovered the first player to hit the button can hop in the new suit. You have to move quickly to avoid being cornered by bad guys while also trying to find your favorite weapons and abilities, as they will randomly spawn on the map. It’s fast and chaotic, and it’s a lot of fun avoiding large waves to grab your favorite powerup.
Guns come in abundance with shotguns, tommy guns, revolvers, and ‘Tesla’ variations of these. Each gun shoots differently and reloads differently, with the Tesla versions shooting energy instead of bullets, but some of the bullet weapons pack more of a punch. A Tesla shotgun, for instance, has little energy balls that spray further apart and fires eight shots before needing to reload. A double-barrel shotgun, on the other hand, does more damage per shot, but with less spray and needs to reload after two shots. Early on it becomes pretty easy to figure out which is your favorite weapon and settle in. However, the weapons don’t carry over from round to round, and since each round starts with a pistol and weapons can spawn anywhere there were a number of times my Co-Op partner picked up multiple weapons before I could get anything other than the (borderline useless) pistol, typically because I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Aside from firearms, there are ‘Abilities’ that players pick up during the level and have a limited number of uses within that level. These range from exploding barrels that the player can place to giant weights you can drop on bad guys, and while they can kill enemies en mass, they feel very easy to ignore altogether since they only have a few uses. If you find ‘your’ weapon, you may run through hoards of bad guys for it because you will use it to the end of the level. If your favorite ability pops up, you only get 5 or so uses out of it, meaning it often isn’t worth fighting for.
As your squad polishes off more and more of Lovecraft’s nightmare creatures you fill the XP bar at the top of the screen until you can level up. Leveling up grants the option to choose one of two randomized perks, which one player (whoever is fastest to do it) picks and all players will share. These include useful buffs such as discharging more rounds per shot, moving faster, reloading faster, gaining health over time, being able to dodge attacks, and many more completely game changing skills. The perks given from leveling up last only the current round and the choice of which perk a player chooses reflects the people playing, for example, my partner and I opted for upping firepower whenever possible rather than movement or health buffs.
The XP pool, as opposed to the Mech suit, is shared by all players, meaning that if someone in the game is intent on being the Mech whenever all pieces are collected their kills will still contribute to the team’s XP and benefit the team as a whole. It’s a nice way to balance the players because at the end of the day you are a team of Teslas. The only downside is that after a perk is chosen the game picks right back up. Since the challenge of the game comes in the huge waves of bad guys, without a verbal warning that we were diving back into the action the instant start left my Co-Op partner completely overrun.
After the player is comfortable with all of those mechanics, they are given access to Crystals, which are used to purchase permanent skills that are used in all future levels (be it a random perk they get to start with, more evasion moves, more Mech time and armor, etc). Each of these permanent skills can be upgraded multiple times, so if the first level lets your team have a random perk, the second tier gives you two random perks and so on. Unfortunately, this is when the game starts to stagnate fast. By now, players have a good flow of teamwork, they’ve seen a lot of the perks/weapons/abilities the game has to offer, and they know how to deal with the baddies using their preferred loadout of weapons, perks, and abilities.
So, initially, this new mechanic seems great since it sounds like more of the good stuff. But, it becomes clear all too quickly that the game is stingy with the aforementioned Crystals for no particular reason. Often, my partner and I were granted just 4 Crystals in a round. To put that in perspective, the most expensive unlock is 150 Crystals for its first tier, and 230 for the second tier. With 10 tiers in total, just unlocking that one skill alone is a daunting task. Up until the introduction of the Crystal system, there is a steady flow of new perks to try, new bad guys to fight, and new levels to explore; as soon as the Crystal system is introduced, the levels start getting reused and the new weapons and perks stop flowing. At this point it becomes a matter of pushing through the game just to see it to the end, but there is nothing there whatsoever since the story that seemed wonky and fun to start fizzles out completely.
Aside from the campaign there is an endless mode that gives leaderboard scores to your team and their ability to survive the unwavering waves of bad guys. This is where the most fun is to be found, since the shooting, ability grabbing, and perks you earn from leveling are what the game does best. Unfortunately, this mode is unlocked after a couple of hours and yields even fewer Crystals than the campaign maps, which leads to a game mode that lends itself to be avoided altogether if you’re just interested in progression and not making it to the top of the leaderboard.
Tesla Vs Lovecraft is an acceptable twin-stick shooter. The weapons are fun to play with and there’s a great feeling to blasting away bad guys in rapid succession with your Tesla teammates. Unfortunately, just as the game seems as though it could stand out, it falls short due to the endgame “grind”. The stagnation goes past actual gameplay as well, with the overworld being a large map that is used (with a different color palet) three different times and once all of the perks, weapons, bad guys and abilities have been seen, you’re only midway through the game. Even an aesthetic change of the map would have made things feel less stale. Unfortunately, all that is left for players after that midpoint is repetition.