Vector Wars – game review

Since I had a little time to kill, I downloaded a game from  BlackBerry World.

Vector Wars is a space ship shooting game that harks back to the days of Asteroids and Space War with a hint of Wing Commander. You pilot a small vector shaped ship (hence the name) and battle off waves of enemy ships. The other part of the game is being verbally abused by commander of the supply ship.

The game starts off with a tutorial level and plenty of abuse from the supply commander. The tutorial is needed if you aren’t familiar with playing a two controller game on your phone. First thing is, you have to put two fingers on the screen to have both controllers. The left controller handles the ship movement. Controlling the ship takes a little getting used to. Playing on my Passport probably gives a different feeling than using a Z30. I can’t imagine playing it on a Q10 or Classic.

The right controller fires the weapon and points the ship. Therefor, when you have a gun of limited ammo, don’t keep your finger on the screen. As hinted at, you can get different weapons, which are dropped off by the supply ship throughout the game. Having the left controller figured out helps you retrieve the glowing crates with power ups, lives and weapons.

As with other shooting games, each level has increasingly tougher ships and the ships do different things. Either fly at you or shoot at you or maybe a combination. After a few levels, there is a boss ship, which can only be defeated by shooting at it; to the dismay of those who were just ramming the smaller ships.

After you die too many times, you are sent back to the home screen. From there, your points start over, but not necessarily the level. “Wait a minute! How to I build points back up?” Good question, other voice in my head.

After you are back at the home screen and hit “Play”, you are sent to levels screen.

On the levels screen, there is a slider. It’s position is at your last played level. Just slide it back to start building your score back up.

It is a fun and challenging and deceptively simple game. While it looks like a 2D game, it is actually in 3D. Beware that those 3D graphics can suck up your battery.
You can get Vector Wars and other crazy games by FileArchiveHaven in BlackBerry World.