"PRELUDE": One day, I watched an internet review of Vectorman and thought it looked like an interesting game. Fast forward to the present, when I suddenly find myself capable of playing such a game. After searching for it, I also found Vectorman 2, which, according to the internet, is inferior. Wouldn't it be neat to play both and compare them? I thought.


So, today I start a Let's Play based on experiences playing both games, going back and forth between them in an odd way. How far will I get? Well, I'm not good at platformers and Vectorman 2 is pretty tough, so honestly I have no idea. I might just give up halfway through.


I've already played through some stages from both Vectorman 1 and 2. Sadly, I took next to no screenshots, so I have like one from each group of four stages. I may take more in the future, so bear with me! Also, to keep this from simply being a Viz-grabbing endeavor, I'll try to say something thoughtful. If you read this, please post comments on how I can improve my, well, comments on this analysis of sorts. I just thought this thread would be a fun idea...


Part One: The First Three Stages


Vectorman (1)




These graphics are amazing.


...Okay, no, it looks better than that. The following is a screenshot taken by bombchu link, not me:





That's the only one I'll steal, just to give you an example of how pretty this game looks...and it looks even better in motion. This guy Vectorman runs around shooting metal folks with glowing white stuff, which he also collects, for a reason that was probably explained in the opening cutscene. He also has a double jump, a feature that's always fun.





The boss isn't all that impressive. It's a plane with...chain maces on it. I don't know why it took me so long to defeat it; the boss's pattern isn't hard to follow. Just run around and occasionally shoot upwards for a few minutes, and it goes down.





Stage 2 has Vectorman suddenly being a tank on some railroad tracks shooting a huge swinging golem, surrounded by more neat visuals and a slightly disorienting moving camera. There are also annoying mines floating randomly around the tracks. This stage is extremely short, as the time limit is about one minute and you're sure to finish before then, but I still had to reset it a few times.


In the third stage, I kept getting hit by enemies in the water, causing me to obsessively use save states just to keep as many health points as possible (four). It didn't go very well, but I survived. I wish there had been a little more enemy variety in this level, but it was still fun. On the visual end of things, I love the lighting effects underwater.


Vectorman 2




What am I looking at? Seriously, I just went back to my own screenshot and I can't remember what's going on in it. That's because the first few stages of Vectorman 2 are so dark. Also, at some point I'm gonna have to go back and take screenshots of the intros of both games, just because.

Note: after much deliberation, author now thinks this is a picture of Vectorman getting splattered across the floor (left) as a result of getting killed by a bug (center)


The game's intro tosses Vectorman off of, I think, a robot sludge barge and into an alien planet. The very first segment disoriented me, since it starts with Vectorman in a different form with different controls, going in for landing as a helicopter.


Then he lands, and...I appreciate what they were trying to do with the visuals - create a dark atmosphere filled with hostile mutant insects - but it gets in the way of platforming. I didn't enjoy having to shoot fifteen glowing atoms just to make sure I could see the next ledge. Also, the level design's a bit shot; often I couldn't tell where I was supposed to go, which is only exacerbated by the fact that I hardly even saw where I was!


Stages one and two are...pretty much the same, 'cept one has mushrooms.





The third one is almost like platform hell. You go to the far right, but there's nothing to do there. You've gotta backtrack and scale the branches you might not have even classified as platforms. Then it gets more confusing when you have to go back and forth between them, never knowing which tree will take you higher up! And they're filled with enemies that take five minutes to kill because after every hit they guard and then after that they shoot and their attacks are practically unavoidable!


But I digress.


On the plus side, there are some enemies that change your color when they hit you. It looks very cool. Sometimes Vectorman will say "YEAH" when they hit him. He can lose all his health, but if it gives him a paint job, he's happy. So self-centered.


The next stage in both games is a boss fight, and the first boss in Vectorman 2 is fairly wacky. I'll come back to these games yet. Again, please tell me how I can improve the way I write these!