Vector Pieces of Me
Written: Aug 02 '09 (Updated Aug 02 '09)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: It's just good. There's really nothing more to say.
Cons: It's tough to review!
The Bottom Line: Vectorman is a true classic in need of a revival.
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| BaronSamedi3's Full Review: Vectorman for Sega Genesis |
Well, it's tough to gauge just how long this review is going to be. I'm a Top Reviewer in games. I've been reviewing video games for two websites for close to ten years now, and Vectorman for the Sega Genesis is that one odd brand of game I never quite figured out how to review. It's an action game. It's very well done. It has a unique style of graphic animation which Sega has only used once since revealing it, and that one time was in the sequel, Vectorman 2. Usually, video games - no matter how similar or generic they are - have a handful of unique aspects which a reviewer can devote one or more long-winded paragraphs to. But Vectorman? Well, let's find out.
The story of Vectorman throws you into the futuristic barren polluted Earth scenario. By now it's become a little bit cliche. If it sounds a little bit familiar, it's because it's the same kind of depressing future we saw in Wall-e last year. The difference is in Wall-e, the robot was the only creature at all in any kind of operation, save for a cockroach. In Vectorman, there are many different robots in operation. The trouble is, they're all out to get you. It goes like this: Earth is so polluted, all the humans had to leave. While they left, they had a bunch of robots called "orbots" clean up the messes they made. One of the orbots, Raster, gets involved in some kind of accident with a nuclear weapon, rechristens himself as Warhead, and takes control of all the other orbots. Our hero, Vectorman, was conveniently taking a trip to drop some crap off into the sun while this happened. So when he gets back, he vows to snap all the other orbots back to their senses. Yes, this involves shooting them and blowing them up, so don't worry.
If Contra was a platformer, it would probably play a lot like Vectorman. I've just described the gameplay in full with that statement. You run to the right. You shoot things. Sometimes you fight bosses. You dodge waves of attacks and bullets which can get pretty intense in the later stages of the game. You are equipped with a very useful standard blaster which can be used in eight directions and a jump. (It's a double jump, in fact.) Of course, video games are not about quantity of special items and weapons and levels and extras so much as they are about the way the ones that are actually in the game are presented. Vectorman's features are very well done and the game keeps growing on me no matter how often I play it. And I play it quite a bit.
The extra armaments Vectorman is allowed to play with come in a handful of different forms. There are spreaders and machine guns and a couple of others. What speaks about the quality of the game is that none of them are useless. These extra guns can be picked up by blowing up television monitors, and all of them are a lot of fun to just play around with, as well as useful in disposing of Earth's mindwiped orbots. The only thing I don't like about the guns is they are on timers. They wear off after a certain amount of time instead of after you lose a life. When you find a new blaster, you hope you're in an area which allows you to use it because you don't want these fun little toys to just go to waste.
Adding to the great fun are the various costumes Vectorman has to don. The most prominent is probably a drill, which allows Vectorman to drill into parts of the ground that you may need to get under. I've seen a bomb and a car too. They all have their uses, but again, they are on a timer. But in the case of the transformations, the timer isn't nearly as much of a bad thing because these transformations wear out their usefulness once you're through the area they're required to help you get through. Vectorman is invincible while using them, but he can't shoot anything either. Therefore, the short life of the transformations is to the game's advantage.
As Mario has coins and Sonic has his famous power rings, Vectorman has little photons scattered throughout his 16 levels. They're nice, and they add up to big points at the end of your current level. Vectorman was released close to the end of the era of the Genesis, when developers were starting to leave score counters out of games more and more frequently. Vectorman has one of the old-fashioned score counters and it can result in extra lives when it adds up to a high enough number. If you're a child of this old era, it means the game has a little bit of replay and competitive value if you were the type who liked to challenge high scores.
The levels in Vectorman aren't really unique, but they are well-designed and fun. This isn't exactly a Mario or Sonic the Hedgehog game we're dealing with here. Levels are short and timed, but they are also very challenging and the progression of the challenge is better done in Vectorman than in a lot of other video games. Vectorman is the type of game in which you'll be wondering what all the fuss is about after the first level. Then the second level is a little bit tougher, followed by a third which is just a wee bit harder than the second, and before you know it, you're overwhelmed. Levels vary up a little bit by throwing an occasional strictly-boss stage at you which is tackled in a manner that isn't left-to-right. The levels of Vectorman are very honest for the most part, and you'll get what you see. There aren't any hidden curveballs. Unfortunately, this does mean you have to deal with underwater and ice levels. There are also a handful of variations of a level taking place on what is either a skyscraper or an airplane.
The graphics of Vectorman are one of its main selling points. They use a unique process called Vector Piece Animation which doesn't use sprites as characters, but groups of sprites moving in small clusters. The result of this look is animation of beautiful, almost balletic fluidity. Vectorman himself is composed of 23 individual sprites. The backgrounds can be barren a lot of the time and the game could benefit from a few splashes of color, but otherwise Vectorman is one of the most incredible graphic efforts of the 16-bit age. The sounds mostly consist of explosions, though. The background music has an eerie sci-fi sound to it, but it's so tiny that it really doesn't matter. Instead of inviting you into the game's atmosphere, the music sits unobtrusively in the background and is so soft that it's impossible for it to be any kind of distraction.
The gameplay is amazing. I compared it to Contra already. Two buttons - jump and shoot. There's a double jump in the game which can double as a way to attack enemies if you time it just right, and it is necessary at certain points. Vectorman can shoot in eight directions, and when he takes to the sky, he can shoot underneath. Believe me, this comes in handy later in the game.
When the Playstation 2 was entering its prime, Sega had a new Vectorman game in development for it. However, the advances in technology rendered the Vector Piece style of animation moot, and instead of the little cluster of balls Genesis loyalists came to know and love, Vectorman looked like a cliche giant robot. Sega cancelled the project because the screenshots the public saw really didn't look very appealing. But Vectorman needs to be brought back. Not as the intimidating, lame-looking cancelled 3D project he would have been on the Playstation 2, but as the original cluster of spheres orbiting around each other, in the two dimensions Vectorman fans originally fell in love with.
Recommended:
Yes
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BaronSamedi3
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 in Games |
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Location: Chicago
Reviews written: 319
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Doing work on my blog: http://phoenixinquirer.wordpress.com/
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