VVVVVV Hands-On - It's Easier to Pronounce than it Looks
By:
Andre Segers
|
December 15, 2011, 12:01 pm

What it is...

VVVVVV (pronounced “V”) is a gravity-based 2D puzzle-platformer...without jumping. Let me explain. The game takes place in a weird, alternate dimension where you can flip gravity with the touch of a button. This is your “jump” button. Instead of leaping over a spike-pit, you’ll flip gravity to be sucked to the roof, where you can cross over it instead.
 

From that example, the levels get much more deviously designed, requiring you to thoroughly think before you act. One puzzle I encountered necessitated my using the same set of moving platforms to cross a gap twice, by walking both on top of them, as well as on their underside (note that I said “on” and not “underneath”).

Perhaps the most distinctive thing about VVVVVV is its super old-school visuals, which wouldn’t look out of place on an Atari 2600. They’re delightfully retro, and serve as a unique juxtaposition against the otherwise modern-day use of 3D.

We were told the main game can take about 4-5 hours to play through, which seemed believable if the scale of the world, indicated by the Metroid-esque map on the touchscreen, was any indication. And though it is a port of last year’s PC and Mac title, it comes with an additional 4-5 hours of bonus content, basically doubling the length of the original game.

Early thoughts...
I very much enjoyed what I played of VVVVVV, which offers a super simple, but very challenging gameplay style, a la Super Meatboy, wrapped up in a wonderfully retro package. With that said, the gameplay is very unforgiving and requires extremely precise inputs which can be a little discouraging, even with the very generous checkpoint placement. But it did leave me wanting to play more, which shouldn’t be much longer as it will be dropping onto the Nintendo 3DS’s e-store sometime between January and March of next year.

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