Null Vector, Soars Out of Early Access May 3rd

By: GeekyGamerGirl87

Null Vector, is a twin stick arcade shooter that is getting ready to come out of early access on May 3^rd, 2018.

As I do have a love for shooters, I was very thankful to receive this game for free from the developers to play through for this review.

Null Vector, was a change of pace that I needed from a lot of the games that I normally do play. The game does not have a storyline at all, and for me that is perfectly fine. Every so often; you just want to pick up a game to play and just play, without having an objective.

The only objective that I can gather from the game is that you need to clear the six sectors and that is simply it. No clear the sectors and then you saved the human race. No outside crazy storyline. Just simply clear the sectors.

Graphically, the game does look nice, however it only goes up to 1366 x 768 as it’s highest resolution and 1280 x 720 as it simplest resolution. Graphics quality ranges from low to high. To be truthful, I didn’t see much of a difference between the graphics settings. Therefore, whether you play on a high resolution or a low resolution you will not miss much.

The game offers two modes: standard mode and hell mode. Standard mode is the mode you want to play if your looking to just have a simple easy light going pace of gameplay. As far as Hell mode goes, it is a tad bit more difficult but not by much, unless you add modifiers to the game.

The game does offer 12 different modifiers to the gameplay that depending on the difficulty of the game, can make the game more difficult and even more fun.  There are modifiers that take away HP and makes the enemies bullets come faster just to name a few.

During one of my gameplays I turned all of the modifiers on, just to see what it was like and I do find it challenging and fun with all modifiers turned on for the first few play throughs, but then the game becomes predictable even with the modifiers turned on. The game does offer two player local co-op, so you can always grab a buddy to play with as well.

The game is best played with a controller, although you can play with keyboard. The controller controls flow very well with the game and I enjoyed it a lot with controller. As far as keyboard controls go, I would steer clear from them. Therefore, if you’re not a controller player and strictly a keyboard and mouse player; I would steer clear away from this game.  The keyboard controls are a complete nightmare for this game. There is no way to change the controls for the game either. For keyboard, you use WASD to move your ship, the arrows keys shoot, and the enter key allows you to use the teleporters. A lot of the time when playing with keyboard; I found myself getting frustrated with the controls that I switched back to the controller because the controls left me very confused. Although, the game does say “it’s better play with controller” and it pretty much shows you that with the terrible keyboard controls.

I do feel that even though the game is coming out of early access there are some things that could have been improved on. For one the keyboard controls. It would have been nice to be able to use keyboard and mouse as well, instead of making the controls just for keyboard.  Again, as the game is local co-op and I have no one to co-op with, I am not sure if player 2 is also allowed to use the controller as well or if they would have to succumb to the controls of the keyboard.

Another thing I would have love to seen; was an online leader board added to the game. Not necessarily online multiplayer, but something that would draw you back into playing the game, as the game does not have achievements or trading cards, which usually keeps people coming back to play a game.

I do understand that the developer is trying to capture the essence of the old school retro style arcade game. Which in that essence they did really nail it, because back in the old days when there was arcades you didn’t have achievements or trading cards, but you did have that satisfaction of going after the person with the highest score. Therefore, adding the leaderboard would have been completely awesome. Even if they would have added a weekly and all time high board, which the weekly board would reset every week, that would give people a thrive to play the game repeatedly.

Overall, Null Vector is still a pretty good game to enjoy. Hopefully, the developers will continue to improve on the game even after it comes out of early access. Some may say, “shouldn’t they had address this all during the early access?” I would agree and say “Yes, they very well could have, but there is always room for improvement.” If you would like to play Null Vector yourself, you can purchase it now on steam for $4.99 USD.