Game Review: Velocity 2X (PS4)

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *

Velocity 2X is a part twin-stick shooter, part platform game available for download from the PlayStation Store for the PS4 and PS Vita. The game is the much anticipated sequel to the multi award winning Velocity that was originally released in May 2012 as part of the PlayStation Minis range before receiving an overhaul under the title Velocity Ultra and releasing natively upon the one year anniversary of the original game for PS Vita in May 2013 and on PS3 in November 2013.

The story unfolds via a series of beautifully detailed artwork between each level, which sees the lead character Lieutenant Kai Tana serving under the military division of Earth’s within various defence and deep space research programmes. Unfortunately, since entering the Vilio black hole Kai has had to undergo substantial bio-mechanical facial reconstruction and has had a bionic arm fitted in an attempt to keep her alive and fully functional as the pilot at the helm of the Quarp Jet.

There are fifty levels combining elements of a space shooter and platforming together with some levels purely focused on the ship, while others focus on the character in platforming levels during the infiltration of enemy bases and levels that combine the two together perfectly by entering docking portals where the ship docks to allow the character to enter the platforming areas to infiltrate enemy bases before entering a portal at the end to return to the ship.

There are three different types of levels including: Hostile Forces, Critical Urgency and Search and Rescue with the Hostile Forces missions seeing an increase in enemies, while the Critical Urgency missions will require the player too sprint through the level as fast as possible and the Search and Rescue missions will see an increased emphasis placed on rescuing survivors.

The survivors the player rescuse throughout the story will reward you by working alongside your ally Hjun Ralan III in his laboratory to upgrade your ship with improved components, such as doubling the power of your weapons systems and providing the capabilities to shoot bombs in any direction to make a larger impact against enemies, amongst other enhancements to the ship. This provides a reward for rescuing survivors beyond just being the good guy as the player is effectively receiving upgrades from a team of survivors that you have committed the effort to rescuing.

The core gameplay revolves around a timer that you must complete each level within, rescuing survivors by collecting pods when the player controls the ship, collecting Rekenium Shards also known as crystals during the platforming levels and scoring as many points as possible, while power-ups such as triple shot firing are introduced from the ninth level onwards. Teleportation is absolutely vital to navigating the ship through its surrounding environments, but also for Lieutenant Kai Tana to make her way through certain areas of enemy bases as impenetrable walls are a regular occurrence throughout the game. The teleportation abilities are enhanced from the seventeenth level onwards as the ship gains the ability to drop telepods, which allows you to return to a point in the level were the surrounding environment branched into multiple directions in order to rescue the survivors on one side and then retreat back to the location of the telepod to rescue the survivors from another direction of the level. However, it does not end there as the teleportation abilities are enhanced even further from the twentieth level onwards as Lieutenant Kai Tana is introduced to throwing telepods to teleport to out of reach areas that are inaccessible from a normal jump; while there are also many more gameplay mechanics introduced periodically throughout the duration of the entire game.

During the ship and platforming areas you will have to destroy switches to open gates and disable force fields to access new areas, such as teleporting into a previously inaccessible area that was covered by a force field moments beforehand. However, it is more complex than that for the majority of the time as you will have to destroy far more than just a single switch as there is usually anywhere from three to six switches required to be destroyed across ship and enemy base infiltration areas in order to open a new area to progress further through the level.

There are a total of twenty-five bonus levels with each one being unlocked by collecting large golden crystals that are all hidden outside of the main path of the level. The bonus levels are small in size, but are quite entertaining as the player attempts to beat your own best time to rescue the survivors and reach the opposite portal. The clever part about unlocking bonus levels is that the golden crystals require powers that are revealed as you progress through the game, resulting in having to revisit levels you have already completed to attempt to find alternative paths in order to find the golden crystals.

The player’s performance throughout each and every level is graded and statistically analysed as the execution is based upon four categories: time, rescues, crystals and points. The accomplishments are rated across three tiers, such as bronze, silver or gold medals for how fast the time was to complete the level; one, two or three stripes to represent your bravery in regards to how many survivors you have rescued; one, two or three crystals to represent the amount of crystals you have collected; and one, two or three stars to represent how many points you have earned collectively throughout the entire level. Another important element of the three tiers of performance is that each tier also represents the amount of XP that the player will receive, the player will receive 20XP per category for completing a level in the slowest time within a twenty minutes time frame, rescuing just about enough survivors and collecting enough crystals, while scoring a good haul of points will provide 10XP; each tier up from the third best tier will add a further 20XP until you have reached the top tier, while 10XP would be added for the points category.

The player will earn XP based upon how quickly they complete the level, how many survivors they have rescued, how many crystals have been collected and how many points is scored. However, the XP is not used to level up as it generally is throughout many genres of gaming, but is instead used to reward the player for being successful within the relevant areas of your performance with the reward being the unlocking of levels that are multiple levels ahead providing that you have earned enough XP to unlock them, so you can could theoretically play level 15 immediately after level 9. This is a great design choice as every key element of gameplay is tied to the earning of XP, therefore providing a genuine reward for a high quality of performance, alongside the harmony of being able to skip past a level you are having difficulty completing with the prospect of coming back to a tricky level at a later time, rather than it blocking your progression through the story.

The Flight Computer acts essentially as a rather large extras menu that is split into two separate categories including Codex and Miscellaneous. The Codex category includes a prologue which provides the origins to the story of Velocity 2X; scenes which allows you to relive the story as they are unlocked as progress is made further through the game; a journal of diary entries that chronicle Lieutenant Kai Tana’s thoughts; a listing of the enemies encountered; an analysis of the equipment at disposal; a description of the races across the story; a biography of each of your allies and the history of each of the locations visited throughout the story. The Miscellaneous category includes concept artwork; statistical analysis of the overall performance; bonus levels; an interactive credits sequence; a calculator; and statistical analysis of progression through the game. The Flight Computer is an exceptional design choice as it provides a wealth of unlockable content that is rewarding for progressing further into the game.

The level design is quite diverse as the player starts in space with plenty of stars in the background, while the setting around a quarter of the way into the game moves onto a planet called Altranda with leaves blowing in the wind to emphasise the change in environment. The environments progressively become more complex and open as progress is made through the game with multiple directions opening up, which also brings about the important gameplay mechanic of telepods to enhance the abilities of the teleportation device.

The enemy design is just as varied as the level design as the enemies range from a variety of ships following different patterns to make their movements unpredictable with a loss of health upon coming into contact with any of them to a mine that will explode if it is touched resulting in an instant death, while there are plenty of enemies that fire varying weaponry at the ship, alongside enemy bosses that are determined to obliterate Lieutenant Kai Tana and her ship with all manner of weaponry.

Velocity 2X supports the share feature that allows players to upload a video clip to Facebook or Twitter; upload a screen shot to Facebook or Twitter; and broadcast live gameplay footage via Twitch or Ustream as they are experienced. The PS4’s hard-drive continuously stores your most recent fifteen minutes of gameplay footage, so there is still the chance to decide if sharing something amazing a few minutes after it has taken place is viable. The share feature is a next-gen revolution that has only improved with the further customisation provided by the Share Factory app that allows commentary, music, themes, stickers, effects, text, picture-in-picture video between game footage and the reaction from the PlayStation Camera and much more besides, which will only continue to prosper and flourish as it matures with additional features and further experimentation in the future.

Velocity 2X supports cross-buy and cross-save between the PS4 and Vita. Cross-buy presents a superb amount of value as it means that the player will be purchasing the PS4 and Vita versions of the game with just a single purchase. The cross-save functionality allows sync the progression of a saved file from your Vita to your PS4 and vice versa, so you can start playing the game on your Vita on the way to and from work, sync the saved game when home and then resume where it was left off by loading the save game and continuing via the PS4 version. The cross-save feature is made possible by uploading your save file to the cloud on one console and downloading it from the other console.

There is downloadable content available for Velocity 2X in the form of a Critical Urgency Pack, which includes six speed run levels that will test your teleporting skills to the absolute limit and beyond, while being very reasonably priced at £1.99 as a cross-buy purchase for the PS4 and PS Vita. Velocity 2X is most likely to receive post-launch support in the form of downloadable content to expand the game even further beyond the fifty levels, 25 bonus levels and Critical Urgency Pack as there is an additional content menu dedicated to providing a quick link to any of the available downloadable content released for the game, while it is important to highlight that none of the downloadable content has been held back from the game itself as the Critical Urgency downloadable content was developed after the game was submitted for release.

The Quarp Jet ship control scheme consists of pressing X to fire lasers at enemies, switches to open gates and crystallised survivor pods; holding square while changing the direction of the left analogue stick to teleport beyond a wall; pressing triangle to drop a telepod; pressing L1 to access the map with triangle to retrieve the telepod to retain your initial allocation of telepods or X to use the telepod to return to the position of your telepod; pressing L2 or alternatively double tapping triangle to quickly return to the position of your telepod; holding R1 or R2 to move faster; changing the direction of the left analogue stick or alternatively pressing left, right, up or down on the d-pad to manoeuvre your ship; changing the direction of the right analogue stick or alternatively pressing O as you direct the ship to fire bombs at enemies, switches to open gates and crystallised survivor pods; pressing the share button takes you to the share feature menu; and pressing the options button to display the pause menu.

The Lieutenant Kai Tana platforming control scheme consists of pressing X to jump or pressing X next to a smaller clearance to slide through it; holding square while changing the direction of the left analogue stick to teleport beyond a wall; pressing O to fire the rifle at enemies, switches to open gates and shielded crystals; double tapping triangle to teleport to the position were the telepod has landed after having thrown the telepod; pressing L1 to access your map; holding R1 or R2 to run faster; changing the direction of the left analogue stick or alternatively pressing left or right on the d-pad to move; and changing the direction of the right analogue stick to fire the laser at enemies, switches to open gates and shielded crystals.

The touch pad implementation is actually only introduced twenty levels into the game and provides an alternative to the left analogue stick when throwing a telepod during the platforming areas when you control Lieutenant Kai Tana and need to reach a higher area that is out of reach from the height of a jump, while the DualShock 4 controller does vibrate when you have shot crystals containing rescue pods to collect and when you destroy enemies. There is no light bar implementation, which is surprising as the touch pad could have provided an alternative to pressing square to teleport, while the light bar could have provided an alternative to the HUD in signalling how much health you have with green fading through to yellow, orange, red and flashing red to show that your health is seriously running low, alongside flashing blue for when a telepod should be dropped and flashing green when you have returned to the location of a telepod.

The graphical quality of Velocity 2X is beyond that of what you would normally expect from an indie game with amazing dynamic lighting, particle effects, explosions, surrounding environments and a real artistic flair throughout the entire game, which have their collective qualities highlighted even further due to exceptional 1080p native resolution graphics on PS4 and native resolution graphics on PS Vita and 60 frames per second on both PS4 and PS Vita performance.

The presentation of the game is solid with a great user interface that is navigated by the face buttons with support for the left analogue stick, directional pad and touch pad across various menus such as the main menu, level select menu, flight computer menu, online leaderboards, notification wall, options menu, instructions menu, additional content menu and gameplay menus, although there is no support for navigation via the right analogue stick, although that is not an issue considering the multiple methods of navigation that are available. The background of the menu screens is vibrant as it consists of stars spanning the galaxies of outer space, while there is an overlay of the previously accessed menu during the main menu.

The audio consists of sound effects and music with the sound effects including weapons being fired from your ship and enemy ships, teleporting through walls and speed thrusts while in your ship, alongside Lieutenant Kai Tana firing her weaponry, jumping and teleporting through walls while exploring enemy bases on foot. The music has been composed by Joris de Man who is returning after bringing the soundtrack for the original Velocity to life and is known for his composing on the soundtracks for the first three Killzone games as well as Killzone: Liberation with his Ivor Novello Award for Best Original Videogame Score for Killzone 2, recording the Killzone 3 soundtrack at one of the greatest studios in the world at Abbey Road and also winning the Best Audio Design Award at the Dutch Game Awards for Killzone 3 certainly proving his talent and quality of composing. As the characters do not have voice-overs; their communication is displayed via speech bubbles, resulting in the audio lacking in any voice-overs, which is the only area that could perhaps be improved upon to create more immersion within the story, although the speech bubbles themselves do look quite stylish and everything else related to the audio besides the lack of voice-overs is absolutely flawless in design, direction and implementation. There is a subtle use of the DualShock 4 speaker as you hear a bleep when any communication is received from Hjun Ralan III and from the seventeenth level as you hear a bleep when you drop a telepod.

The trophy list includes thirty-six trophies with twenty bronze trophies, ten silver trophies, five gold trophies and one platinum trophy. There are a fair few trophies that you will naturally earn as you progress through the game, such as the Mind The Gap bronze trophy for docking your ship for the first time; the Ketchup bronze trophy for getting squished at the bottom of the screen; and the Hoarder Next Door bronze trophy for collecting 5,000 crystals. However, there are a few harder trophies too that will take some effort to achieve, such as the FuturLab Certified gold trophy for gaining 50 perfect medals; the Now You Know gold trophy for getting a perfect medal on all Critical Urgency levels; the Ralan’s Mission gold trophy for completing all bonus levels; and the Mind Over Matter gold trophy for completing level 50, especially considering how you need to earn enough XP in order to unlock the latter levels. It is estimated that depending upon skill, a good trophy guide to provide some helpful tips and that it would take between fifteen to twenty hours to platinum the trophy list.

There are no difficulty levels, although the difficulty naturally increases as you progress through the story with a steady introduction of gameplay elements, such as new enemy types, hazards, weaponry, power-ups, telepods and more besides to implement that next gameplay mechanic to learn and familiarise yourself with. It is a great design choice to introduce new gameplay mechanics sporadically as it provides an efficient difficulty curve, which makes the player rise to the standard required from each gameplay mechanic, rather than throwing everything at the player simultaneously, therefore allowing the player to reach greater reaction times when they are confident in a particular element to such a point that it becomes second nature before another feature is introduced.

The online leaderboards focuses on global rankings and friends rankings across all of the fifty levels and the overall game with each leaderboard containing each player’s rank; name (PSN ID); and score with the positioning of each player based upon the score that has been accumulated on that particular level of the game and collected together for the accumulation of points throughout the overall game.

There is no local or online multiplayer, which is forgivable as FuturLab decided it would cost too much for an indie developer to implement their ideas for multiplayer and instead decided to invest their budget in implementing two forms of gameplay between the space shooter and platforming genres, although it would have been great to see local co-operative multiplayer and a form of local competitive multiplayer similar to the boss battles or one of the players controlling an enemy of their choosing at any given time to add an edge of competitiveness to the gameplay. However, immediately after you have completed a level you can share your score on Facebook and challenge friends to attempt to beat your score, so at least there are positive elements of social interactivity; despite there being no local or online multiplayer.

The replayability of Velocity 2X stems from attempting to earn the highest possible score to submit to the competitive online leaderboards, while also earning more XP to unlock more levels and progress further into the story in the process, alongside the ability to share the high scores and challenge friends to beat them in a positive implementation designed to encourage social interactivity. There are also many levels to earn high scores and challenge friends on as there are fifty levels with a further 25 unlockable bonus levels, which is a great gesture aimed at rewarding the player with even more replay value by providing the player with the opportunity to revisit levels in an attempt to apply your new powers to accessing new areas to find the golden crystals to unlock the bonus levels. Yet another area of replay value as the extensive gallery of extras showcased within the Flight Computer as you will collect codex to unlock some extras, collect golden crystals to unlock bonus levels by revisiting earlier levels with new abilities and naturally unlocking some content by progressing through the game.

Overall, Velocity 2X showcases the most perfect layering of a game with new and unique gameplay elements being introduced at the most appropriate of times when you have become fluent with the previous gameplay mechanics. There is an extraordinary amount of replay value and content, which provides seriously exceptional value at £12.99 for a PS4 and Vita cross-buy purchase and unbelievably free on PlayStation Plus for its first month of release; therefore the best reason yet to have a PlayStation Plus subscription! When FuturLab expressed their beliefs of having created the 2014 Game of the Year winner most people probably thought it was just bravado, but you have to experience it to believe it as Velocity 2X is the best indie game yet with an undeniable bench mark set for any future indie game as it is presented with such quality and affection to achieve perfection as though it is written as a love letter to why indie gaming should be embraced the world over.

Jason Bonnar

Analysis

• Title: Velocity 2X
• Developer: FuturLab
• Publisher: FuturLab
• System: PS4
• Format: PSN Download
• Cross-Buy: Yes (PS4 and PS Vita)
• Cross-Play: Yes (Cross-Save)
• Multiplayer: Yes (Online Leaderboards and Online Social Interactivity)

.Hard Drive Space Required 2.5GB (Version 1.01)