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British indie developer Jeff Minter became a legend after coding the Atari Jaguar game Tempest 2000, transforming Dave Theurer’s 3D wireframe shooter into a cartridge-based rave. Trippy visuals, an incredible electronica soundtrack, and addictive gameplay made the sequel more memorable than its inspiration.Tempest 4000 is the PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Steam PC version of Tempest 2000, or more accurately, of the spiritual sequel TxK that Minter’s company Llamasoft released while Atari was temporarily defunct. In addition to updating TxK’s graphics, including 4K resolution support, it includes three full soundtracks’ worth of Tempest 2000 and TxK music. As a huge fan of the Tempest series, I’d love to tell you that the Xbox One version I’m reviewing today is great, but it’s firmly in the “good” category due to some rough UI and UX edges. My hope is that a postrelease patch addresses its issues, as a few tweaks would make Tempest 4000 much easier to recommend to more people.
What you’ll likeA fun and challenging gamePutting its aesthetics aside, the core game inside Tempest 4000 is still Tempest — a “tunnel shooter” where your Claw spaceship shoots enemies as they advance from the distant background of a wireframe “web” to the foreground. You move left or right on the web’s edge, firing inwards to take out targets as you enhance your abilities with powerups. For instance, a single-use Superzapper kills all on-screen enemies, weapon upgrades multiply your bullets, an AI droid clears enemies at its own pace, and a jump upgrade lets you temporarily vault off the web. Above: Screenshots only do modest justice to the pixel and polygon explosions you’ll watch as your Claw (left) and AI Droid (bottom) shoot from the outside of the “web” towards targets inside.Each of the 100 levels offers a different web shape — some static, some rotating or folding in on themselves — and enemies typically become more resilient and/or numerous with each passing level.
You needn’t restart at level 1 when you run out of lives; you can start a new game from any stage you’ve reached. However, you will likely start from your last stage with zero extra lives, so if you get hit once, the game ends.This is a fair compromise to let players keep progressing, but around a third of the way through the game, it will be hard to advance through some levels without a spare life. Consequently, you’ll find yourself revisiting stages over and over again, sometimes having fun, other times dealing with profound frustration — especially as webs start to spin around, making your Claw difficult to precisely control.An even more detailed take on TempestBeyond his crack coding skills, Minter is known for two things: his love of livestock (reflected in Llamasoft’s name), and his extraordinary talent as a lightshow creator. Tempest 4000 uses the 1080p and 4K resolutions of modern TVs to sharpen the edges of Tempest’s classic vector objects, but the game’s signature feature is its intentionally overwhelming special effects engine. Above: Completing a level can lead to the web dramatically shattering as you fly through it to the next challenge.Inspired by 1990s rave culture, Tempest 2000 was packed with pixel-exploding text, melting effects, and thumping beats. While the exploding text is toned down, Tempest 4000 amps up overlapping visual echoes, shattering polygons, and wavy distortion effects. By design, the game attempts to induce a trance-like state in players, so when it’s all just too much to look at, that’s the point.
It looks much better in motion than in still images. Above: Many of the webs are presented at suboptimal angles that make distant targets harder to identify, an issue Tempest 2000 addressed with multiple camera choices.One thing that’s regrettably missing from Tempest 4000 is a camera toggle. In Tempest 2000, players can switch between default, locked, and close up cameras that improve your perspective on various levels, but in Tempest 4000, you’re stuck at one angle that can make it hard to see some objects in the distance. Additionally, many of the webs only fill the center of a 16:9 screen, leaving background patterns to occupy the otherwise black space.
Tempest 4000’s price-tag is wildly unforgivable when you factor in the meager content that you’re getting in return. This is greed at its absolute finest and despite the series’ fame for being colorful and fast-paced, which indeed the game is, there’s just not enough content within to justify its cost.
If there’s a postrelease patch, a Tempest 2000-style camera option to fill more of the screen with webs and lock certain webs in one position would be one of my top three requests.Bonus stagesSeveral bonus stages break up the shooting action. After each web, you get extra points for steering a spark-like version of your ship through the center of a light tunnel towards the next level. Originating in TxK, this is a simple addition to the Tempest formula, and initially confusing because the spark is too small on screen, but it keeps you occupied between levels.
The game is better for its inclusion. Above: Can you spot the UI elements in the center of this screen?And despite the “4000” name, one gets the sense that the assets weren’t wholly rethought for modern 4K TVs. The navigational UI elements are consistently at least a little too small for no good reason, so you’ll squint to make them out against the rest of the art. By the time you reach these stages, however, your eyes and brain might be too melted to notice. What you won’t likeLimited options and Xbox glitchesTempest 4000 officially missed its first release date, but actually hit the online PlayStation Store back in March for a very brief period of time. I know this because I excitedly bought the PlayStation 4 release, only to see it disappear from the Store for over three months. As a result, I’ve seen Tempest 4000 in both PS4 version 1.02 and Xbox One version 1.22x.
Above: Only one of these “options” menus actually contains options — and then, not many.The game seemed basically done in March, but the UI was surprisingly threadbare, so I hoped it would improve. Instead, it barely changed — “Options” only lets you toggle volume levels and languages — and the Xbox version I tested has minor visual glitches. In an early level, I’ve seen the right side of the Xbox screen briefly fill with a disappearing box, an issue I’ve never seen on the PS4 version. The Xbox game also has an unusual initialization period after it’s loaded. Above: Starting in the 20s, some levels spin and warp while you’re playing, making the unadjustable controls unreliable as well. Camera and control adjustment options would help.Apart from cleaning up the Xbox issues, my second patch request for this title would be additional visual, music, and control options.
For now, the game delivers TxK’s basic visual experience at a much higher resolution, which is nice. But giving players the ability to choose the speed of the Claw’s movement would help. And it would be great to have at least a little control over the backgrounds, or see them moving in sync with the music — something that Minter’s Virtual Light Machine for Jaguar proved was possible. I’m not holding my breath for the latter changes to happen, but they would take Tempest 4000 from “good” to “amazing.”Weird music situationOn a positive note, Tempest 4000 has three impressive soundtracks to choose from — the Jaguar’s brilliant original Tempest 2000 chip music, enhanced CD-quality mixes of the same soundtrack, and completely different tracks from TxK. While the newer TxK tracks never reach the unparalleled heights of Tempest 2000’s most remarkable songs, it’s great that you can choose between multiple playlists. Above: Tempest 4000’s use of rainbow colors evolves well past the original Tempest, but it doesn’t prominently feature the melting effects of Tempest 2000 or its little-known Nuon sequel, Tempest 3000.But it’s not great that Tempest 4000 omits even basic audio playback controls. I thought it was weird when version 1.02 of the game never flagged that you can switch between the three soundtracks by pressing the Triangle (PS4) or Y (Xbox) button at the Level Select menu, but version 1.22 doesn’t mention that detail, either. Moreover, there’s no track selection feature, so you’re stuck listening to a single song for around eight webs.
The promise of a new song might be an incentive to complete multiple stages, but with such a huge soundtrack to explore — and so much need to replay certain frustrating stages — it would be better to let players have more control than a volume slider.No VR support, but plenty of obscure text referencesAs many VR fans will attest, it’s a huge disappointment that Tempest 4000 doesn’t include a VR mode on the PS4 or PC. This is certainly both the right game and time to include VR support, but it was left out for reasons unknown. Instead, suggests that Llamasoft is working on something else in VR.
My third and final patch request would be to add this feature in, as I can’t imagine any game justifying long, happy stretches of VR playtime like Tempest. Above: Text quickly flashes on screen referencing livestock, KLF songs, and curries — some of developer Jeff Minter’s favorite things.For the time being, you’ll have to content yourself to be amused by Minter’s numerous in-jokes, including references to classic Atari games, devices, and slogans, various types of livestock, revolutionary trance group The KLF, and Indian cuisine. That these references appear in Tempest at all is a reminder that Llamasoft is a two-person developer, and now working for a very different Atari than the one older gamers remember.
ConclusionsI went into Tempest 4000 hoping to fall in love, but instead found it to be somewhat underwhelming, with mystifying omissions. Why include three soundtracks without providing any clue to use them? Where’s the VR mode? Why use so little of the screen to display many of the webs?
As much as I prefer to review games for what they are rather than what they’re missing, Tempest 4000 only partially lives up to its potential. Above: Tempest 4000’s high-polygon special effects are its biggest draw over prior versions — but you’ll only be able to focus on them when you die or beat a level.Even if it feels incomplete, Tempest 4000 is still worth playing.
The visuals remain entrancing, the music is as powerful today as when it was released, and the task of clearing baddies from webs continues to be challenging. If you can look past the roughest levels, you’ll find this to be a fun and highly memorable game. Here’s hoping Llamasoft gives it a little post-release polish so it can become a modern classic, just like Tempest 2000.Score: 84/100Tempest 4000 is available today for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Steam PCs. The publisher sent us PlayStation 4 and Xbox One codes for the purposes of this review.
- Platforms: PC | PS4 | XBO |
- Developer: Llamasoft
- Publisher:Atari
- Release: July 17, 2018
It’s been a long, bumpy, twisty road to Tempest 4000, which is the first official entry in the series in eighteen years. The original Tempest was created by Dave Theurer for the arcade back in 1981, Tempest 2000 was the sequel for Atari Jaguar (later ported to Saturn) from Jeff Minter in 1994, Tempest 3000 hit the Nuon in 2000, and then a very long time passed. Seeing as nobody else was doing anything with the series Jeff Minter made a thematic sequel called TxK for the Sony Vita back in 2014, and after legal wrangling with Atari, the game has been revamped as an official part of the Tempest series. It may have taken significantly longer than expected but the result is a stunning trippy light show of pure shooting mayhem.
Even by the standards of the ’80s, Tempest was a bit of a weird one. The player is a yellow claw running across the top of a web that extends into the screen, with various geometric “monsters” starting at the bottom of the web and working their way to the top. The claw has a relatively generous fire rate and everything goes down in a single hit, but there’s a whole lot of them and only the one of you. Thankfully it’s not instant death when an enemy reaches the top, but once you’ve got a pile of flippers working their way across the rim while enemies fire from below it can really trim down on room to maneuver. Even the tightest situation always has a strategy or two for survival, if only you can see it through the chaos and be fast and precise enough to pull it off. Or you could just hit the once-per-level superzapper and clear all enemies off the board in a single go.
What makes the Llamasoft sequels to Tempest work so well is that they don’t mess with the formula. The abstract geometric enemies are still the same angular baddies they’ve always been, the superzapper is a strict once-per-level escape from imminent doom, and the web still hangs in an undefined space as particles zip toward the screen. The Tempest of 2018 is instantly recognizable as a direct sequel to the Tempest of 1981, even with all the updates to the gameplay and the hyper-colorful effects that combine with the soundtrack to make the game a techno dance-party for eyes and fingers.
Tempest 4000 at its core is basically Tempest 2000 with a few new tricks up its sleeve. Enemies rise up the web, you shoot them to keep your territory clear, and every once in a while a destroyed critter lets loose a powerup which drifts slowly up the web. Grabbing the power-up earns a number of rewards given out in a specific order, ranging from points to a faster gun, AI helper, and even a jump ability. Each upgrade is a lifesaver in its own way, with a few disclaimers. The jump ability, for example, can get you off the web when bad things are headed your way, but you earn no points for destroying things while in the air. The AI helper is your friend and savior, but it can’t protect you from bullets. Tempest 4000 gives you the tools to survive the web, but nothing in the arsenal will let you dominate it outside of the skill you develop through play.
If you’re not familiar with TxK already (which I’ll admit right here I’m not due to no Vita) it’s initially hard to see what’s new in the latest version of Tempest. New web shapes, new music, and familiar enemies are plenty to start with, though, especially for a series that’s been in hibernation this long. It feels great to sink back into the familiar, and then new enemies start showing up. Disco balls roll gently between the lanes before jetting along at high speed shooting a mass of bullets, spiky electro-fruits explode in a burst of distortion when shot, and the rotors from Tempest 3000 return to spin the web as you try to keep your bearings. While the assault on the eyes never gets to the level of Space Giraffe (that 5 of 5 score from the October 2007 issue of Hardcore Gamer Magazine still stands) the web gets increasingly more active as the effects kick in and the entire level’s shape fluctuates. And then the ride is over as the web disintegrates in shattering rainbow triangles while you glide down the tubes, watching out for any spikes along the way, and a brief bonus mini-game of flying through gates gives a short rest before the next level starts up.
After a few levels you’re bound to get the first Game Over, and here a standard Llamasoft feature kicks in. You can either start back at level one and try to do better, or take advantage of “resume best” on any level you’ve completed. When you pick a level it comes with a completion bonus and stock of lives, and if you’ve done well in a past game it’s reflected in the amount of each available. Propping up your high score then becomes a matter of heading back to the level when things fell apart and doing better, although you’ll still have to play up to your current progress for it to do much good. The later levels don’t automatically adjust to the newer scoring until you carry it there by playing, which isn’t really a problem seeing as it’s a complete blast to tear through the game.
Closing Comments:
Tempest 4000 is the final Llamasoft Tempest and an incredibly strong game to go out on. The years of experience with the series are on full display in everything from the flow of the levels, speed of introducing new enemies while mixing in the familiar ones, web design and even the spikes in difficulty followed by a short break before ramping back up again. It combines difficulty with accessibility, giving plenty of challenge for seasoned players while being forgiving enough for new ones, and even when the intensity ramps up to be a little overwhelming, the music and lights make it worth pushing on. When the bullets are flying as you manage the crowd working its way up the screen, trimming back the horde over there while timing a power-ups trip up the web over there, zipping over just in time to grab it before heading back to thin out the next set of enemy rushes spawning on different parts of the web, it all feels like you’re conducting a techno-light show made of bullets, vectors and multitasking precision. Tempest 4000 is a fantastic conclusion to Llamasoft’s work on the games and easily holds its place amidst the classics of Atari’s flagship arcade series.
James Cunningham
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Tempest 4000
Version Reviewed: PC
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