Villordsutch reviews Tachyon Project…
The tagline for Tachyon Project should read, “This game isn’t forgiving!”. I can honestly say I don’t think I have “Rage Quit” a PS4 game as many times as I have with this rush-style game.
Tachyon Project clearly plays homage to the classic Geometry Wars with its core appearance; however Eclipse Games have developed their love of the classic game by bringing a perfect bright neon glow and light-fading burn to the much tighter compact arena. We have a twin-stick shooter that relies on your reflexes being extremely fine-tuned otherwise you will be turning the air blue and losing a vast amount of well-earned points.
Entering the game you’re offered a training level and it’s always smart to go down this route; you’ll easily polish this off within five minutes or less, then you’re thrown into the story which it’s tied together with silent storyboards and it here that the game unfortunately grinds to an unneeded stop. We have no ability to skip through this back story, which is a rather humdrum tale of two hackers that have created the hacking program called Ada (the ship you control) and after a minor hack they’re carted off by the Police. With that Ada attempts to track them down through the many different systems. Again, these silent subtitled storyboards bring the action to an unwanted halt and I really would have enjoyed the ability to bypass these altogether.
You have one life within the four walls of Tachyon Project and your energy is controlled by the sands of time itself. If you’re not killing you are dying! Killing the numerous programs devised to seek out and destroy Ada leaves orbs for you to collect which adds time back on; however being struck by an enemy can remove time, sometimes by drastic amounts. This is an excellent idea to add to the game, especially within the stealth levels, for which your primary focus is to attempt to stick to the darkness and to keep your fire-rate to a minimum, so you don’t gain the interest of enemy programs. However in doing so can deplete your life-force.
The further you progress in the game the more you can configure Ada with primary and secondary guns and also perks making you into a more efficient weapon. The primary gun is a strange one, the description of the weapon upgrades inform you that the weapons are more powerful – along with the negative effect – however I found no real benefit with a few of the high strength weapons; take for example the missiles – they were far to slow and seemed be weaker compared to the opening gun. However the secondary weapons are the true life savers, these used correctly can win you rounds and my current favourites are Freeze and proximity mines.
I’ve found playing the game that the level difficulty can be aggressive on certain low levels and then you when you finally get past them you easily fly through a higher level without breaking a sweat. A good example is Level 4, which was my main “Rage Quit”. First I was screaming at the Smashers and then my real rage fell upon the Big Boss. When I finally downed the Boss it was a real satisfying kill, but then I flew into Level 5 the entire level was an utter breeze; I couldn’t understand why Level 4 had been made so difficult and then to be given this following level as a soother.
The music is a pounding soundtrack and initially you’re under the impression that it goes rather excellent with the game. However you slowly realise that this music isn’t woven into the game and it just seems to be looping over and over again. It’s still enjoyable when it kicks in at the right moment, though it can begin to frustrate when you’ve been trying to get past the same level for some twenty minutes.
Tachyon Project is worthy of picking up for the PlayStation 4. It’s fast, frantic and frustratingly enjoyable! There are faults like the silent storyboards, level difficulty and music looping however these are beaten down by the “Yes!” you’ll be shouting when you successfully see the “Wave Finished!”.
Cons
– Storyboards stop the action
– The varying difficulty of levels
– Looping Soundtrack
Pros
+ The in-game pace in perfect
+ The energy/time system of Ada is an excellent idea
+ Satisfaction of completing a difficult level is brilliant
Rating:- 7/10
Villordsutch likes his sci-fi and looks like a tubby Viking according to his children. Visit his website and follow him on Twitter.
Originally published January 28, 2016. Updated April 14, 2018.
