Not too many games do teleportation
that I can think of. I rented a Genesis X-Men game when I was a kid where you could
bamf through walls as Nightcrawler. I hear that Dishonored does it
well. And Portal, of course (I still haven't played this, shame on
me). Zone of the Enders: The Second Runner has a really great
teleport mechanic where you press the button and then the direction
you want to go and you suddenly appear quite far in that direction,
even behind enemies. But Velocity does teleportation in a very basic
and satisfying way that works so perfectly, it makes you wonder why
no one ever did it before. More than any other game I've played or
heard of, it really makes you feel like you are legitimately
teleporting.
Velocity is a vertically scrolling 2d
space ship shooter released as a Playstation Mini. As the screen
scrolls by, you move through the level, but even in this basic idea in Velocity is different than most shmups I have played. You are moving
through an actual level with structures all around you instead of
just flying on top of a scrolling background. You don't take damage
from touching structures, but if the bottom of the screen pushes you
against an object, that will kill you. The object of the game is to
find survivors who are floating around the levels in little survival
pods. So you have to navigate through the structures to get at the
pods and pick them up. Sometimes the pods are behind walls or inside
the frame of the space station, meaning they would be impossible to
get to in a traditional 2d game. That's where the teleportation
mechanic comes in. When you hold down square, a cursor appears. You
control the cursor instead of your ship's movement as long as you
hold square down. When you release square, your ship nearly instantly
appears wherever you left the cursor. This elegant, unlimited use
ability is the backbone of the gameplay of Velocity, and because
you've probably never played anything like it and it is executed so
well, you're going to have a blast with it.
The other controls include: cross to
shoot, circle to launch bombs, R to fly faster, triangle to drop a telepod
(more on this later), and L to bring up a map.
The story is that a black hole is
about to destroy a space station and the government has decided to
send the prototype Quarp Jet into action immediately to rescue the
people there. You are its test pilot, so in you go. An
electromagnetic pulse from the black hole has knocked out a lot of
power to stuff, so that's why they can't just save themselves. Also,
some of your enemies are taking advantage of the power outages to
attack and steal stuff, so they show up. The story is halfway decent.
It's told from time to time in the game in the form of short blurbs
of text and cool pieces of still art. You also get some of it from
reports you can read from the menu that unlock as you go.
There are three different qualities
that a level can have, and a level can have more than one quality.
Search and Rescue missions focus on finding survivors. Hostile Forces
missions have more of a combat tilt, but still involve rescuing.
Critical Urgency missions have strict time requirements and are often
adrenaline-pumping petal to the floor races to the end of the level.
You fail a mission if you get the end
of the level and haven't rescued a minimum amount of survivors, or if
time runs out (or, of course if you die). You get three lives per
mission, and you can take a couple of shots or collisions with
enemies before losing a life, although getting crushed by the edge of
the screen will instantly kill you. Loosing a life sends you back to
a checkpoint that is usually pretty close behind you.
I wouldn't really call this game a
shoot-em-up, as it is really squarely focused on rescuing survivors.
There isn't much shooting, and when there is, it isn't that intense
or great. It's ok, but the game is totally focused on getting as many
survivors in as little time as possible. There are a few weapon
power-ups to make things interesting, but teleporting around and
grabbing those poor helpless people is where you'll be spending most
of your time.
So, in a typical level, you'll be
teleporting through walls and into little cubby holes and such to
grab every survivor pod you can find as you scroll toward the exit.
You may also need to shoot some numbered switches in order to
deactivate forcefields that block your path. You can launch bombs in
the four cardinal directions based on which direction you are flying.
This mechanic is used to hit switches off to the sides or behind you
in many clever ways in conjunction with the teleportation mechanic
and leads to some cool moments as you jerk your ship around to get
bombs to fly in the right direction. It's hard to explain how much
fun all of this is, but it is. You just have to try out the
teleportation mechanic for yourself to see what I mean.
There are 50 main missions to play
through, and many of the latter-half involve the use of the
previously alluded to telepods. This is a second form of
teleportation in the game. You have a certain number of telepods you
can drop in these levels. Once you drop one, you can bring up the map
with L and then select that pod to teleport back to it. This
allows you to access areas that you have already scrolled by. This is
also a really great and really fun mechanic. It allows for some
mind-bending puzzles that have you quickly jumping all over the level
to hit switches in order and return to newly opened areas once you
have your network of telepods dropped where you want them. The game
prompts you to drop the pods at key locations, and it is usually
right, but there were a few spots where I dropped them differently
than suggested, especially when trying to get perfect speed runs.
The game rates you on each level in
three categories: number of survivors rescued, time taken, and points
(which you get from blowing stuff up and collecting pickups and
survivors). There are three target values for each of these
categories, and getting the best at all three in one run will give
you a satisfying “perfect” stamped on that level. Getting these
perfect ratings is quite challenging, but it was so fun, I got all
50. Mastering the teleportation and telepod techniques is required to
get these perfect scores, but I really recommend doing it as the
mechanics are so fun and different from other games that you stay
motivated to keep trying. It's very satisfying to blaze your way
through a complicated level that took you forever your first time
around, or to finally speed through a critical urgency level without
missing a single survivor.
As you go through the story mode, you
unlock tons of extra content, including: concept art, bonus missions,
in-game trophies, a calculator (?), artwork, story text, and
mini-games (including fun clones of Minesweeper, memory, Bomberman, Coconut Dodge (which was also made by this game's developer, Futurlab), Snake, Space Invaders, and some game that plays
kind of like pixeljunk shooter or asteroids or something). Actually,
I find the Space Invaders mini-game to be very not fun. The others
are a blast though. That's a lot of mini-games, and that so many of
them are fun is a really amazing. I never knew Minesweeper was so
cool!
The bonus missions you can unlock are
like really short regular missions but you can't touch the structure
at all or you instantly fail the mission and you are on a very strict
timer! They are challenging and very fun, and really push your
ability to teleport super-fast and super-accurately to the limit. The
bonus missions are where the one big glaring flaw in this gem of a
game is, however. One of the missions (bonus mission 14) is
unfortunately glitched so that it is not possible to complete. When
you complete it, it says you missed some survivors, even if you
didn't. The developer has confirmed this. I played this mission for a
few hours before I learned about the glitch, so that was annoying.
But the game is so good, I really didn't even care and moved on.
This game is also crawling with little
secrets and Easter eggs all over the place that I won't spoil for
you. The trophies help point the way to a lot of them. Others you'll
find on your own. And still others involve codes and stuff you can
find on the internet. The game is also filled to the brim with
references to science, scientists, and science fiction. Keep a look
out and you'll see little references to Alien, Ender's Game, The Big
Bang Theory, and many more.
The multitude of in-game trophies do a
great job of cheering you on to complete every aspect of the game,
including the bonus missions and grabbing those perfect scores, along
with a bunch of other little goals. Unfortunately you can't get the
trophy for getting every trophy, since you can't beat that one bonus
mission. I got all the other trophies though, with the exception of
the Space Invaders trophy, which I gave up on after many tries since
I wasn't having fun with it. This makes me sad.
The graphics are really great sprites
with some cool effects thrown in. Especially impressive is the trail
that follows the quarp jet around, and jumps drastically when you
teleport. This can be especially hypnotizing when you unlock the
ability to change how the trail looks. The music is also worth
mentioning. I don't really know how to describe it, but it's really
good. A few of the tracks are fast-paced and urgent, and one or two
are slow and mysterious. They all fit the action really well. I heard
that they are going to release a re-mix album of these tracks, and if
they do, they are good enough that I might pick it up.
There are a few other minor little
problems with the game. Quitting a level often involves going back to
the main menu, not the level-select screen, which is a little
cumbersome when you are trying to switch levels. There's also no way
to check what your time and survivor quota is without going back to
the level-select screen that I could find.
But beyond the one bonus level glitch,
the space-invaders clone mini-game not being fun (I'm just bitter
that I couldn't get the trophy for beating it!), and the minor menu
interface issues, this game is extremely fun, challenging without
being overly frustrating, innovative and well-executed, and bursting
with secrets, references, and in-game trophies to collect. It's a
great game, tier 2.
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