They just don't make games like this anymore. I just played through VVVVVV, the newest (and first shareware) game from acclaimed indy developer Terry Cavanagh (Pathways, Don't Look Back, Judith), and feel that, although it clearly can not be judged in the same way as his more experimental works, is his best game yet. It's addictive, unique enough to feel fresh and periodically soul-crushing.
In VVVVVV you play as Captain Viridian, a little blue stick figure who almost constantly wears a huge grin on his face. Viridian somehow gets his starship stuck in another, less stable dimension and must find his ship, recover his crew and unravel the mysteries of the VVVVVV dimension. Viridian has the ability to reverse gravity if he is standing on the ground (or ceiling), no explanation is ever given for this, nor is one needed. Much like a great 8 or 16 bit game, the player is taught the game's gimmick early and spends the rest of the game exploring more complex and challenging variations on the theme, with the occasional quirk thrown in to keep things fresh. You will die often and the difficulty never lets up, but it only crosses into truly frustrating territory during some of the obstacles protecting the 20 optional shiny trinkets strewn about VVVVVV's world.
The player can explore the entire dimension immediately following the fairly easy introductory level and with a few exceptions can tackle the actual levels in any order. Unfortunately, this is the one part of the game that I feel could have improved: aside from the 5 or so trinkets not found in the actual levels, there's little to do on the overworld aside from walking from level to level. You can find computer terminals that mark level locations on your map, but you'll find them anyway simply by traveling to uncharted tiles on the map. Viridian does not get any additional abilities throughout the game and the structure ends up feeling like little but a glorified level select screen.
This is easily forgiven, however, due to the sheer brilliance of the level design. The variety is astounding given the relative simplicity of the mechanics and, outside of
one or two side quests, the game's difficulty level is not excessive. The world has checkpoints sprinkled liberally throughout, so death only sets you back a few seconds in most cases.
Despite this, VVVVVV is unapologetically punishing; you are going to die and you are going to die often. While even games known for their difficulty like N, Castlevania and Dynamite Headdy treat death as a failure, it it treated with so little fanfare in VVVVVV that you learn to stop viewing it as such. You collide with a spike, Viridian turns red for half a second and you are suddenly back at the last checkpoint you touched. Death will come hundreds of times throughout the game (in one room I died 141 times according to my end of game statistics), but it never slows down the game's brisk pace.
Occasionally you'll be whisked away to a dimension not on the map following a rescue, increasing the level count from 6 to about 10, but the game is still a bit on the short side for the price ($15US). I finished my playthrough and picked up the last few trinkets in about four hours, but time trials, a mirror mode and unlockable trophies should easily more than double the playtime for those who are interested. It is perhaps worth noting that a hard mode is included, but considering it ends after a single death it strikes me as more of a joke than a serious game mode.
There's really not that much to say about VVVVVV. It's a solid helping of polished, absurdly fun retro-styled gameplay. If you yearn for the days when games like Mega Man 3 and Ninja Gaiden were able to succeed sheerly on the merits of their polished, challenging gameplay, VVVVVV comes highly recommended.
Normally I would embed the link in the first paragraph, but the website name is amusing enough to post here:
www.thelettervsixtim.es
Ugh.
VVVVVV is available on both Windows and Mac operating systems. A Linux port is coming soon.
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Director of the Department of Orderly Disruptions
[Last edited by Snacko at 01-14-2010 04:38 AM]
