Vangers
One for the road
There's a dangerous lack of innovation in today's games, right? What everyone is screaming for is a game that breaks from the norm, which dares to be different, right? Wrong, because Vangers is such a game, and when it was released two years ago, almost everyone disliked it. I read review after review, and there is a strong trend of completely missing the point of the game in them. I'd like to think that it was simply the wrong reviewers who got hold of the game, because it seems they all thought "cars!" and decided to judge Vangers as some kind of racing game. Luckily, the first review of the game that I got hold of was PC Format's, which saw the game the right way and therefore gave it a pretty high score. If I had read a different review first, I probably would have missed this engulfing game completely, as many other people seem to have done.
I can have a degree of understanding for all those negative reviewers, because Vangers takes time to get into. What I can't accept though is the fact that they can't see the game as it is and play it that way. Vangers isn't about speedy highway-style racing, actually it's more like old trading/space-sims like Elite or Frontier. What fools people is that you drive vehicles looking like cars instead of flying space ships and that the game has a top-down view similar to that of GTA. Another thing reviewers complain about is the lack of any plot, story or direction. This, in my eyes anyway, just shows that said reviewers have been too impatient and uninterested, simply the wrong people to review a game like Vangers. If you read the introduction (they probably got tired of reading more than two pages of text ...) you'll get a lot of beckground information. Not everything is explained, the rest is for you to find out, and I found it pretty obvious and exciting that things were that way. As you travel through the game universe, you'll get more and more information as you progress and things will become a bit clearer.
Reviewers also complain about all the own terms the game uses, and this is also kind of valid criticism. It's probably a matter of taste, impatient reviewers complain about the Speetle System not being called rocket launhcer, I find it a nice variation and think it's cool the game is so consequent avoiding "standard" terms. Also, it does say "rocket launcher" in the description, but I don't suppose they managed to read it (it's several lines long, and you have to right-click on the system in the shop to see it) ...
You may have noticed I haven't really said much about the game here, and that's because I want you to play it yourself and find out that way. Yes, it does take time to get into, and you have to be able to read more than three words at a time to understand it, but Vangers is worth it. It dares to go its own way in all ways, you won't mix Vangers' looks or music up with any other game, and it's one of those very few games I just want to get deeper into, not just completing. Huge recommendations!
