Nylige anmeldelser av Evil Retail

Please note that this is a spoiler free review; no story elements, secrets or special weapons are spoiled.


Nuclear Throne is a top-down shooter, in which you control a mutant (or a fugitive running from the popo), with the goal of killing everything in sight, and finishing your journey to the fabled Nuclear Throne. In your task, you are aided by a metric ton of possible weapons, ranging from revolvers, all the way to nuke launchers, and anything in between. Generally, if you can imagine it, it's there. To those favoring a more hack and slash gameplay style, melee weapons are also present.

The character you pick will influence your playstyle significantly, as each of them brings an active, and a passive ability to the table. Currently there are 12 characters in the game, with 6 unlocked from the start. Five of the six starting characters are easy to pick up and play in terms of mechanics:

- Fish collects more ammo, and, as the loading screen kindly tells you a million times, "Fish can roll".
- Crystal starts with 10 HP instead of 8, and has the ability to encase herself in a hunk of crystal, reflecting shots
- Y.V. (Yung Venuz), the Gun God himself, has a faster rate of fire than the rest. His active ability is firing his weapon twice, with double the cooldown (affected by the fire rate reduction). He can also press B to airhorn, which should be a core feature in every game.
- Steroid has no active ability; instead, his passive allows him to fire two weapons at the same time, in exchange for worse accuracy.
- Chicken starts with a sword, instead of the usual Revolver. Her passive allows her to survive a lethal hit, by literally running around like a headless chicken. If she picks up health from any source, she'll survive, and take a -1 max HP penalty. She can also throw weapons Hotline Miami style, which is extremely effective in the early game.

Every stage, your main task is to blow everything the Hell up, and collect whatever you can to help you do that on future stages; radiation canisters (this game's experience equivalent), weapons, ammunition, medkits, and so on. Once you kill everything, a portal spawns near the corpse of your last slain enemy, and starts dragging you in. Enter, and you're whisked away to the next stage. (Possibly a secret area.. If you found one of them!)

If you've collected enough canisters to level up, you can choose one of four random mutations. All of these mutations are a large boon, that'll help you both short and longterm. There's quite the variety as well; each weapon category has it's own related mutation (example: Bolt Marrow apparently replaces your bone marrow with crossbow bolts [don't even ask how that's possible], causing your bolts to have slight homing capabilities; Laser Brain amps up the damage of your energy weapons, Long Arms increases your melee swing range, etc), as well as several more 'generic' ones (such as Second Stomach, which doubles the health you get from medkits, Rabbit Paw, which causes more items to drop, etc).

The mutations are varied, and powerful enough, that you have to make tough decisions when leveling up, however, there's not so many of them, that you can't aim for a specific playstyle.

I didn't talk much about the actual combat itself - that's because there's not much to talk about. It's extremely simple, however, that is a compliment in this case. The game is a perfect example of the expression "elegance in simplicty", as the game's narrow focus means that the action is fast-paced, exciting, and extremely hectic. Patterns are predictable, however, the sheer number of enemies you fight at times, coupled with the fact that you NEED to collect those radiation canisters means that you're constantly making life and death decisions, on the fly, under a split-second. Hesitate, and you can either lose out on an advantage you desperately need, or die. The weapons are, for the most part, satisfying to use, and most importantly, consistent.

One interesting thing is that guns themselves don't vary much in terms of raw damage output. A basic Shotgun deals the exact same damage per pellet as higher tier ones, a Revolver does the same damage per shot as a Minigun does, and so on (There are exceptions to this, however); thanks to this, even if you've never picked up a weapon, you generally have a very good idea on how much damage it'll actually do to whatever you point it at. Upgrades still feel extremely satisfying, however; despite the ammunition itself dealing the same damage, the overall damage output always increases significantly. You will have to combat the increased ammo consumption, but generally your mutations tend to help out with that.

Every third level, you will face a level boss. They will not be spoiled.

Rinse, repeat, until you reach the Nuclear Throne.


Simplistic. However, it is extremely charming. If you're not a fan of sprite-based graphics, look elsewhere. If you are into it, you'll dig the sprites in some cases; the mutants themselves are rather creative, and the enemy design is okay at worst, and "♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ WHAT IS THAT" at best. My personal favorite pieces of the art in this game are, funnily enough, shown in the first few seconds of the game: the character select screen. You get to watch your cast of mutants lounging around a campfire, doing their own thing (amusingly, their locations on the screen are randomly generated, too); selecting them results in a fighting game style character overlay. It's quite charming.


No shooty-shooty-bang-bang game is complete without sounds, and tunes.

The gun sound effects are actually surprisingly good. The audio feedback is excellent; even your starting weapon, the Revolver, sounds satisfying to use, higher tier weapons sound sufficiently devastating. It's a hard one to talk about without hearing the audio itself, so I apologize if the description is generic. Special mention goes to the sound effects you hear when you select a mutation - each of them have an associated sound clip, that's meant to represent the changes your mutant is undergoing.

The music... Oh, man, where do I even begin.

Personally, I'm infatuated with what the devs put on the table - or at least the idea of what they were trying to do. I sincerely recommend looking up the soundtrack on YouTube if you plan to read the rest of this section, as none of what I'll say make sense without.

The main theme itself is one of the most enchanting pieces I've ever heard in a game of this type. It's atmospheric, and it sets the mood perfectly well.

However, the audio quality drops massively when you actually enter the game; while the tunes themselves are extremely catchy, and complement the game perfectly, it is hamstrung by the low fidelity of it; synthetized, grainy sounding drums, generic, MIDI-sounding choirs. The guitar tracks, which are the only thing that sounds legitimately recorded, is excellent.

It's an interesting design choice that they chose all three bossfights to have the same main motif, with alterations on the track to more accurately represent the boss and the zone you fight them in. A nice touch.

I sincerely hope that they'll re-do the soundtrack before release, and pay someone to record a real drum track, as it's a huge flaw. Still extremely enjoyable despite that, if you're not an audiophile.


If you couldn't tell by now, I'll spell it out for you: despite some of it's flaws, I ADORE this title. I've written this review after 25 hours, and I just can't stop playing it, no matter how many times I see the words: YOU HAVE NOT REACHED THE NUCLEAR THRONE.

It's one of the most polished Early Access titles; for $12, you'll get a lot of value out of your money, if you're into this type of game. The dev support for the game is great, they DO listen to feedback, and it shows.

If this is your jam; buy it.

Best 15 EUR I ever spent.

Step 1: Place Portal on wall next to 6 orc-analogues, and the other next to you.
Step 2: Use Flame Wave on the portal.
Step 3: Watch enemies roll around in panic, grunting in agony.
Step 4: Collect loot.

Rinse, repeat.

That alone is worth the price of admission.

(Deep breath)

Do you know that feeling, when something gets under your skin so badly, that you can't help but want it more, and more? For me, EVE Online evokes that feeling, which either raises really weird questions about me, or points out the nature of this game.

The devs have done a wonderful job in smoothing out the early learning curve, which was a main frustration point for new players. Sure, it's still steep, but now if you can learn to read, the game actually teaches you the basics. Emphasis on "the basis". The game is still far, far away from holding your hand, which I do adore.

However, the game is still extremely harsh when it comes to penalties. Most of the major penalties can be avoided to some extent; insurance will pay for your ship if you're blown to smithereens (you still lose your junk on the ship, though), having an up-to-date clone will prevent skill loss (you still lose your implants). Death IS essentially just a slap on the wrist... If you make sure that your backup assets are sufficient, and active. Otherwise... Well, I hope you enjoy sitting in your rookie ship again.

The skill system is still as in-depth as it always was; the metagame is still as enticing as it always was. You are, as always, free to pursue whatever path you desire. There's no such thing as an unviable playstyle.

... Just remember that at the core, this game is still about people.

And people never change. They'll always be @ssholes.

Big fan of this title. If you're into the whole city building nonsense with pretty severe penalties on messing up, this is for you.

The learning curve is fairly balanced, however, it's made easy if you know how to read; the game has an extensive help menu system. An ingame wiki, even.

While there isn't much to the title, what is IN it, is polished, and works really well. I'm looking forward to the patches.