Hands down, one of the best and most creative space shoot'em ups that I've ever played!
What makes Velocity so exciting and different is its unique approach to classic genre. Players won't find themselves blasting away hoards of seemingly endless enemies to set a new high score or dodging the fire of larger than life mid/end level bosses in bullet hell. That's been done plenty of time already and this game is a bit more sophisticated. In Velocity, you indeed do control a starship but it offers a variety of task types in the 50+ missions of the game. Most of the game revolves around collecting all of the stranded spaces pods scattered throughout the mission. There are three different mission types: survive onslaughts of hostle forces, collect the majority of escape pods in the level, and get to the end of the level with the time limit. Velocity also has a scoring system (bronze, silver, and gold medals) that oddly revolve more around how fast you get through missions than pod collecting. This won't begin to matter until the much latter parts of the game when certain missions require a minimum high score to unlock...which of course means, higher level medals are rewarded for higher scores. Even then, you only need gold medals in a handful of missions to unlock everything...that is if you aim to collect all the escape pods in every level. Though they don't contribute much to ranking system, the amount of escape pods collect per level does count greatly to the high score. The amount of which you have to collect per mission varies but the time based ones tend to require the least.
Another great thing about Velocity is that it periodically introduces new elements of gameplay throughout the game and gives you missions that make the transition of these elements in to normal gameplay a smooth one. Said elements are a HUGE part of the overall experience. This includes teleportation, bombs, boosting, spawning points, and color coded security locks. Many escape pods or even routes often require your ship to teleport itself through walls to reach. This done by holding down the [ ] button and moving a target to the postion on the screen that you wish to send your ship to. Boosting comes in handy mostly when comes to getting the highest rank possible in a mission. Bombs can be lauched from your ship in every direction and are best used against stationary enemies to the side or the back of your and destructable glass barriers that most time have escape pods in them. Your boost is unlimited but the challenge comes in when trying to navigate through the often puzzle like layouts of the levels combined with collecting pods. A limited number of respawning points can be layed throughout the level for your ship to return to at any time...so its best to choose where to set them wisely. Most times, they're best placed at forked paths as many of the later levels require you to return to cetain points to complete the mission. Lastly, the color coded security locks are little circular machines with numbers on them that must be destroyed in numerical sequence in order to bring down the security barrier that's in the way of your ship's progress. If these locks are ever fired upon out of order then the entire process for that color is reset and you must start again from the first lock. The game periodically and eventually becomes all of these elements put together, which is a truely unique experience. Again shooting waves of enemies (which indeed you do) is a small element of the game and only factor in to the overall challenge that all the other elements bring to the table. Simply reading about this game may not sound very entertaining but its just something about Velocity that's additive once you start playing it.
The story is brieftly laid out in the very beginning: You're part of a space rescue team that's been tasked to pilot a ship equipped with a bunch of experimental technology (as priorly described) in order to rescue a bunch of scientist who are stranded escape pods. I can't remember if their space station became unoperation due to a technical failure or an enemy attack. I'm leaning more towards the former since the stationary "enemies" are described as manfunctioning security equipment. However, enemy ships are good ole' fashion alien forces who are either taking advantage of the situation or are defending their territory where many of these escape pods have drifted to. The only negative thing that I have to say about this game is that the music is generally the same throughout the game (even though the handful of songs are cool) and the environments all look the same in each mission.
My Breakdown:
What's Good:
- Very unique gameplay
- In game achievement system
- The collection of bonus pods unlock bonus mission amongst other things
- Periodic cannon upgrades
- New features introduced throughout the game keep the gameplay fresh
- ^ Plenty of missions that help players get use to new gameplay features
- Mission variety
What's Not-So-Good:
- Same handful of songs used throughout the game
- Beside layout changes, there is a lack of variety in the game's enviornment
- It doesn't make sense to me that the mission ranking system is designed around time when the scoring system itself is clearly designed around pod collecting
What's Bad:
- Nothing found
In all, if you are a fan of shoot'em ups or even if you're not and are just looking for something different to play...do yourself a favor and download this game. I got it for free as a PS+ member but I doubt that it's even $5 in the PS store. You get a lot for such a low price!