TxK (PS Vita) Review by Jason Bonnar

rosenmakeup Haziran 11, 2022

Game Review: TxK (PS Vita)

TxK is an arcade shooting game available for download from the PlayStation Store for the PS Vita. TxK has been developed by Jeff Minter who is a legend of the videogames industry having developed games since the 1980s for pretty much every console imaginable from Deflex on the Commodore VIC-20 in 1981 to Tempest 2000 for the Atari Jaguar in 1994 and Space Invaders Extreme on the PSP in 2008 with so much more in between to list across a plethora of platforms and genres. The inception of Tempest as an arcade game released by Atari in 1981 was a creation by Dave Theurer who initially wanted to develop a 3D remake of Space Invaders, although the original design of the game had

various problems and needed to be taken back to the drawing board, which resulted in an entirely unique design. Dave Theurer said that his new design came from a dream in which monsters appeared from holes in the ground, although it was not the only game that was inspired by Dave Theurer’s nightmarish visions; as he also claimed that he was the victim of many nightmares during the development of Missile Command in which nearby towns were being bombed. Jeff Minter was responsible for bringing Tempest back to a wider audience with Tempest 2000 for the Atari Jaguar in 1994, Tempest X3 for the PS1 in 1996 and Tempest 3000 for Nuon DVD in 2000 before reinventing the series once more in TxK for the PlayStation Vita.

TxK features three game modes including: classic (restart best), pure and survival spanning 100 levels. The pure game mode sees you starting from the first level and attempting to reach as far as possible into the game by completing levels consecutively with only three lives when you start but with the availability of extra lives in the form of 1Up pickups, while the survival game mode sees you starting from the first level and attempting to reach as far as possible into the game by completing levels consecutively with no extra lives available as 1Up pickups and bonus levels disabled.

The classic game mode is the real standout as it merges with the restart best game mode superbly well; allowing you to continue on from where you had previously left off as your number of lives and highest score are saved with subsequent games providing you with the opportunity of continuing with those statistics and if you are able to complete that particular level, then you will be awarded the high score

from before the start of the level as a start bonus with high scores from the restart best game mode being submitted to the classic game modes’ high score leaderboard as they are effectively one and the same. This is a great design choice as it allows for you to quit the game when you need to such as when your commute ends on the way to or from work, but to still have the opportunity to resume your high score attempt when you want to do so; without being interrupted in your quest for the highest of high scores, which means that you can play in short bursts of gameplay and enjoy it just as much as long bursts of gameplay.

There are a number of power-ups that you will collect as you progress through the course of a level that are randomly positioned to prevent you from learning the timing of a power-up in parrot fashion, although some power-ups are rarer than others resulting in you potentially having a tough time finding certain power-ups, such as the 1Up life pickup. There are other power-ups that are nowhere near as rare, such as the AI droids that fire upon enemies independently of your movement or firing pattern and there are much easier power-ups to find, such as health pickups that help to restore your health, alongside various weapon upgrades that improve the rate of your fire that will certainly keep you on track for your latest attempt at a high score.

The controls are well mapped with a combination of a face button, touch screen and gyroscopic motion sensing control scheme. The combination of the face buttons and touch screen control scheme consists of pressing X to shoot the enemies with your onboard weapons; pressing O to use a smart bomb; pressing R to use the jump ability to jump above the rim of the surface to provide some much needed breathing space from your enemies; changing the direction of the left analogue stick or alternatively

pressing the left or right d-pad buttons to move your ship across the outer edge of the playing surface; and pressing start to display the pause menu, while the touch screen provides an alternative to pressing O to use a smart bomb by tapping the touch screen and the gyroscopic motion sensing functionality is used to pan the camera angle to the left or right by tilting the Vita in the appropriate direction.

The graphics are effectively a modern re-working of the vector graphics from the retro era of yesteryear, which despite building upon that with bright and colourful visuals is incredibly faithful to the source material. There are some great particle effects when you destroy enemies and everything is perfectly re-imagined to an amazing level of quality that produces a feast for your eyes, while remaining retro at heart.

The presentation of the game is solid with a great touch screen based user interface across various menus such as the main menu, level selection menu, local and online leaderboards, trophies menu, how to play menu, options menu and gameplay menus with support for navigation via the left analogue stick, right analogue stick, directional pad and face buttons, although it does not include support for navigation via the rear touch pad, although that is not an issue considering the other methods of navigation that are available. The background of the menu screens consists of stars moving towards the camera, while a prism flashes amid the centre of the screen directly above the TxK logo.

The soundtrack consists of a pulse-pounding fusion of sci-fi enthused dance, trance and techno music, while the sound effects consist of explosions when enemies are destroyed or your ship is captured by an enemy and a sci-fi oriented voice-over that expresses any descriptions of your performance that display upon the screen, such as “Pleasure”, “Angel” and an amusing impersonation of the Daniel Bryan “Yes!” chant.

The trophy list includes ten trophies with five bronze trophies, four silver trophies and one gold trophy. The majority of the trophy list will be earned as you naturally progress through the game, although the

difficulty will be if you can overcome some of the harder levels when many enemies are attacking or attempting to capture you at once. The A good start bronze trophy for reaching level 16 will be a relatively easy trophy to achieve in comparison to the Completed silver trophy for completing all of the levels in any game mode, while the hardest trophies would have to be the Long march silver trophy for completing all of the levels in the Pure game mode and the Ultra Survival gold trophy for completing all of the levels in the Survival game mode. I would estimate depending upon skill and a good trophy guide to provide some helpful tips that it would take anywhere from five to ten hours to 100% the trophy list.

There are no difficulty levels in TxK, although you can definitely sense an increase in difficulty very early on in the game as you start to encounter a variety of different shaped levels, alongside a noticeable increase in the amount of enemies attacking and attempting to capture you at any given time and new enemies entering into the picture along with the returning enemies from earlier levels.

There are no online multiplayer features, which is a bit of a surprise as I thought that an online co-operative multiplayer component could work by having twice as many enemies descending upon you as there were two ships fighting them back, while a competitive online multiplayer component could have worked by having two players positioned at opposing ends of the tunnel with the winner being the first to reach a particular amount of points with one point representing one hit or the most points achieved within a certain time limit, although it must be said that the exclusion of online multiplayer does not detract from what TxK is attempting to achieve by reviving and building upon the core components of a retro classic.

The leaderboards are splint into local and online categories that focus on the classic, pure and survival game modes. The local leaderboards are the equivalent to high scores from a retro era before online leaderboards existed with the my score leaderboard listing your highest score and the top 10 leaderboard listing the top 10 highest scores from that particular save file with both leaderboards

containing each player’s rank; name (PSN ID); and the overall score. The online leaderboards allows you to compare your positioning on the leaderboards with your friends from your friends list, globally with players from around the world and to immediately find and display your position within any given leaderboard with each leaderboard containing each player’s rank; name (PSN ID); and score.

The replayability of TxK stems from many areas from the retro nostalgia to the three game modes spanning 100 levels and great visual and audio design, alongside the competitive local and online leaderboards that will have you revisiting the game for many hours of enjoyment.

Overall, TxK is a dream come true for retro gamers with a superb revival of the Tempest series. Despite the lack of multiplayer; TxK provides a wealth of content that will hook you in and never let go, so if you are a fan of Jeff Minter’s previous work, Tempest, the arcade shooting genre, the retro videogames era or even if you just want to see an epic game, then you must purchase TxK and spend your time wisely enjoying what looks set to be potentially the best Vita exclusive of the year and given the quality of the release; I am certainly hoping that Jeff Minter plans on bringing his entire back catalogue of games to the Vita for everyone to enjoy the rest of his work.

Jason Bonnar

10 out of 10

Analysis