Metroid-Galaga? –

The odd combo of shoot em up and platformer that’s trying something new.

New to the Steam store, Velocity 2X is a vertical top down shooter, but also a side scrolling platformer with tons of great visuals and an awesome soundtrack. It stars Lt. Kai Tana, who was taken from her home planet during an experimental aircraft flight, given cybernetic enhancements, and now searches for a way home.

The story we may have heard before but it’s nice to see the stranger in strange land story is still alive and well in this new game from Futurlab. It’s a bit sad to not hear any voice acting in a game with this much attention to detail but with that comes some of the best panel storytelling in a long time. Told by very cool comic-like panels, we get to see most of the story visually with some text to just fill in the blanks. It’s a cool approach that almost works on its own without the text at all which is fairly impressive to convey the story of Lt. Tana.

Having a strong female protagonist is always great, but it does seem to be borrowing a bit too much from Samus Aran of Metroid, especially since they look almost the same if she was wearing the zero suit. Along with the backstory from Hal Jordan, it seems that the origin was a bit too close to other stories to be considered an homage. That said, once things get going, it’s nice to see her adventures of getting back home, and it adds to the drama.

Unoriginal origins aside, the gameplay is very fast paced, to a ridiculous degree that will keep even the most caffeinated gamer on his toes. Having to think so far ahead as to lay down a teleport pod, destroy the right switches in order, kill all the turrets, all in the span of a second can really tax the mind of anyone playing. With this frenetic pace in mind, all the levels take only a few minutes at most to complete. Im not usually a fan of so many levels being so short but I can see how someone couldn’t keep up the pace with a 10 minute level, so it turns out to be a blessing in disguise. To keep the gamer in pace with the game, there is also a great soundtrack that keeps the feel of the action to a perfect tempo, and the platforming segments cool and futuristic.

Velocity 2x is trying to be a lot of things and mostly accomplishes that feat. Being the top down shooter of old but with many enhancements like needing to teleport between rooms, or a side scrolling platformer with an emphasis on speed running, or a bullet hell game for the bosses. So many game modes always keeps the player guessing and ready for the next challenge, but it also leads to a sort of identity crisis as to what to focus on in the game. Fitting into many categories is not a bad thing, but it does seem that being the jack-of-all-trades has left them master of none.