Vector Assault

4.5 Overall Score
Gameplay: 5/10
Graphics: 3/10
Sound: 5/10

Interesting weapon upgrades | Decent music

Ship speed | Clunky menus | Little replay value

Game Info

GAME NAME: Vector Assault

DEVELOPER(S): WizByte Games

PUBLISHER(S): WizByte Games

PLATFORM(S): Nintendo Wii U

GENRE(S): Twin Stick Shooter

RELEASE DATE(S): May 21st, 2015

When you were a child, did your mother ever buy you the off-brand cereal? It looked the same, tasted different, and had some poorly designed elephant or squirrel character you’d never seen before on the front of the box. If so, welcome to Vector Assault by WizByte Games. The best and only Geometry Wars clone on the Wii U, and that’s both a good and bad thing. I would love something that plays like Geometry Wars on my beloved Wii U, but reskinned maybe so it doesn’t look blatantly like Geometry Wars.

The graphics are fine for this type of game, mostly vector, as per the title. Even the bubble effect that follows the ship in Geometry Wars is here. The bullet effects aren’t too . The menus are pretty rough looking and clunky though. The sounds, also retro, have a good feel, but again nothing out of the ordinary.

vektor-assault

Now to the gameplay. If you’ve played Geometry Wars, its similar, a top down single screen shooter where you use the left stick to pilot and your right to shoot in any direction. When the action gets too real to handle, you get a few bombs to clear the screen. Also, there’s some special weapons, which are really cool and change up your attack patterns. Generally, most enemies you destroy on this 2-D plane will drop score multipliers, and upon reaching certain levels, will upgrade your single shot to a double, and then triple shot. Beyond that, you need to pick up support power-ups, which range from a bullet field that slows incoming bullets so you can Matrix your way around them, to the old fashioned but always welcome support ships that add an extra bullet to your arsenal.

In addition to the support power-ups, there are weapon pickups that change your bullet type. From a gear shaped shot that fires out in a spread and then returns to your ship for double damage to the enemy(my personal favorite), to an arrow shot that splits on contact with an enemy, these upgrades help the game stand apart from Geometry Wars, while giving you new ways to blow stuff up.

vector_assault_screenshot

My biggest point of contention with the gameplay is when you start, and subsequently respawn after getting blown up. Your ship is slow. I mean painfully slow. Its a good thing you have a health bar instead of getting killed in one hit because certain enemies can catch you if you’re not good enough at maneuvering or you get boxed in. When your score multiplier increases, your speed also increases, but once you die, its back to turtle mode. Which for me, interrupted the pace of the game and made it discouraging to get back into the fight after I was nigh unstoppable and filling the screen with laser-flavored justice. I know and expect that you lose all your weapon upgrades when you die. This is standard for the shooter genre, but the returning to snail’s pace felt unnecessary.

The Recommendation

There are some good ideas here. Vector Assault brings some of the visuals of the game it pays homage to, but throws in some nifty new stuff. The weapons are cool, the support items give you an edge, and the extra play modes extend the life of the game a bit. I just want to see a follow up where you move at a normal pace. I keep harping on that one point, but its a big one. For five bucks though, if you’re a Geometry Wars fan with a Wii U now, its worth it just for survival mode, but not much else.

 

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Author: Eddie View all posts by