...I'm so tired.
Since I only have like two things to say about VeNix, I'm going to waste some space up here with an analogy. Imagine you're baking a cake for a party. You really want to impress the people at this party, so you spend hours making the batter as sweet, succulent and decadent as you possibly can. After what seems like an eternity of toiling over a mixer and waiting for the damn thing to bake, you finally come up with an absolutely heavenly cake. Then, your friends come through the door, take one look at your cake and say, "where's the frosting?" That's VeNix in a nutshell.
VeNix is a vehicular homicide simulator kind of like Twisted Metal but a lot slower. You can choose between 4 different cars, each being different enough from each other to keep gameplay interesting. All things considered, the gameplay is fine. Nothing to complain about except for minor things. For example, one of the levels has way too many obstacles strewn about it that the camera always manages to get stuck behind.
The two things I had a problem with are the narrative and the sound design. First, I'll talk about the latter because my criticism of it is short: there is none. By now, most gamers and film-goers are mature enough to realize that you don't always need background music, but silence should probably be avoided unless it's driving a point. Let's use my latest obsessoin, Dark Souls, as an example. There are only a few tracks of bgm in that entire game, but when they're not playing, the game is still full of ambient effects and hit sounds. VeNix leaves you with an empty feeling. You want your ears to be occupied by something other than the annoying sound of the gray alien's special attack that he just spams over and over and over and over...
Sorry, got lost in myself there. Let's talk about the narrative, now. Look, I'm not expecting that every game on this list has a good story, or even just a story. You can have a game just for the sake of being a game. But narrative comprises more than just story. Setting is an important part of a consistent game experience. Twin Gates, for example, wouldn't keep me coming back to it as often as it does if it didn't have the ancient Greek aesthetic. Anyways, VeNix seems to be going for some kind of "save the galaxy" plot, but all of the battles take place in some dude's bathroom or living room or something. A bit more consistency would have been nice...
That's all I got for today. Until next time, stay tiny
Links
Venix Down, 500gil: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=469
