Developer: Soft Office Publisher: Soft Office Release: 10/16/97 Genre: Shooter
For many Virtua Fighter was the star of the Sega Saturn launch. It is easy to see why; it was the first major fighting game in 3d and was also the pack-in title for the system. But while everyone else was going gaga over that game I was more interested in that odd game with the flying dragon. Panzer Dragoon was the game I turned to once Star Fox 2 was cancelled. In my opinion it was the reason to own a Saturn. I always wondered why there were not more rail shooters in that style and coincidentally Japan had a few. Unfortunately most are outright bad and G Vector is no exception. Sometimes you have to be careful what you wish for.
G Vector is similar to Panzer Dragoon not just in its look but in its mechanics. You have separate buttons for regular fire and rapid fire and another to fire lasers. With your reticle you can lock-on to a maximum of eight targets. Like RayStorm and Star Fox 64 the more targets you hit simultaneously the higher the point bonuses. That is all you need to know. There are no power-ups or items in the game to distract you from the blazing fast action, a fact you will appreciate in short order.
As far as first impressions go G Vector makes a strong one. The game moves at a blazing 60 fps and the speed is instantly noticeable. It is a leap forward over Panzer Dragoon in that regard. But while it moves faster it lacks that game’s art direction. The textures are low resolution and the explosions and clouds are full of the ugly mesh patterns that plagued the Saturn due to the lack of transparency in its feature set. There are moments it looks good like the later cityscapes but most of the guardians are blocky messes of polygons you can barely decipher. I will give the game credit for maintaining its framerate even during hectic moments but the overall presentation comes across as busy and it affects gameplay.
While it may have the look G Vector lacks the nuance and polish of Sega’s title. Your ship is a large target in the middle of the screen and obscures incoming objects. You have a limited space to move around in and together with the viewpoint judging distance to dodge bullets is tough. The ugly mesh clouds combined with the frequent explosions make the game look busy in a bad way. This reaches its nadir during guardian fights where waves of bullets come left and right. The screen is so cluttered it is very hard to know where to move to survive. It ruins these otherwise pretty cool battles.
I question who did the balancing in G Vector as it is one of the most brutal shooters I have come across. A large part of the difficulty stems from the lack of resources. You can take three hits before death and there are no healing items in the game. In fact it does not even restore life between levels! The visual clutter makes it hard to dodge bullets and by stage four the game is so insanely fast it is impossible. Each stage you complete becomes available for practice in the Score Attack mode where you are invincible but it does not help much if at all. With a single life and three credits I question anyone who says they are able to finish this one without cheating. It is a damn shame the difficulty is so ridiculous as the game is decent otherwise.
That is not to say the game is a complete failure. The set pieces are nice and when the game is not getting in its own way it can be fun. The enemy waves are arranged to enable you to build up high scores through skillful use of the lock-on mechanic. The pace of the first stage is near perfect at this and I wish the ramp up were smoother. It would have made the ludicrous requirement to beat the game on credit to see the ending less ridiculous. It is certainly possible to get good enough to do so. But the amount of practice required is not worth it in my opinion.
In Closing
G Vector could have been good. It is technically sound if a bit ugly and the simple mechanics make it easily accessible. But it all goes out the window thanks to an insane difficulty curve that ruins all the fun. With a little bit of tuning G Vector could have been an import gem. Instead it is an obscurity best left forgotten.
