The Velocity series is one with humble beginnings,starting as it did as a PS mini shoot ’em up. The leap from the PSP to the PS Vita with Velocity Ultra brought with it a graphical overhaul, but kept near identical gameplay with some minor alterations to the controls, yet was a remake rather than a sequel. Is Velocity 2X the sequel the original deserves?
In many ways, it picks up exactly where the first game left off. Through a handful of brief flashback levels, it recaps the events of that led to Lt. Kai Tana being flung halfway across the galaxy and how she came to be cybernetically augmented. The story is a fairly simple on, as she breaks from captivity in the Vokh empire with the help of Hjun Ralan III, a member of their Jintindan slaves.
Their partnership is depicted by text discussions interspersed with a great number of gorgeous pieces of artwork, and it quite pleasingly shows a fast growing friendship in the face of adversity. The counterpoint is the snark and sass that Kai exhibits in her interactions with the game’s primary antagonist, General Glaive. It might not be a story that will win awards, but it put a smile on my face, that’s for sure.
The game’s true focus, just as before, is on the gameplay, and it very quickly lets you get to grips or reacquaint yourself with the Quarp Jet’s movement, the accelerated scroll rate and the short range teleporter. However, it’s also quick to introduce the big new addition, that Kai can now step out of her space ship and run along the corridors of buildings on alien planets.
In giving her the ability to do so, FuturLab faced the problem of translating the ultra-slick Quarp Jet controls to controlling a human being, but have done so with aplomb. It’s difficult to describe, but even as they’ve moved the primary weapon from a face button to allow for 360º of firing on foot and taken away the imperative of an ever-scrolling screen, 2X manages to keep the essence and feel of Velocity’s controls when Kai’s on foot and they push you into a quite different scenario.
2X The Platforms
- Switching between PS4 and PS Vita is pretty easy, thanks to Cross-save. It’s not seamless, but through prompts and menu options, you can quickly move your progress between the two platforms. The controls are near identical between the two, but the Vita does have the advantage of using the touchpad for short teleportation in the Quarp Jet, although directing your on foot Telepod throws with the tiny analogue stick is appreciably more fiddly.
A key part to this has been the manner in which the Teledash has been implemented. Its ship-based analogue lets you move a teleport cursor around anywhere on screen – or on the Vita, tap anywhere on screen – allowing you to hop from one space to another in the blink of an eye, but on foot it’s at a set distance and in only one of four directions. Initially it’s there to help you pass through walls, but you quickly learn that it can also greatly speed up the rate at which you move through the levels, before it’s turned to depleting the shields of Vokh guards as you Teledash through them before opening fire, and ever more intricate manoeuvres in tandem with the throwable Telepod.
The manner in which the use of the Teledash evolves through the 50 missions epitomises the overall difficulty curve of the game. As someone that completed and mastered Velocity, it was admittedly quite odd to have my favourite toys withheld from me and be breezing through fairly simplistic levels. The difficulty ramps up very gradually, introducing one new element here, another there and always building up to the point around 2/3rds of the way in at which you feel like you’ve got everything under control. There’s more surprises waiting for you though, as the game design really opens out and lets you see what it’s been preparing you for all along.
The Long Range Teleport once again comes to the fore as the level design becomes ever more intricate and complex. Rather than providing you with a simple fork in the road, so that you have two avenues to explore and two sets of switches to trigger before you can progress to the level end, it starts to see you doubling back, calling up the level map – thankfully freezing time – to look for which part of the sprawling map you need to visit next, what areas have been unlocked and so forth. A neat trick is that you can teleport from being on foot to being in the Quarp Jet and vice versa, saving precious seconds as you race against the clock.
Admittedly, the overall time limits on each level are really very generous, giving you ample time to go round at a snail’s pace if you want to, but the game is all about pushing yourself to beat the time for a gold rating while also collecting all of the Jintindan cryopods and the Rekenium crystals, all without dying to get the Perfect rating. It all adds up to a score which is added to the online leaderboards, where it can be particularly compelling to aim for one of the top spots, or at least best your friends and send them direct challenges.
Managing to put together a perfect run gets much trickier as you progress, as you get much narrower windows in which to get Teledash and avoid certain death, or maybe it’s through pushing yourself with the accelerated scroll speed that you crash into a forcefield and respawn, losing precious seconds and, of course, your shot at perfection. The enemies that you face aren’t particularly smart – it’s a shoot ’em up, after all – but come to flood the screen with fire or, on foot, the Vokh guards might only have one attack, but can easily catch you out if you mistime your moves.
Then there are those encounters with General Glaive, the boss fights of the game and another addition compared to the original. Again, there’s a sense of inventiveness to how they work throughout the game, staring off a fairly straightforward shooting battles, but morphing into little puzzles for you to figure out, as you break through Glaive’s shielding and even head inside the ship to deal damage on foot.
It’s often very hectic and demands absolute concentration for minutes at a time, as you try to breeze through the levels, so it’s easy to gloss over just how gorgeous the game looks. Velocity Ultra’s particular aesthetic has only been improved upon and refined, as they now visit alien worlds and get greater variety in the backdrops to the action.
Regardless of whether you’re playing on PS4 or PS Vita – both at a rock solid 60 frames per second – it’s all made to feel so much more vibrant thanks to the vastly improved lighting, with bloom and lens flare everywhere. It could be the twinkle of lights in the backdrop, the lightning effects as you break up Rekenium shards or the plethora of generated particles, halos and more that make up each and every explosion. In tandem with the art exhibited during cutscenes, it’s a finely tuned approach that, to my eye, can stand shoulder to shoulder with the likes of Rayman Legends and Child of Light.
It would also be remiss of me not to mention at least in passing the soundtrack which saw Joris de Man and James Marsden collaborating once more and, as with so many parts of Velocity 2X, takes what was there before and builds upon it greatly.
What’s Good:
- Builds upon the excellent gameplay of Velocity Ultra.
- Controlling Kai on foot is just as precise as the Quarp Jet.
- Exploits those new gameplay possibilities to the fullest over the course of a gradual difficulty curve.
- The wonderful art style and music that have both moved on from Velocity Ultra.
What’s Bad:
- Later levels get particularly difficult to perfect, but you like a challenge, don’t you?
- Cross-save isn’t as seamless as it could be.
- Enemies don’t feel all that distinct.
Velocity 2X delivers another dose of pitch perfect shoot ’em up gameplay, but refuses the rest on the laurels of its predecessor. Taking Kai out of her Quarp Jet opens up whole other avenues for the gameplay that only gets better and better as you progress, with every other part of the game lavished with further polish and refinement. I can only think to echo the sentiment and the score that we awarded the original.
Lieutenant Fatman
Problem is, I’m really stuck into Persona 4 Golden on my Vita at the moment, can’t put it down. But I don’t want to wait to play Velocity 2X as the first game was superb and this looks incredible. Argh, dilemmas!
Might end up jumping between the two.
freezebug2
Looks great, and with shoot em up’s being one of my fave genres, will likely have some attention.
A Re-mastered and upgraded Turrican 2 would be the ultimate pinnacle of shooty goodness for me though….oooh!
tactical20
Regardless of how good the game is, TSA was always gonna score this 10/10.
bunimomike
Are they on the take?
tactical20
As much as I love TSA, they can be pretty bait sometimes. There’s probably a TSA quote in the official trailer or something, hence the endless topics.
Stefan L
I’m not sure what you mean by “endless topics”, but you can see on the right hand side that there have been a sum total of 10 posts on TSA which mention Velocity 2X in particular, many of which do so in passing rather than being dedicated posts.
Regardless of how often we talk about a game, there was no effort on my part to “bait” anyone, and I do genuinely think this game deserves a 10. Personal and subjective opinions will differ, but the general consensus that you can see by sampling reviews from all over the internet (or just heading to metacritic) is that it’s a damn fine game and amongst the best on either PS4 or PS Vita.
tactical20
By ‘bait’, I mean obvious/predictable. Don’t get me wrong, I love TSA, but it’s pretty obvious when an indie dev has taken you out for lunch. ;-)
bunimomike
Ah, so TSA’s bias is from the game dev/publisher greasing their hands with a tasty lunch or other such goodies. Interesting.
Stefan L
FuturLab’s never taken me out for lunch, as if something like that would affect the score I give to a game and as if we wouldn’t disclose something potentially prejudicial at the bottom of our review. I think I’ve spoken to James Marsden for a sum total of 3 minutes on the EGX show floor last year.
Blair Inglis
I love that of all the sites out there, you’re accusing the one that does this voluntarily – for you guys – of being bought, because you don’t think an indie game deserves 10/10. Sometimes I wonder why we bother putting so much effort in.
psychobudgie
“on the take”, “bait”, what the hell ? That’s a bit harsh. I disagree with the score because having played the game it’s not quite my cuppa outside of handhelds, however I do disagree with the 10 as I can think of a couple of better 2d shooters on the PS4 which I personally prefer (resogun anyone?) and are themselves only 8-9. The reviewer clearly loves the game however, and loved the prequel and the mini so yay for them. Everyone has a right to an opinion and I think he explained his reasons pretty well I just don’t agree with some of them. I also don’t think 10/10 scores should ever be awarded unless the game was made by Naughty Dog or Rockstar :P
tactical20
I’m just saying how it comes across to (at least) me. There are definitely a few games that seem to get a lot more attention than they perhaps should (OlliOlli, Thomas Was Alone, etc..) and it’s usually when you’ve been personally invited to the studio, or had an interview with one of the devs. But then perhaps they deserve more coverage if they go to the effort of promoting their game to you?! I dunno, I’ve not even played any Velocity game, so have no idea how good it is. My only observation was that I knew it would score 10/10. Please don’t take offence. I genuinely think TSA is excellent and this is only a very minor criticism.
Lieutenant Fatman
I’ve put a couple of hours in so far and agree with the review & score TSA has given.. Interesting story, great soundtrack, lovely artwork & graphics, and amazing game play. Would have happily paid full price for it on release.
MrYd
Well, since it’s on the store now, I’ve had a little play. And I’ve a feeling that half the game deserves an almost 10/10.
The problem is with the other half. The sections on foot. And the sudden change in controls. One minute, it’s X to fire, the next it’s the right stick. And it’s a horrible change that I’ll either get used to or not. It’s certainly not a wise game design decision, but it’s probably something I can just about cope with.
Everything else is fine, it’s just that one thing is probably enough to knock the score down a point. Which is a shame.
Stefan L
You quite quickly gain bombs when in the Quarp Jet, so that you can thrown them in four directions on the right analogue stick, and then a more powerful rifle when on foot that only fires in the direction you’re facing, so you do get the kind of equivalence you’re after. It’s a little bit of a learning curve, is all, and they’ve necessarily had to spread this out over 15-20 levels.
Glad you almost agree, though. ;)
MrYd
But…
On foot, the right stick is your weaker weapon, and circle is the more powerful one. In space, X is the weaker weapon, and the right stick is the more powerful bombs. There’s just a horrible lack of consistency there, which I’m finding kind of annoying.
And please tell me that throwing teleports about thing gets less patronising later on? Stand on this little icon, through teleport so it bounces off this other icon? Did they need to make it that obvious? Even the first time seems like a bit much to me.
MrYd
And now somewhere around level 40 or so, I find a horrible bug. The ship just flies up and to the right, and I can’t control it. One of the more complicated levels that involves lots of teleporting and shooting the number things.
I’m going to give it about 8/10 now. The bits in space aren’t much different to the previous games (but then, why fix what’s not broken?), and the on foot bits are a bit annoying. Controls that lack consistency, and an overall lack of difficulty, so far – maybe the last half dozen levels get harder? And no, going back and repeating the same levels over and over to collect everything and do it in a certain time just to get those perfect runs doesn’t count as a challenge. That’s just annoying.
So, very good, just not quite a 9 or 10 out of 10. And I think I’ve given it a bit of a bonus point for the platinum trophy being named “Yippee Kai Yay” with a description of “************”. Which I believe is something quite rude. And then I’ve taken some points off for having DLC (almost) available on day 1. And put those points back because we got it for “free” anyway.
psychobudgie
10/10? Seriously? On the Vita I can understand a high mark, probably an 8 or 9 if you really like the genre,and as it’s relative to other titles on it and it’s a great little on the go, turn on and squirt game. On the PS4, seriously, give me a break. It’s an 8 or more a solid 7 at absolute best and that is taking into account other shooters/puzzlers on the PS4. Art style is nice and audio is pleasing but, the game itself is not 10/10 ffs.
Lieutenant Fatman
Why does it not deserve a ten?
psychobudgie
The control scheme is disjointed, it is better suited to the Vita, the platform sections are ordinary and not exactly challenging. Certainly don’t make me want to replay them. The game style itself is not universally appealing and there are better shooter examples available on the PS4 (Resogun, Pixeljunk Shooter). Apart from that I can’t think of any that stand out.
Lieutenant Fatman
Resogun and Pixeljunk Shooter are fantastic games, loved them both and have the plat for both as well. But better than Velocity? I disagree. For me Velocity has the better soundtrack, it has story the other two lack and it is a lot more challenging. I appreciate not everyone wants more challenging, but then reviews are opinions after all.
But it’s worth noting thesixthaxis isn’t the only site to award Velocity 2X a 10/10.
It takes more time to settle into the controls due to the complexity of the game, something some will love and some will hate, but given some patience the game for many will be very rewarding. Once you’ve mastered how to play, you’ll feel like a total badass. If you prefer pick up and play games that’s fine but it doesn’t make the game any less deserving of the score given. Just means it’s not your thing.
MrYd
You forgot one big problem there. The lack of any _real_ challenge. You can just fly through all 50 levels fairly easily. Apart from the last level, which actually has a meaningful time limit, not “about 4 weeks” like the others.
Except then you haven’t got enough XP to unlock later levels. By around level 42, I had to go back and earn a few more points. This was after going through 40 levels, hardly dying, collecting most of the survivors and destroying almost everything. I’d got silver on everything (well, silver for time, whatever the equivalent was for everything else). And a trophy for getting above average XP in 25 levels.
And yet still it makes me go back and play half a dozen levels to earn those few extra points. After that, I didn’t have to do the same thing again and got to the last level.
Now, if I really want to finish everything and get a nice platinum trophy, all I’ve got left to do is get a perfect medal on all 50 levels. Which will give me another 4 trophies, and I’ll probably get annoyed about 30 minutes in. Extending a 4 hour game with stuff like that pisses me off.
As do collectibles that give you no clue at all as to where they are. I’ve got 41 out of 43 data packs (another trophy to get there). And there’s no indication at all of even which levels I should be searching.
My overall score now is about 7.5. Which is still very good.
Lieutenant Fatman
Hmm, must admit I haven’t played it as long as you so haven’t come across these issues yet, but that does sound like fair criticism. And if there’s one thing in games that really winds me up these days it’s searching for collectibles without a hint as to where you might of missed them. That blast shard trophy on inFamous was probably the worst trophy ever.
MrYd
At least with an open world, you can always get to the collectibles. You might have to run about a bit to find them, and then try a few times to jump up to whatever tricky hiding spot they’re in.
But when they can be hidden halfway through a level and you have to go back to the start (or wherever a teleport was placed) just so you can have another go at teleporting into that one spot that might as well be off the side of the screen…
And for what? 1 bronze trophy for collecting 43 of the buggers? Which don’t do anything else? Oh, and there’s another 25 bonus level crystals to collect. One of those gives you a bronze trophy, and completing all 25 bonus levels gives you a gold trophy (and the last folder in the flight computer you need for another trophy).
But the 25 bonus levels are absolutely trivial to complete. Find the collectibles (with no clue as to what level they’ll be on), and then get 10 minutes of an extra, ridiculously simple puzzle game.
I’ll give in and try and get those perfect medals. And probably randomly spot one of those last 2 missing data packs just as I’m finally about to get a perfect medal after an hour of trying. Which is bound to mess up that attempt.