From what I've tried (a dozen of stages and two extra missions), the controls aren't as floaty as, say, Space Shooter For Two Bucks. But it's still an euroshmup, complete with great emphasis on storyline, slow and "thinking" action, popcorn enemies that refuse to go down after a shot, and so on. The initial "tutorial" seems to last forever and I wonder if it'll gain some pace.
I'd rank it just below of WTF, as a Minis.
p.s. oh, the mainstream press is absolutely in love with it...
edit: Joris De Man composed the music for this game. Interestingly, he also did the music for the GBA shmup "Invader" in 2002.
Overall, I like this game. It's very good for a first effort, better than most (if not all) indie shmups I've played. I think that it has some good ideas, but I do have a few suggestions on how it might be improved. FWIW, I'm playing on a PSP, and have played up to Zone 16 at this point.
It seems like there's only one Quarth-like area background and a couple of pieces of (lovely Amiga style) music. Those are fine, but some variety wouldn't go amiss. I'm not familiar with Minis though, so maybe reusing assets to stay under filesize limits is to be expected.
The story bores me. The artwork is decent but I find myself skipping through all the menu screens without caring to read anything. The required times for bronze/silver/gold could have been put on the HUD or on the pause screen so the action could be a bit more constant. I think I was up to about Zone 5 before anything started shooting at me (all I was doing up to that point is warping around - a feature which I do think has potential; I'm reminded of stage 2 of Ikaruga where the stage becomes split into two halves and perhaps one side is easier than the other, or has more scoring potential). Combined with the time spent going through menu screens, I wonder how long I had to spend playing Velocity before it threw anything exciting at me?
I don't like the "bomb flinging". It makes it feel like less of a shmup and more of a puzzle/strategy game. In fact, that's the feeling I get from this game overall. The default scrolling speed is a bit slow, too, and the general vibe is more that of a puzzle/strategy game than a shmup. It feels like it needs more enemies, more bullets to dodge, and faster, more action-packed gameplay. Check out the open areas of Zone 10 - the Star Soldier-esque "wave bonuses" are cool, something I'm a big fan of, but the parts of the game that are like that seem a bit scant. Zone 15 is my favourite so far. For a shoot 'em up, I don't seem to be spending much time shooting things.
Maybe it could have benefitted from "enemy horde" stages as well as those "boost the whole way through" ones. But in all honesty, I would have preferred the game to have played more like a traditional shmup with the occasional puzzle/strategy elements rather than the other way round. Long form teleport, huh? Dropping start points...? I don't like where this is going.
Last edited by Annoyboy on Fri May 18, 2012 3:59 am, edited 1 time in total.
Picked up the Steam version during the holiday sale (somehow seemingly everyone on Steam ended up with a 20% off coupon, which stacked with the 10% discount during the sale).
So far, pretty engaging through the first ten or so levels - it definitely plays like a puzzle game in that it requires specific positioning and actions, but the emphasis on speed keeps things twitchy.
An interesting twist is that you don't really care about getting hit, at least at this early point in the game - instead, you charge through bullets to save time, then grab one of the many health pickups. Lives seem to be an expendable resource as well - losing lives doesn't seem to prevent you from getting "Perfect" ranks on stages.
