Recently I’ve played a number of absolutely miserable games. Super Toy Cars, Zombi, LA Cops, all were, to say the least, below par. And in all honesty, I expected Tachyon Project to become a member of this particular club, as in the end it was developed by Eclipse, the very same company which has created Super Toy Cars. However, to my surprise, this was not the case.
Tachyon Project, isn’t a perfect game by any means, however, unlike majority of the monotonous sludge that seems to appear on the PSN Store these days, it is fun. Tachyon Project, is a simple, futuristic, twin-stick shooter based around the concept of ‘hacking’. It doesn’t reinvent the genre, or even try to do so, but its simple controls and moderate level of customisation do enough to keep you engaged for the duration of its campaign. In-game, you’re in control of a crescent-shaped space ship/software, which is equipped with a main weapon and two abilities, at all times. Throughout the game, you’ll be able to unlock a range of different primary weapons such as lasers or machine guns, and a plethora of active abilities, such as decoys, turrets, and explosions. Your ship can also be customised in terms of health, speed, and other technical abilities, however, it cannot be adjusted visually.
Basic completion of Tachyon Project, shouldn’t take anyone more than two hours, as it is composed from only 10 separate levels, which themselves are divided into waves. During each wave you might be asked to defeat specific number of particular enemy type, survive until the end of the round, or simply to defeat all on-screen enemies. New opponent variations are introduced overtime, and give the game a sense of discovery, but as soon as the game serves all available enemies to you on a platter, it becomes frustratingly difficult. During the first five levels, difficulty increases steadily with every new opponent, however, once all cards are on the table, Tachyon Project becomes an absolute mess. Enemies appear on-screen in unbelievable amounts and get stuck on one another, and most importantly, are capable of spawning right underneath you. So, if you’re as unlucky as me, you’ll spend 15 minutes on a single wave, simply because the game has decided to spawn 20 darts right underneath you, killing you instantly.
Poor mechanical level design, and spawn system are not the only downsides of Tachyon Project. Visually the game feels like an A level computer designed project. The UI feels, and looks archaic, also, ship upgrade menu is borderline unusable due to its convoluted design. And the playing field has one physical variation, and only slightly differs from level to level. The only difference in visual level design, is in the colour of the border which surrounds the arena, and sometimes in the shade of the hexagons which serve as the background.
From time to time, Tachyon Project also decides to grace you with images of the in-game characters, when displaying its plot. However, the quality of the images is simply poor, and their art style seems so incredibly out-of-place, it feels like developers, Eclipse Games, has just purchased a handful of images via Deviant Art, and slapped them straight into the game. In short, not to take more of your time, Tachyon Project is simply misdirected.
Lack of direction seems to be Eclipse’s biggest problem. Tachyon Project, suffers from exactly the same issues Super Toy Cars did, and even though these are two completely different games, they both lack quality in exactly the same places, game direction and visual design, and these two should be a priority to each and every-single modern developer. Its mind boggling how someone can be willing to invest time and money into a project, and completely neglect game direction and art design. I hope that Eclipse will employ they right people, and elevate their future projects to the next level.