escapeVektor Review

EscapeVektor by itself is an excellent puzzle game. But the developers at Nnooo wanted to add a story, something to push you onward, and passed with flying colors. The story isn’t just to break up the levels, the story actually means something. The puzzles, and the way you pass them, are excellent too. There is so much great content in this 10 dollar package it’s astounding.

In escapeVektor you follow the story of a man named Vektor, who has been trapped inside a computer. He wants to escape, but is held in by the evil CPU. You play as Vektor, guiding yourself out of the computer. Throughout the story, Vektor “codes” new powers from completing nodes and recovering Vektor’s memories from before he entered the CPU. You upgrade these powers by scoring high on levels. Upgrades include a larger blast radius for your detonate attack, a larger boost capacity and so on. He also hacks you wild cards, which I’ll go into detail in later. This is very creative, and shows they definitely spent a while on the game.

To help Vektor escape, you must guide him across lines in the computer. At first this is simple, but then, the CPU “adapts” and starts to throw enemies at you. The game has an easy learning curve, starting out rudimentary, but then slowly progressing to get harder across the 150 “nodes” or levels. It starts to get crazy with laser gates, enemies that eat your progress in the levels, and alarms that make the enemies go twice as fast. These made the levels hard, but not “OH MY GOODNESS! WHY CAN’T I PASS THIS LEVEL!!!” hard. I had to retry a few times, but after a while I finally figured it out.

There also is a scoring and medal system in the game, in which you get points for filling in the levels, killing enemies, and finishing within the time limit. But the catch is; to get a gold or platinum medal, you (usually) have to use a wild card. A wild card doubles your score for the level, but can only be used once. If you die on that attempt, it is gone forever. The only ways to get new wild cards are by setting a new personal best on a level, or sometimes Vektor hacks them for you at random times.

There are bonus nodes too, but they’re different from the rest. You can use them to upgrade your powers, or just for playing the game more. They have different rules to them, like time mode and eraser mode. Time mode is just a timed level–you have to finish in the time limit. Eraser mode is extremely difficult; if you run over a line you have made already, it disappears. You really need to strategize on these, and definitely plan out patterns to pass the node.

Nnooo has never developed for the Vita before, but you could never tell. The game has a cool gyroscope feature, great trophies, beautiful graphics, and an awesome soundtrack. The gyroscope lets you see around the level, and is cool while you are stationary. If you are in a car, or anywhere moving, it doesn’t work, but it is easily turned off. But in the right circumstances, it works pretty well.

The trophies are good and fair, like leveling up Vektor all the way, or unlocking every zone. They’re all obtainable for sure, except for one that will really give you trouble. That trophy is for finishing every level without detonating. And once you’ve played this, you’ll understand why it’s nearly impossible.

escapeVektor is beautiful, and looks very sharp on the Vita’s OLED screen. The camera angles really show off the vibrant levels and colors well. Even the menus look good, which is a plus. The soundtrack goes with the game well. Even my dad said “Is that that the music game? (referring to Sound Shapes)” and he really likes the music from that.

escapeVektor is a must buy, and probably the best puzzle game on the Vita yet. I enjoyed the game a ton and I am going to try for the platinum medal in every level (even though that’s unlikely). Plain and simple, you should buy this game, it is a great time.