Game Reviews

Assault Vector

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iOS
| Assault Vector
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Assault Vector
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iOS
| Assault Vector

Assault Vector is an inoffensive space-based strategy game that looks and feels like a board game.

Your aim is to destroy allTHE ships on the board or reach the green block exit to proceed to the next stage. However, you only receive upgrades by annihilating the opposition.

Engage

If you move into any ship's attack zone, your ship will be fired upon, so the only way to take out enemy ships is to attack from their blind spots.

The trick is to monitor each ship's attack range by tapping them, rather than venturing off into the unknown and being blown up right away.

There are three enemy ship types, each with different attack patterns - one attacks vertically, another horizontally, and the last attacks anything two grid spaces away.

In later levels you'll find yourself cornered in, with one misstep resulting in being attacked from all sides and losing tons of health in one turn.

Make it so

Only your hyper jump and neutron cannon moves can save you in such a situation. Hyper jump permits you to jump over enemies and obstacles once per stage, while the neutron cannon gives you one free shot at anything within its range.

On the upgrade screen you can choose to repair your ship, strengthen your hull, increase jump range, or increase cannon range.

Herein lies Assault Vector's downfall. Continually levelling up your maximum jump range and neutron cannon breaks the game's difficulty.

Eventually you can jump to each level's exit in one move from the starting point, or pick off every enemy ship from the other side of the map.

Assault Vector is let down by its overpowered upgrades, but it's a merry enough board game until you figure that out. Unless you like winning without any challenge, then you'll love it afterwards too.

Assault Vector

Assault Vector is a slow space blast for an hour or two, but it's all too easy to crush your foes after a dozen upgrades
Score
Danny Russell
Danny Russell
After spending years in Japan collecting game developers' business cards, Danny has returned to the UK to breed Pokemon. He spends his time championing elusive region-exclusive games while shaking his fist at the whole region-locking thing.