Whenever I think of the Genesis' iconic edge, Vectorman is a prime game that comes to mind. It's radical gritty style is the perfect embodiment of what the Genesis stands for, and man does it go HARD. I don't think I can properly express how much I adore this game's aesthetic, it has the perfect mixture of edge and lightheartedness that I can only describe as "brilliantly radical." I should also mention just how technologically impressive it is for the time only adding on to just how cool it is. It's gameplay is really cool too being a fast paced and high energy run and gun, although it is a bit odd at first with how it has a strange initial learning curve and a less than stellar first impression with the first 2 stages when you're confused on what to do and making things feel rather unfair at first. It's very worth sticking through the iffy start as the game most certainly picks up in the later levels where you've likely figured out how the gameplay works. If you want to know some essential things before you start though, the game has a handy info page in the options menu where you can check out some things you'll want to know, like the TVs that you'll want to break as much of as you can to get those multipliers, extra lives, occasional transformations, and even health upgrades. You won't really need to remember how each transformation mode works though, as they're mostly for context sensitive usage for optional paths that are rather clear for where to be used whenever you get one. It still has some odd bits like the overall screen size, the usage of time limits being detrimental to the whole exploration for goodies incentive, those real awkward gimmick fight stages (that first one is a particular road block for newcomers) and a rather frustratingly difficult final boss but they're not present enough to prove to be extreme issues. In fact, they're mostly solved after you can get over the learning curve. Those gimmick fights in particular are quite literally not present enough to be major issues, they all have only one minute on their time limits because you can easily take them down in less than a minute if you know what you're doing.

Before I wrap this up, did I elaborate how cool this game's aesthetic is enough yet? Because god DAMN how do you make a game this rad

Well the whole game is cool, but the style dude, it's another level

Reviewed on Aug 26, 2021


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