Although it’s nice playing vast, graphically advanced games on our shiny new PS4s, they’ll always be a place for those neat little indie affairs, like Velocity 2x, which is available for free this month on Sony’s ‘PS Plus’ service.

Also available on the Vita, Velocity 2x’s gameplay is split into two modes. The first and most prolific mode is a 2D space shooter in which a small craft is used to travel through a galactic obstacle course full of hostiles and barriers. The second is a side-scroller in which the protagonist, Kai Tana, has to slide, teleport and gun her way through fairly simple levels.

My first thought when I realised the game had two different modes was that the second was fairly unnecessary, considering that it is easier and simpler than the first. However, rather than splitting the two modes up completely and having levels dedicated to one or the other, Futurlab made the masterful decision of intersecting the space-shooter levels with side-scroller sections, meaning each mode offers a welcome break from the other and you never get bored of either.

Velocity 2x is full of clever little touches that enhance the experience. One mechanic I was particularly fond of was the ability to increase the space-crafts ‘speed’ during the space shooter sections. I put speed in inverted commas because all you are really doing is increasing the speed of the vertical scroller, but it means that the pace of the levels is completely left to you. The result is that the levels never feel overwhelming because the player is in control of how difficult they are just by pressing or not pressing R1.

The key mechanic that sets Velocity 2x aside from many peers is the teleportation system. Pressing square makes a cursor appear on screen, which the player can use to transport instantly to another point nearby. At first I was certain that it was too fidgety a mechanic for a game in which some levels demand a focus on flawless speed, but once you get used to it you’ll find yourself zipping around the levels with aplomb.

Not that all the levels focus on speed. Each level is scored based on certain perimeters. Dotted through-out are strange cylinders apparently filled with survivors for the player to collect. Similarly, the player has to gather crystals during the side-scrolling sections. As well as that, the player is scored on how much damage they take and how many times they die. It’s a clever system, because if you want to get a perfect score, you’ll have to repeat the levels repeatedly, keeping in mind all of these measures.

Unfortunately for all its good points, the levels are not distinct enough from one another, meaning that after a while, they start to blur into one big, black, lazer-filled mess. However, just when it becomes tedious, a good old-fashioned boss battle is thrown in, adding a bit of teeth and excitement.

The story is expectedly lightweight. As far as I could gather, a race of uncaring, merciless aliens has recovered an advanced spacecraft complete with Kai Tana, the comatosed human pilot. There intention is to awaken her so that she can show them how to pilot the craft. Instead, she breaks free with the aid of an alien in servitude and together they race across the galaxy so that she can return home.

It might sound meaty, but its delivery is limited to still shots and subtitles between missions which are crammed with foreign sounding space words like ‘Vokh’ and add little to the game. There are also diary entries, but I found them incredibly dull. And this is coming from somebody who is about to proudly announce during one of his articles that he read every little bit of flavour text in Dragon Age: Origins.

Having not played the original, I couldn’t possibly comment on whether or not its an improvement or a departure from what has come before. However, what I can say is that if you have a PS Plus account, it would provide the perfect addictive and enjoyable rush to indulge between playing those lumbering games on the horizon.

7/10

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