Game Reviews

Vektor

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iOS
| Vektor: The Courier
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Vektor
|
iOS
| Vektor: The Courier

Q: What to you get if you cross Akira, Tron, and that motorbike bit from Final Fantasy VII?

A:Vektor!

It's not a particularly funny joke, admittedly. But that pretty much sums up this stylish endless driver from CHKKLL.

Ride on time

You're a courier working in a futuristic dystopia. Apparently, couriers of the future will possess advanced infiltration, computer hacking, and hand-to-hand combat skills.

You can add advanced motorcycle driving to that list of qualifications as the game begins. Riding along a raised highway, viewpoint located above and behind our courier, you must tilt your iOS device left and right to weave between traffic.

Occasionally a rival biker or three will catch up with you and start attacking, which requires you to tap the left and right sides of the screen to slash out with your samurai sword.

Riding (o)pinion

It has to be said that Vektor gets its core elements spot on. From the accomplished retro-futuristic vibe, complete with a moody John Carpenter-esque synth soundtrack, to the satisfying feel and responsiveness of the accelerometer controls as your tail light weaves a trail through the intensifying traffic, it just feels right.

It's a shame that the developer didn't take things further, really. This is a perfectly decent endless runner, but it feels like the foundation of something more.

Like someone took a futuristic samurai sword to the game just as it was about to get REALLY good.

As a futuristic proof of concept, Vektor is great. It looks and moves with a degree of poise that few endless runners manage, even if each of its elements has very clearly been borrowed from well-established sci-fi and gaming culture of the past three decades.

Hopefully the developer will reuse these ingredients for something a little deeper and more ambitious in its own not-too-distant future.

Vektor

A polished endless runner that looks and feels great, but stops short of creating something truly special with its core elements
Score
Jon Mundy
Jon Mundy
Jon is a consummate expert in adventure, action, and sports games. Which is just as well, as in real life he's timid, lazy, and unfit. It's amazing how these things even themselves out.