G-Vector

"You've got better games to play than this one."

A chase-view shooter is a game in which the player controls a shooting vehicle in two dimensions, while bullets and enemies all work within a confined three dimensional zone in front of it. The vehicles are typically (but not always) moving forward into the screen, with the player viewing from a fixed point behind the vehicle and moving at the same speed, as though you are "chasing" it. The first game of this kind was Sega's Space Harrier, an arcade game, and Panorama Cotton on the Sega Genesis represents possibly the pinnacle of old-school shooters of this sub-genre.

I've always been a big fan of these types of games. I believe they can employ the speed and naturality of 2D with the depth of 3D simultaneously, which is something I haven't really found anywhere else. After getting so much enjoyment out of the chase-shooters of yesteryear, I was on the lookout for an installment on a 32-bit platform. Imagine my delight when a game I found for my Sega Saturn turned out to be a chase-view; then imagine my disappointment when this game turned out to be the single worst title I have ever played on the system. Enter G-Vector.

The biggest reason why G-Vector is so awful has to do with the most important aspect of any video game - the gameplay. This is another one of those titles that makes you wonder if anyone played it before it was published. Frankly, after using a cheat code to see the whole game, I would be surprised if anybody could actually beat it all, and this is coming from someone who plays a lot of very difficult shmups. There are so many problems it's hard to know where to start.

Like Panzer Dragoon, G-Vector gives you a large sight in front of your standard-issue generic shooter vehicle, and by passing it over enemies and some objects, you automatically "lock on" to it, and can keep locking on to others until you decide to fire. The result is a weak but accurate homing shot. There is also a basic gun that fires wherever the sight is, and that's about all there is to it. A fires the gun, B launches lock ons, and C is rapid auto-fire for the gun. Shoot down enemies, and don't get shot down yourself; not a difficult concept.

G-Vector supports both analogue and digital directional control, but the difference between the two is very significant. When using analogue, the your ship's position on the screen will always be a equivalent to where your thumb is on the pad. In other words, if you let the analogue go to its default center position, the ship will go to the center of the screen. This still allows decent control of the ship, but it seriously compromises your ability to aim. Sadly, the sight does not remain fixed directly in front of your ship, but rather swings around "realistically" with your ship to stay in line with its nose, similar to Star Fox, but much more sloppy. In analogue mode it is almost impossible to hold your site on something. Digital control, which uses the standard and predictable movement scheme, makes this a little easier to deal with, but it is still a big problem no matter what.

The real problems with the gameplay start with the enemies and their weapons. The formations of enemies, as well as their individual size, are not perfectly tuned, but they actually aren't that bad until you realize that the lousy control won't let you shoot at some of them. The big problem, however, is their bullets. There's something about the perspective of this particular game, which must be seen to be understood, that makes it almost impossible to properly judge where many of the bullets are going, or how close they are in proximity to your ship. This is not something you'll see in many games. To make matters worse, the collision areas are poorly designated, and you'll often be wondering why you did or did not just get hit. Finally, enemies don't just fire their bullets; they spray them in lines. When enough enemies do this, the screen will become so full of bullets that you won't be able to see what any of them are really doing at all. All these things considered, G-Vector is very often unplayable.

Also, I feel that there were many other loose ends in the gameplay that show lack of polish. Some enemies pop out of nowhere and take shots at you that are too cheap. When one boss enters, the camera view changes drastically, and you are unable to see where you are going or how to steer your ship. Nevertheless, enemies still fire at you during that time, and you'll be lucky not to take damage. There are stupid things like this all over the place.

At best, the gameplay of G-Vector needed a little more time in testing to be refined. At worst, it needed a total overhauling and a complete change in process on the part of the developers. I lean towards the latter theory. What a waste.

Graphically, this title actually isn't that bad. Of course, it came out late enough in the Saturn's life that there were good graphics libraries available for development, so it had better be decent, but it is. G-Vector uses fully textured and Goraud-shaded polygons for terrain and vehicles, both yours and the enemy's. Distant backgrounds are a combination of rotating images and mode-7 planes, and bullets are made of sprites. Unfortunately there are no real transparencies, everything looks quite grainy, and there are also a fair amount of drawing glitches that show polygons that shouldn't be there. This isn't too bad until the slowdown kicks in, which can get very severe, but the engine still churns out a halfway impressive amount of activity. At least one gets a sense of what the Saturn could've done with a good game of this kind.

The music, like the graphics, is not that bad either. In fact, it's downright catchy in a couple places, however in the end it doesn't escape being generic mid-late 90's techno, with more than its fair share of cliches. It's certainly nothing I would ever listen to outside of the game, like I often do with other soundtracks, but I'll definitely say this is passable.

Sound effects are not abundant, and they don't play a huge role in G-Vector. What is there is nothing unordinary, and is usually pretty bland. None of the effects are especially grating, but that doesn't make this a positive aspect of the game. I would say that all the repetitious noise is actually a little annoying after a while.

People who actually want to play this mess again can do so in either a standard game or a score attack, but there are no difficulty settings, so don't expect a whole lot of replay value in terms of variation. There's not much to G-Vector other than the main seven levels.

Finally, I would just like to note that for some crazy reason, all of the options everywhere in the game are backwards. Off really means on, stereo really means mono, vice versa and etc. I have no idea why this is so, but it sure is stupid.

So in conclusion, as I'm sure you've figured out by now, this game is not a good choice for you. Even if I'm not getting something and G-Vector is actually playable, I can still promise that you've got better games to play. Here's one Saturn import that thankfully didn't make it to the US.

Reviewer's Score: 4/10, Originally Posted: 09/14/04