Previews

Hands-on with Velocity 2X - another piece of FuturLab's 'grand vision' on PS Vita

Plus an Earth-shattering revelation about the Velocity universe

Hands-on with Velocity 2X - another piece of FuturLab's 'grand vision' on PS Vita
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| Velocity 2X

Much like its name suggests, Velocity 2X is a doubly large, doubly ambitious sequel to Velocity, with twice the number of playing styles. We went hands-on with Futurlab's latest at Eurogamer Expo in London.

If you played a previous entry in the series - Velocity or its HD update Velocity Ultra - the action-packed movement, shooting, and teleporting that the Gold Award-winning series has become known for will be familiar to you. But this time it's not confined to the empty blackness of space.

Say Kai

If the preview build we played is anything to go by, the gameplay is divided evenly between space combat and puzzle-platforming sections in which you leave your craft and explore corridors filled with dangerous traps.

To the new bit first: you control Kai Tana as she explores abandoned facilities and enemy strongholds, usually to find switches so that she can shoot them and unlock the next area.

It works fine, for the most part. The controls are responsive and Kai can be incredibly agile when she needs to be - just like her ship. You can shoot in all directions with the right stick, and chuck bombs too. The gravity (perhaps appropriately) feels a little floaty, and the traps that lie within kill you a tad too quickly.

You can avoid enemies easily enough: the ones I fought could be teleported through and shot from behind, and this approach worked equally well on walls. There are also some teleportation grenades, which you chuck with an Angry Birds-esque pull and ping.

Inevitably, on foot you don't feel as fast as you do when you're in your spacecraft, not least because you have to take a more circumspect approach to avoid running headlong into mortal danger.

Quarp nine

It's the flying sections that you'll have come to Velocity 2X for, though, and they're better than ever.

Dashing about in hulking wrecks and industrial zones infested with alien life, you avoid incoming fire from defence systems while unlocking areas that lie ahead by shooting numbered locks in the correct order to drop the security fields that protect them.

The Quarp Drive is top fun. Your ship contains a transporter that can beam it to distant points on the screen instantly, and as you learn the layouts of the levels and to master this teleportation mechanic your times steadily improve.

Pretty soon you're boosting through sections at breakneck speeds, blipping about the level with ease. It's immensely satisfying once you understand how it works, and when you add fiendish level design and a few enemies into the mix you've got a quality shoot-'em-up experience.

As you've no doubt come to expect from the Velocity games, it also sports razor sharp visuals, top class audio, and a uniquely involved storyline.

The game's director, James Marsden, revealed to me that this emphasis on plot is part of a "grand vision", and that all of the studio's sci-fi games - Velocity, Fuel Tiracas, and Surge - are part of the same universe.

Aside from the unnecessary slowing of pace in the on-foot sections, which may yet be addressed, Velocity 2X is shaping up to be another brilliant downloadable Vita title when it comes out in 2014.

Peter Willington
Peter Willington
Die hard Suda 51 fan and professed Cherry Coke addict, freelancer Peter Willington was initially set for a career in showbiz, training for half a decade to walk the boards. Realising that there's no money in acting, he decided instead to make his fortune in writing about video games. Peter never learns from his mistakes.