Tire? Tier? Tear? Trrrurr?
Coming to life as a kickstarter campaign by Ennui Studio, Tyr: Chains of Valhalla is a Mega Man style clone on Steam and PS4. From a 2.5D perspective, the highlighting feature is the cyberpunk Norse mythology visual aesthetic, specifically the hand drawn story segments. Unfortunately, everything else is a complete mess of a game.
The problem with Tyr, besides its goofy name, is the weird mixed identity. While it plays like classic Mega Man with running, jumping, and shooting, it tosses in something like the high speed of Sonic. Level design focuses on some accurate platforming but the loose controls revolves around frustrating inaccuracy. The terrible play control is only amplified by the high speed of movement, resulting in nothing but accidental deaths and rage quitting. Making matters worse, the player is required to use the dash maneuver, a move that is all or nothing with zero controllability. Even wall jumping doesn’t feel right as the player bounces up a wall like Mega Man X but only with wonky jump mechanics. Combat also suffers with an awkward color coded bullet system. I guess some shots are more powerful against certain colored enemies but couldn’t tell a difference and the game never informs the player of this major gameplay element.
Poor play control is only the tip of the iceberg. Outside of completing the abysmal opening tutorial level, I was not able to complete the first stage after a couple dozen tries due to cheap tactics and no fault of my own. Enemies not only shoot the player from off screen, they take way too many hits to defeat. The worst part, however, is enemy placement. Always placed as the players makes a jump or climbs a wall, there is a bullet always just waiting for you. And since the play control sucks so bad, only pro players with a tremendous amount of tenacity will complete a stage let alone the entire game. The player can only take three hits before being forced back to the last checkpoint too. Checkpoints are also spaced too far apart for a game as cheap and difficult as this.
This game is so bad and poorly put together, it is a wonder if any play testing was done at all. In fact, the screen doesn’t even fit properly as the bottom 5%-10% always gets cuts off even after making adjustments to the PS4 hardware in the main console menu. Sure, the mix of Norse mythology and cyberpunk sounds like an interesting idea, and it is, but it means nothing when everything else falls apart around it. Stay away from this $10.99 digital download.
SCORE: 3.5/10
Wait For It: Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon
Makes: Mighty No. 9 look like the next Symphony of the Night
Also Try: Powerblade 1 & 2 on NES
By: Zachary Gasiorowski, Editor in Chief myGamer.com
Twitter: @ZackGaz
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