Tony and Clyde [Xbox]
Developed and published by DCF Studios, Tony and Clyde is an action-adventure shooter where you can play as either of the titular characters. As a pair of criminals that pride themselves on dealing with the other criminals in order to help those in need, they’ve got back into things to dish out some revenge. Three difficulties to begin with, Easy Peasy, Normal and Hardcore, with Hardcore feeling not just punishing, but torturous - so we both decided to just stick with the easier difficulties.
The controls are slightly unusual, with shooting assigned to RB instead of the trigger - and this will automatically switch to a knife slash within close range, though more often than not you’ll be keeping your distance. Clicking in the left stick allows you to run, however not doing so makes you move at a completely glacial pace, so it’s very much needed; if anything, you should really have that as the standard speed with an even faster run to replace it. Sometimes this even becomes a bit of a nuisance, as accidentally clicking the stick during busy sections will cancel out any momentum you had, thus making you particularly vulnerable to any nearby enemies.
Visually, it’s quite strange, with a blend of drawn images in short story ‘cutscenes’ that can be quite jarring due to high-res textures that are randomly included at times, though they do convey the story well, with a fair bit of humour to things. The actual game visual style has some varied jank to it, with locations having some abyss-looking floors due to the flat colouring, and other things have almost realistic details.
Shooting enemies can sometimes make it feel like the frame rate is dipping, though this actually seems to just be a side-effect of the slow-down in battle, where the screen judders around a bit making it quite hard to steer clear of enemy projectiles. Enemies are pretty easy to deal with, especially if you make use of your dodge - and bosses aren’t too difficult either, however the Ishii Twins proved to be the hardest, with two coming at you at once, quickly overwhelming you. You’ve got a few different weapons to choose from, and can select your loadout upon starting the game, with a primary and secondary weapon at your disposal - so it is well worth trying these out to see what works for you.
There are plenty of environmental objects that can explode, from motorcycles to barrels, and whilst these can be fun to wipe out (often dealing with some enemies in the process), the excessive explosion sound effects can sometimes be a tad overwhelming. Voice acting is awkward, with many of the casts’ voices feeling quite false and out of place, though this sometimes comes off as quite funny, and enemies will often repeat the same phrases over and over. If I need to hear “on your fucking knees” one more time…
From the main menu you can view the ranking system to see Stages Completed, Thugs Killed, Innocents Killed, Juice-Man Killed and Deaths, with the individual level stats being shown upon completion of a level. Sadly there doesn’t seem to be any real secrets to be found or anything interesting along those lines, and the recent title update which added a few new achievements (bringing it to 2000 gamerscore in total) didn’t seem to add anything substantial outwith this.
We’re seeing more and more indie games going for the ‘get all achievements done within the first half hour’ style, and Tony and Clyde seems to fall mostly into this category, with many of the achievements tied to killing or being killed a certain number of times, as well as completing a bunch of tasks within the first stage. It has a lot of jank to it, but still ended up providing a decent experience, though we do wish it had a bit more to make it feel substantial as it is a little bit underwhelming as it stands, overall. If you want to try it out for yourself, it’s available for £7.99 on Xbox.
In the end, we decided to give Tony and Clyde the Collecting Asylum rating of 5/10.
Are you interested in Tony and Clyde? What do you think of it?
Let us know in the comments below!
- V x
Thank you to DCF Studios for the Tony and Clyde Xbox review code!
