POSTED 20/12/12


ESCAPEVEKTOR

Nnooo
Vita/PSN (also on 3DS)

We have clearance, Clarence. Roger, Roger. What’s our Vektor, Viktor?

Our Vektor’s a pixelated pink dude who’s stuck inside our Vita. Hopefully he doesn’t break anything important tromping around – although it could explain why our rear touchpad spontaneously cuts in and out of workingness.

Anyway, apparently it’s kind of desirable to help him get the fuck out of there, especially considering the myriad greeblies and nailed-down nasties trying to blow him – and by default us - out of the, erm, screen.

If you’re hoary enough to remember classic arcade star Amidar, that’s basically this, but funkified. As such, it also conjures reminiscences of Qix, Tempest and even Pac-Man. If you’re going “Huh? Spluh? Wha-now?” then, umm, this is a wholly original thing that’s a credit to good old Aussie ingenuity. Yep.

Basically, you’re faced with grids made up of more white lines than Grandmaster Flash ever imagined rapping about. You’re essentially a ‘greater than’ symbol (or ‘less than’ if your outlook’s more Gothistic) that shooms about these grids painting them. When completed, you can get the hell out, hopefully nabbing a speediness medallion.

Sure, you initially face a simple square, but before long you’ll be confronting maps that look more like schematics of the Vita’s innards than game levels. Greeblies greeble, cannons cannonise, electrical switches electrify... and you’re hardly even into the game. Your defences increase as you level up versions. You’ll then speed up, explodinate greeblies and, eventually, conjure momentary invincibility. You’ll need these.

Somehow, escapeVektor almost perfectly skates the line between addictiveness and wanting to hurl your Vita towards something hard. Think of it as gamingy ‘just right’ porridge.

Stuffed with leaderboards, Near functionality, annoying gyroscopicness that can mercifully be deactivated, innumerable upgrades and mega-oodles of replayable levels, escapeVektor’s one of the acest Vita titles yet – and it’s dead cheap.

White lines – get higher, baby!

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