Welcome to our CHEATfactor Game Review of Ted by Dawn. We review the game and then factor in how the available cheats affect the overall game experience. For better or worse, our reviews will help you decide whether or not to use cheats when playing the game.

You know what’s everywhere these days? Retro games. You know what else is everywhere? Endless runners, games with unfair difficulty spikes and zombie games. Ted by Dawn, the new side-scrolling shooter from indie developer Proteus Pixels takes all of this and tries to create an entertaining interactive experience but the results are less than certain. It’s a game that can seemingly barely establish a complete thought, let alone a complete experience. It is however a game that’s great at what it does; it’s just not great at everything it does. You’ll likely find at least something to like about Ted by Dawn, especially for the price but this is a n unfortunate case of too much at once.

You play as Survivalist and outdoorsman Ted. He’s one of the backwoods doomsday-prepper types and it looks like it’s paid off because the whole world seems to have gone to hell in a hand basket; gain fireballs, monsters and of course flesh eating zombies. Ted takes it upon himself to slaughter the horde of evil by any means possible. What that really equates to is a side-scroller that’s sure to test your patience and just how much you think you like this game. That’s not to say that there’s not much to like about Ted by Dawn but you’ve just got to know what you’re looking for.

Most levels in Ted by Dawn play out in a similar fashion. Moving right to left you’ll cross through the level avoiding obstacles and shooting everything down that you possibly can in an effort to survive. There are no checkpoints but you have unlimited lives to try to finish and you’re also timed and scored on each level. It’s a potpourri of different gaming ideas all crammed into a small experience and some work better than others. As you’d expect, it is a lot of fun to mow down hordes of the undead but it’s also a hectic experience to say the least. You’ll throw your controller quite a few times having to start entire stages over ( I had a habit of dying near the end of stages constantly) but it’s also pretty rewarding when you’re able to finish them with a new high score.

There are a lot of great little touches that make each level attempt feel different. The game uses an old-school muscle memory approach to it’s enemies and the only way you’ll get through a lot of situations is spending the time to memorize your enemy’s attack patterns. I loved how different enemies would deteriorate in different ways, like the zombies who would be cut in half when I used certain weapons, and I’d have to deal with faster, half zombies crawling around. Again, it’s been done before but it’s a nice fit here. The game is full of ideas like this, and they’re mostly implemented well.

In fact, if there was one thing no one could ever fault Proteus Pixel for with Ted by Dawn, it’s having ideas; in fact it seems to sometimes have too many of them. Ted by Dawn is great at what it does, being a side-scrolling shooter but it’s seemingly not content with that and the developers decided to take almost every hot idea in gaming and cram it in. There are endless runner levels where you’ll find a motorcycle and take out the undead with it and the game is obsessed with being almost unfairly difficult and punishing players. That’s a trend that’s been going on for a bit too long in gaming - give me challenge but don’t give me an unfair challenge. Some of these ideas work but others fall incredibly short of what they’re meant to do and the game suffers as a result.

Ted by Dawn also features the same retro style graphics that are incredibly popular in games today. They’re simple and fun and it’s kind of neat to see the ultra-violent content in NES style presentation but at this point it’s been done so much that it’s not even special anymore. The same can be said for the survival mode packed in with Ted by Dawn. It’s fun but it feels so uninspired that I often forgot it was there until I went back to the main menu and saw it sitting there.

I liked Ted by Dawn, I really did, but I often forgot that it was even in my games library. It’s got some great ideas, but unfortunately even more unfleshed out ones and the result is more of a mixed bag. For everything that Ted by Dawn does right I seemingly had three or four similar games that did those ideas better. For the price though, I have to recommend Ted by Dawn, even if it’s a very hesitant recommendation.