Strike Vector, released January 28th on Steam, is an aerial, multiplayer only combat game for computers that has first person shooting elements.

The game, developed by indie developers Ragequit Corporation, uses the Epic Game’s Unreal Engine. The result is a high-speed dog fighting experience filled with more explosions, gunfire, and testosterone than a 1980’s Schwarzenegger film.

General game play is pretty straightforward. Players are supposed to shoot everything with a red diamond around them. The game is very simple to play. This gives it more of an “old-school” feel where there is no story line, just some mindless shooting fun.

Players have a variety of game modes ranging from team-based objectives such as domination to death match, which I find most enjoyable to play.

The scoring is done in an interesting way. The game keeps track of how many enemies players shoot down and how many times a player crashes. There is no “death” count. As a result, the amount of time a player is shot down does not affect their ranking. However, if a player crashes, they are actually deducted a “kill” point. This makes the game very difficult, for the environments are not the easiest to fly through.

There are a lot of open areas, but every environment consists of flying through some sort of large structure one way or another. Because of this, the vectors actually have two flight modes. With a tap of the space bar players can switch between “jet mode” where they are flying, or “stationary mode”, which allows them to hover to increase aiming ability and move through tight spaces.

The learning curve is steep, but eventually players will be flying through the thinnest gaps while evading homing missiles and let me say there is nothing more rewarding.

Customization is a huge part of Strike Vector. As players rise through the ranks they unlock various body types, camouflage patterns and emblems which they can combine with any color figuration to make their personal war machine truly unique. With that, players can customize three different classes with any combination of the game’s ten weapons, perks, and special abilities.

A good feature to the game is that everyone has all of the options unlocked from day one. This means there is no disadvantage to being the “new guy” where all the people with higher ranks use the better gear.

The weapons range from homing rocket launchers to rapid firing machine guns which all have various “perks” that can improve aspects such as damage and accuracy. Gamers can use any two of these weapons, including two of the same kind. As result there are literally thousands of possible load outs.

  Ragequit Corporation is planning on releasing multiple DLC packs in the future which they promise will include other game types, maps, and possibly even a single player mode. The best part is all this DLC will be free.

The game can be purchased for $25 on Steam. With that said, Strike Vector is a tremendous value. It is a fantastic multiplayer game that will keep gamers hooked for hours, especially because new content won’t cost them a dime extra. Ragequit Corporation really delivered with this title and I expect more great things from them in the future.

Score: 7.9 out of 10

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