Tony and Clyde Review

Tony and Clyde simply tells the story of two characters described as being more than just simple thugs from the streets but not highly trained criminals or professional robbers. They are two Kane & Lynch antagonists who are addicted to big piles of money, glamour of being reverenced in the streets, adrenaline rush of an ongoing heist, smell of recently burned gunpowder and the sound of empty shells falling on the ground.

Tony and Clyde is a top-down twin stick shooter affair where the left joystick moves the character around whereas the right one aims in any direction you need to shoot. As you explore levels and find (and kill) a Juice Man, you’ll earn new weapons that you can equip in the main menu before jumping into the action. You can also swap between characters before jumping into the game. Thankfully, the game has a dodge mechanic, which sounds like a genius idea, but it does feel a bit useless.

The twin-stick mechanic works in the sense that you move with the left joystick while the right joystick, unlike other similar games, is used for aiming while you shoot with the RB(!) button. The right trigger is delegated to swapping weapons for some reason. If you manage to sneak up on an enemy, you can swiftly kill them with your knife. Loadouts are customizable but have no impact on gameplay, so you can basically use the same weapons from start to finish.

The game looks pretty meh overall. The 2D hand-drawn cartoony cutscenes are pretty decent and have a synthwave color palette like to them; and well I’m a sucker for that aesthetic. But the levels are quite dark and muddy; the restricted camera leaves you open to damage from out of view enemies (incredibly annoying). It feels like they tried achieving a dark and brooding atmosphere, but missed by a mile. The soundtrack is pretty bland, forgettable and boring.

The main problem here is the controls. Given that we’re dealing with twin-stick shooter mechanics, the aiming feels incredibly flimsy versus the enemy A.I. which are incredibly on target; even moreso during boss fights which makes the game feel pretty unfair. Shooters like this require precision; which is something is hard to achieve with twin stick mechanics. The muddy, dark visual also make it difficulty at times to properly spot enemies. The fact that you can’t move around the camera, it’s easy to get shot from behind unfairly because you couldn’t see and prevent the attack.

While I was never really a fan of the twin-stick genre, I was willing to give Tony & Clyde a shot… and well this is definitely one of the worst games I’ve played. It feels more like a lottery than a game. This is mainly because the twin-stick genre doesn’t work when you require extreme precision in order to kill enemies; it works in space shooters because enemies are everywhere. Unless you must absolutely play every twin-stick shooter in the gaming universe, feel free to throw your money at this. Otherwise, save your time and money for much better games.