1352: Critical Urgency

I can’t remember if I’ve talked about Velocity here before, so here I am talking about Velocity.

Velocity, in case you’ve never come across it before, is a game from the Brighton-based indie developer FuturLab. It began its life as a PlayStation Minis title for PS3 and PSP, then was subsequently ported to Vita with numerous enhancements as Velocity Ultra. So positive was the reception to the first game, it seems, that the team at FuturLab is currently in the process of putting together a sequel — a sequel that’s looking rather fab, if the early version I had the good fortune to play at the recent <a href=”http://www.usgamer.net/articles/egx-turning-up-the-velocity” target=”_blank”>Eurogamer Expo</a> is anything to go by.

But I want to talk about the original today, or rather Velocity Ultra. I reviewed Velocity Ultra a while back for USgamer and enjoyed it a lot, but I must confess that in the process of reviewing it, I didn’t make it through every little bit of content it had to offer — largely because doing so would have taken significantly longer than I had time for, and also because I’d already seen a lot of it in Velocity’s previous incarnation as a PlayStation Minis title.

I’ve been going back to clean up what I missed in the game recently, though, and I’m reminded of what a fantastic game it is. Beginning as what appears to be a relatively straightforward top-down shooter, the game gradually evolves, changes and grows in complexity as it progresses; firstly, you get the ability to teleport over short distances (including through walls); then you get the ability to drop telepods at strategic points in the level in order to teleport over long distances and take alternative routes. By the time you get through all 50 of the game’s main levels, you’re practically playing a different game.

Things are mixed up along the way, too. Sometimes you’ll have levels that are filled with enemies; other times they’ll be complex maps with multiple paths. Other times still you’ll have a very tight time limit and have to get through as quickly as possible. Different types of level require different strategies.

Where the truly addictive gameplay in Velocity comes in, though, is medal-chasing. Upon completion of a level, you’re ranked according to how many survivors you rescued, how many points you scored and how quickly you successfully completed the level. Attain the highest accolade in all of these categories without dying once and you’ll earn a “perfect” medal, and it’s chasing these “perfects” that is so ridiculously addictive. The reason for this is that the difficulty of achieving the goals is pitched just perfectly; it’s always just tantalisingly out of reach rather than seemingly impossible. Pretty much anyone with a good handle on the mechanics will be able to attain at least a few Perfects along the way, though it does get significantly more difficult as the levels become more complex.

And then there are the secret levels. Secret levels! I can’t remember the last modern game I played that had secret levels, and yet here they are in Velocity, unlocked through getting your tiny Quarp Jet into places you wouldn’t normally expect it to go, usually as a result of checking the map and spotting something out of place. There are a further 20 secret levels on top of the 50 main levels, and not all of them use the standard game mechanics. There’s a 10-level Thrust-inspired minigame, for example; there’s a twist on FuturLab’s earlier game Coconut Dodge; there’s even a version of Snake. Successfully contend with all those and you have the incredibly challenging but rewarding and addictive “Red Zone” and “Blue Zone” levels in which time limits are tight, the pathways tighter and the slightest clipping of a wall will destroy you.

I was delighted that the upcoming Velocity 2X felt so much like the first Velocity when I played it at Eurogamer Expo — and particularly pleased that the brand new sections where you get out of your ship and run around for some platforming sections make use of pretty much the same mechanics, with the only real difference being that you’re now affected by gravity. I’m really looking forward to playing the sequel, but in the meantime, I’ve got a whole bunch of Perfect medals to try and attain, so if you’ll excuse me I’m going to challenge a few more before I go to sleep.