#IndieSelect : Vasara Collection (NS)

Disclaimer:  I received a free copy of Vasara Collection on the Nintendo Switch from developer/publisher QUByte Interactive through Indie Gamer Chick's #IndieSelect.  The game was given and accepted without promise or expectation of a positive review, only that the game be played, and experiences are shared through social media channels.  All of the words in this article unless otherwise noted are my own from my own experience playing Vasara Collection.

The Vasara Collection is a collection of two arcade games that have been put into a single title by publisher/developer QUByte Interactive, allowing the player to play either Vasara or Vasara 2 or a series of stages that pulls levels from both games.  I have some history with arcade shoot 'em ups (shmups) having played a bunch of 1942 and 1943 at the grocery store while waiting for my Mom to finish her shopping.  I also played a lot of NES ports like Commando, Jackal, Life Force, and Ikari Warriors, as well as modern takes on the genre like Jamestown.  I should also preface that I am not very good at shmups.  I tend to get overwhelmed by the amount of action on screen as well as the saturation of enemy fire.  So I went into Vasara Collection with low expectations that I was going to have fun and get far in the game.

First off, Vasara Collection has a lot of options that you can set prior to starting a game.  Everything from the overall difficulty of the game, to the number of lives your character has, to the number of special attacks you start with after each time you die.  And even before starting the game, you can adjust the orientation of the Switch if you are playing in handheld mode.  Because arcade games have taller screens than they are wide, QUByte Interactive had the wonderful foresight to allow the player to decide how they wished to play.  Now, if you are playing up to four-player co-op, playing on a regular TV will allow the game to be played in widescreen, but since I only played in single-player matches, that is all that I can comment on.

The most important frame of mind, as a player, you need to accept is that this was an arcade game.  It might not need explaining, but here we go anyway.  Arcade games are not designed to be a fair experience.  They are designed to engage the player enough to keep them interested, to make them feel powerful enough to give them faith that they can beat the game.  They are also designed to make money, which means that the player is going to die a lot.  There might be the illusion of fairness, but in reality, the cards are heavily stacked against the player from the first quarter (or two or four depending on the specific cabinet).  With this in mind, some of the features added to both Vasara and Vasara 2 allow the player to either recreate the arcade experience of having credits (which can be added simply by pressing the L shoulder button) or in Free Play mode (which is always the best time to go to an arcade).  

My first foray into Vasara was with the first game, playing in vertical mode while using the Flip Grip.  The advantage to using the Flip Grip here is that it allows the majority of the screen to be used while playing instead of having over 50% of the screen covered by a border of either black or artwork that does nothing for the gameplay.  Having played in both formats though, there are still plenty of times where I feel like a complete bad-ass, destroying enemy ships and inexplicably dodging enemy fire as it blankets nearly the entire screen.

This is where I find most, if not all of the fun from the Vasara Collection to come from: destroying large swaths of enemies while avoiding wave after wave of enemy fire while respawning as soon as stupidly possible.  At the same though, I think this is also part of where the difficulty in the game itself comes from.  Being able to have infinite lives means that the player does not necessarily have to learn from their mistakes.  They can either put in another digital quarter or just press +/- to continue when they have lost all of their lives.  There are no real repercussions to being killed.  You are able to pick up some of the P-Nodes to re-power up your ship in the few seconds that your respawned ship is invincible as well as being able to spam your special attack, clearing the screen of whatever ass-hat it was that killed you in the first place, unless it was a boss, in which case you will just need to survive just a bit longer (after you die a handful more times).

I dead.

Until you reach the last stage in whichever mode you are playing in.  In Vasara 2, you have the option to play either a six or 12 stage game and I have currently only played the six-stage game in Vasara 2 due to time constraints the day I received the game.  The issue is that in both Vasara and Vasara 2 when you die your final life in the last stage and continue, you restart back at the beginning of the entire stage with your base level ship.  My problem with this decision on the part of the developers is that does not teach the player how to be a better player.  I feel like this decision only punishes the player once they reach the last level.  "Great you made it to the last stage, we are now going to impose a rule that did not exist until now and that will put you at a disadvantage if you die and have to restart."

Chibi Seiryubo?  Why not!?

The presentation here is fairly nice.  There are some extra features although the more semi-impressive one is a collection of art that may or may not be concept art.  I wish there was a bit of explanation here because as it stands, you can scroll through pictures of the various characters in the game with zero context.  What I enjoyed the most from this was seeing what the ships that the various characters flew that was not from a top-down view.  There are some online leader boards, but they only show the top 10 in the respective game that you are playing.  No showing where you fit below the top 10, but I did appreciate, at least for the time being, that not all top 10 scores were 999,999,999, which at least shows that people are legitimately playing the game and not hacking it.

So this, I believe, is where the Vasara Collection rests for me.  I will probably never be able to finish the game, with its reliance on being able to complete the last stage with between three-to-five lives (more if you gain a 1-Up during the stage), and starting the player at a disadvantage if they do have to restart.  The music is about on-par with what I would expect from a shmup arcade game, but I have read that other people tout the music as something extraordinary, so I may have to find an isolated soundtrack and give it a listen.  But in the end, it is a fun game when you are able to dodge a screen full of orange enemy fire while laying waste to anything that comes at you.

Or maybe I just need to find some other people to play with.  Anyone?



~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
Our Soul Has Burned by Dragon Fire