Vektor Review

For a generation of science-fiction lovers, the future isn't the bright, chrome utopia promised by the 60s Space Age – it's the dark, cyber-industrial wastelands of Ridley Scott movies like Alien and Blade Runner. That's the future Vektor inhabits, all while introducing some genuinely interesting endless runner ideas.

Vektor‘s brief animated intro reveals little in terms of plot, but it does establish the bleak, oppressive atmosphere. Players control a courier ferrying some illegal information as they race through traffic and away from pursuers on TRON-style light cycles, complete with trails. Slits of glowing colors piercing through a black, technological haze is the primary visual theme, and it works beautifully for the most part. However, the blurriness somewhat softens its edge. It's supposed to evoke an outdated computer monitor, the menus present the game itself as a hacked file, but the style might have had even more impact if it was a little sharper. But that's a matter of taste.

Luckily, Vektor didn't focus all of its creativity on visuals. By tilting their device, players weave left, right, forward, and backwards through crowded highways. Unlike typical endless runners with rigid lanes, players have total freedom of movement. However, the same rules apply to enemy riders that never stop coming – kind of like Excitebike. To deal with them, players can slash from either side of their bike using the touch screen or physically slam foes into oncoming cars. Both are incredibly satisfying.

The open-ended combat and fluid movement gives players a surprising amount of offensive and defensive options to explore. However, because everything is so freeform, difficulty comes not from craftily designed obstacles but from just more garbage dumped in the player's path. Still, learning to skillfully navigate such a harsh, depressing, and chaotic world is a challenge certainly worthy of a dystopian sci-fi novel protagonist.

While its influences are as obvious as they are iconic, Vektor manages to create an exciting and fresh vision for what an endless runner can be. Using the past, it offers what is hopefully a new future; rough edges included.