I had the random urge to replay Vectorman when Jenny started binging through a couple other Blue Sky Studios games, and I'm pretty glad I did. I have a soft spot for both games and always like seeing how my thoughts waver as I play them.
Vectorman 1 not my fav but it's pretty cool.
Earth got fucked over by capitalism and global warming, so humans escape earth Wall-E style and use the worst capitalist trick in the bag to fix it: AI Robots. Exactly what you think would happen, happens; one of them - Raster, - gets shit-faced, turns evil, brainwashes all the others to be evil, and now you gotta kick their asses. A fun setup that the gameplay manages to piggy-back onto the game's otherwise contra-esque gameplay; throwing quarterly encounters against Raster at you, with special mechanics to each fight and uniquely-stunning graphics-processing tricks.
That's kind of VM's bag; visual wizardry. Its defining characteristic above all is its animation and technical prowess. Vector and the majority of the game's baddies are animated with positional tweening - dubbed 'Vector Piece Animation'. While certainly not new at the time of release, it's utilized so extensively and effectively across its runtime. Where other games typically used interpolation to animate basic bosses or machines with multiple rugged parts to save on animation frames, VM uses it to justify giving its characters hundreds of delightfully smooth animation shots and poses. Vector himself is the shining star, expressing so much flexibility and personality through all his enormous suite of animations. The kickback and tweening isn't a second-rate slapjob, either: It serves each the game's feeling of responsiveness and impact extremely well, with a lasting dose of intricacy, vibrancy and elasticity. If nothing else, VM is worth a play for just how meaty and impactful its gamefeel is.
Controls are another factor that makes Vectorman extremely fun. VM has a good feel to running and shooting, though he feels slippery at first. 60 FPS is generally well maintained through the game despite all the moving parts. And I swear to God, this dude has THE best double-jump in gaming. The air you get off of it is insane, you can chain downward shots to reduce your downward momentum, AND the jump doubles as a hitbox. By mastering the timing, you can use double-jump jets to absolutely eviscerate most bosses. And speaking of, boss fights are generally good in this game compared to most western games from then. Nothing too monotonous - just shoot the dudes and don't let them shoot you. They have fun designs, and attack patterns that are basic but easy to vibe to.
Once you step outside the aesthetic trimmings though, VM isn't admittedly much more than another run-of-the-mill mid platformer. Stages do that 'linear-but-also-open-ended' thing that everyone poorly mimicked from Sonic. Platforming challenges aren't very prevalent, with movement just being your way of getting from point A to point B. But it's also not very combat focused, either - the enemy variety is incredibly sparse, and their patterns usually boil down to 'stand in a safe spot and shoot me until I die.' It doesn't help that once you get further, the enemy variety doesn't really expand as you progress, nor do they make you feel adequately intimidated. The OVERWHELMING majority of foes are these annoying-ass stretchy grey turrets that snipe you as soon as they pop on screen. Also there's copious amounts of screen crunch, so you best be taking it slow through these levels until you memorize the enemy spawn points.
But I think the worst thing going for the game overall is pacing: The front half of the game has some scattered weak points, and the back half is just really boring. After stage 1, you get an overly-fast train boss that's guaranteed to kill you multiple times until you figure out what the hell's going on. Stage 3 is a dreadful water stage that has you impishly wading through tides in a straight line for several minutes, followed by stage 4's slow upwards ascent through MORE water. Things pick up from there, until stage 8, when you get thrown a palette swap of stage 1, and then stages 10 and 12 throw the same shtick at you. The levels between and after those are fine, but there are so few new ideas during them. You really start to feel fatigue and that second half, and you just want the game to end already. It's clear that all the passion poured into designing the animation tools came at the cost of level design and pacing. This weird polish distribution also affects the game's difficulty, as most of the game's challenging beats are frontloaded in that first half. You also gotta collect health powerups to make it through most levels, so like, you're inherently forced to take fewer risks in those early levels.
VM is a really cool product of its time that became oddly prophetic when bad indie devs aped interpolation as a cheap way to animate 2D characters with cardboard-ass cutout limbs. I wouldn't really recommend it or call it a 16-bit highlight, but I come back to it extremely often.
Vectorman 1 not my fav but it's pretty cool.
Earth got fucked over by capitalism and global warming, so humans escape earth Wall-E style and use the worst capitalist trick in the bag to fix it: AI Robots. Exactly what you think would happen, happens; one of them - Raster, - gets shit-faced, turns evil, brainwashes all the others to be evil, and now you gotta kick their asses. A fun setup that the gameplay manages to piggy-back onto the game's otherwise contra-esque gameplay; throwing quarterly encounters against Raster at you, with special mechanics to each fight and uniquely-stunning graphics-processing tricks.
That's kind of VM's bag; visual wizardry. Its defining characteristic above all is its animation and technical prowess. Vector and the majority of the game's baddies are animated with positional tweening - dubbed 'Vector Piece Animation'. While certainly not new at the time of release, it's utilized so extensively and effectively across its runtime. Where other games typically used interpolation to animate basic bosses or machines with multiple rugged parts to save on animation frames, VM uses it to justify giving its characters hundreds of delightfully smooth animation shots and poses. Vector himself is the shining star, expressing so much flexibility and personality through all his enormous suite of animations. The kickback and tweening isn't a second-rate slapjob, either: It serves each the game's feeling of responsiveness and impact extremely well, with a lasting dose of intricacy, vibrancy and elasticity. If nothing else, VM is worth a play for just how meaty and impactful its gamefeel is.
Controls are another factor that makes Vectorman extremely fun. VM has a good feel to running and shooting, though he feels slippery at first. 60 FPS is generally well maintained through the game despite all the moving parts. And I swear to God, this dude has THE best double-jump in gaming. The air you get off of it is insane, you can chain downward shots to reduce your downward momentum, AND the jump doubles as a hitbox. By mastering the timing, you can use double-jump jets to absolutely eviscerate most bosses. And speaking of, boss fights are generally good in this game compared to most western games from then. Nothing too monotonous - just shoot the dudes and don't let them shoot you. They have fun designs, and attack patterns that are basic but easy to vibe to.
Once you step outside the aesthetic trimmings though, VM isn't admittedly much more than another run-of-the-mill mid platformer. Stages do that 'linear-but-also-open-ended' thing that everyone poorly mimicked from Sonic. Platforming challenges aren't very prevalent, with movement just being your way of getting from point A to point B. But it's also not very combat focused, either - the enemy variety is incredibly sparse, and their patterns usually boil down to 'stand in a safe spot and shoot me until I die.' It doesn't help that once you get further, the enemy variety doesn't really expand as you progress, nor do they make you feel adequately intimidated. The OVERWHELMING majority of foes are these annoying-ass stretchy grey turrets that snipe you as soon as they pop on screen. Also there's copious amounts of screen crunch, so you best be taking it slow through these levels until you memorize the enemy spawn points.
But I think the worst thing going for the game overall is pacing: The front half of the game has some scattered weak points, and the back half is just really boring. After stage 1, you get an overly-fast train boss that's guaranteed to kill you multiple times until you figure out what the hell's going on. Stage 3 is a dreadful water stage that has you impishly wading through tides in a straight line for several minutes, followed by stage 4's slow upwards ascent through MORE water. Things pick up from there, until stage 8, when you get thrown a palette swap of stage 1, and then stages 10 and 12 throw the same shtick at you. The levels between and after those are fine, but there are so few new ideas during them. You really start to feel fatigue and that second half, and you just want the game to end already. It's clear that all the passion poured into designing the animation tools came at the cost of level design and pacing. This weird polish distribution also affects the game's difficulty, as most of the game's challenging beats are frontloaded in that first half. You also gotta collect health powerups to make it through most levels, so like, you're inherently forced to take fewer risks in those early levels.
VM is a really cool product of its time that became oddly prophetic when bad indie devs aped interpolation as a cheap way to animate 2D characters with cardboard-ass cutout limbs. I wouldn't really recommend it or call it a 16-bit highlight, but I come back to it extremely often.