Catchers Review

Oh, it’s gonna be one of THESE games, huh…? I’ve had people ask me about “Vangers” for a while now. I had never heard of it before, but it caught my attention. I was getting messages asking for a video about it, and I started to notice more and more key words: racing, Russian, roleplaying, alien world, “Star Control 2”, “E.Y.E: Divine Cybermancy”.

It was sounding less and less like a game, and more like the side effects of a medical prescription. Even after playing it, I’m still not sure which is more accurate… The good news is that it got a GOG re-release in 2014, so I’ll be playing that version.

It doesn’t have the multiplayer, but it’s completely hassle-free to set up. At least until you start the game… You’ll likely wanna remap about 90% of the controls here, and I’m not exaggerating. To say they’re kind of dated is really an understatement.

What’s really odd is restoring controls from the default, because if you do that, it won’t restore ALL of them to the default. Some will be changed or stay the same from things you changed, or… I don’t know. For now, let’s just start a new game. The game starts out giving you the prehistory of the universe.

It’s very extensive, so I’m gonna sum it up a bit. A long time ago, human beings made dimensional gateways to travel through the universe. Whenever they found a new world, they’d shortly build a new gate there too, and they kept going until they had chains of worlds across the universe.

Eventually, they encountered an insect civilization known as the Cryspo. Naturally, the humans wanted to wipe them out, but then it turned out that Cryspo were actually dangerous. So the war was waged, until the humans released a bioweapon to kill off the Cryspo, but it affected them as well.

Both factions cut off the gates to their homeworlds, and the survivors were stranded. So the weapon began to break down the DNA of the survivors and combine them, or… It’s not really clear what happened, but now we have this. I know it wants something from me… Well, looks like I can click these panels here, and these… open up… more of the bug thing… Do you remember the first time you went to school as a kid? Or somewhere else filled with strangers, where you didn’t know anybody? This is that exact same feeling, but arguably worse.

Here is what looks like an arrow by the dialogue win… Okay, I figured out how to talk to him, but now I have other questions. For example: why can I paint on the walls? Does this do something? This is the first screen in the game. I’m used to games in this period just throwing you into it, but there’s something more alien about this one.

It’s not clear what these symbols do. I have an assignment to take nymbos to the sultry Incubator, and that’s it. So how does this all work? To start off with, the button on the right takes you to the store and inventory. It may be under an H. R. Giger “Bug’s Life” skin, but it’s still a racing game.

So, essentially, this is the garage. You have over 20 vehicles to choose from, which is excellent for this kind of game. The features of the vehicle, like handling, speed, acceleration, armor and shields are locked to the chassis itself. In other words, you can’t buy a new engine or armor plating.

There is customization, with the most important being your weapon layout. It uses a honeycomb grid system, which is easy to figure out: if a weapon’s too big, it can’t go into smaller weapon slot. You’re gonna need a bigger ride to do that. Players can also equip utility items, like a CopteRig for flying, or a tunneler.

This system is interesting. It feels more like trade-offs than upgrades. For example, a weapon can use ammo, but that takes up cargo space. So, instead, you can opt for a weaker weapon, but it reloads whenever you go into water. It’s not an ideal weapon if you wanna be focused on fighting other vehicles, but if you’re running something like cargo, then it can be a very viable option.

Before I go further, let me talk about the other buttons. The two on the bottom let you to ask questions the aliens, but you might not get answers. The disc on the left lets you save, and you’re gonna want a lot of save files. Finally, there’s a flashing green bug on the top left.

Green means go! The garage then literally throws me into the game world. It’s, uhh… I don’t know what I expected. I’m gonna start with the graphics. The most striking technology in “Vangers” is voxels. I’ve seen some people confused about voxels. A few years ago, when “Minecraft” clones were coming out all the time, using voxel-based technology, people seemed to confuse that with meaning that the game has “Minecraft”-like building.

That’s not really the case. To sum it up: a voxel is a 3D pixel. Pixels are flat squares of color, while voxel is a cube. In the case of “Minecraft”, voxels are used to store terrain data. Visually though, “Minecraft” renders these items in polygons.

So, “Minecraft” doesn’t have voxel graphics. “Vangers” DOES use voxel graphics. It uses a leveled terrain system, so all the vehicles on it can actually alter the map. Something as simple as seeing a vehicle leaving tire tracks behind it is really impressive.

There were off-road driving games that came after years for years that didn’t have that. The terrain is completely destructible. Weapons and crashing cars will leave impacts. Jumping through the terrain will leave outlines. If the ground is weak in some areas, it might completely collapse under you.

The “keep all changes” option was off by default, so I decided to turn it on, and that was a mistake. A big one. A bridge went from being something you could see to more of a theoretical concept. Keeping that on is, basically, New Game +, so I set it back to the default setting.

How do I describe the art style? Most everything is… covered in bugs. Most of the UI is bugs, all the people are bugs, you’re carrying bugs… But not the vehicles. They’re like “G. I. Joe” cars, if the designer had voices in his head. Mashing these up with bugs is bizarre, but it works somehow.

It’s familiar, but outlandish enough to fit inside this alien world. And wow, does this world want you dead… The designs of the aliens are fantastic. They look just as bizarre and strange as the errands they give you, yet they’re not completely alien.

Like the prologue said, they’re part human. Some of them are doing very human activities when you meet them. But even looking at this one, I have no idea how I would describe it to somebody. They’re truly unique, and their wishes are what make for the driving force of the plot.

The game starts with a simple delivery task, but you’re gonna learn more along the way. Your starting vehicle is nimble, but incredibly weak. When you go to make your delivery, other drivers will try and prey on you for your stuff. It’s not just you trying to make deliveries, accomplish quests and find stuff – the NPC drivers are at it too, and they have the same pool of abilities and equipment that you can get.

A AI doesn’t have any special advantages or disadvantages that I know of. Their big initial strength is that they know how to drive and you don’t yet. Your starting weapons likely won’t do much to the NPCs who have better cars. Even in a somewhat even match, it’s hard to kill anybody early on.

If an NPC thinks he’s losing, he’ll just book it. So, unfortunately you can’t own-zone-rolly-polly in this Honda Accord right from the get go. For now, you have to learn to drive and it really is a skill. When you’re new, it’s very easy to become trapped in a ditch and have to wriggle out.

Moving on inclines looks more like a cockroach than a car. Between that and the way vehicles can jump around, they really do seem more like bugs than cars. Even after getting more stable vehicles and beating the game, I never felt a 100% comfortable with the turning.

If this game has a final boss – it’s going up a hill and making a right turn on this map. You need to be very precise, and that is not ideal for “Vangers”. A lot of the off-road terrain can be difficult to read. At several points, I didn’t know which part of the terrain I was stuck on.

Moments like this make getting a CopteRig a godsend. It runs out of juice quickly, but it gets you unstuck without a hassle. Getting a car with good handling will save you headaches. This one rumbles around like an ox in a tumble dryer, whereas this one is very hard to flip on its side.

So, in most cases, you try to stick to the road as much as you can. At least the roads that don’t try to kill you… You may have noticed: this isn’t the best environment for learning how to drive. Well, that’s okay, because EVERYONE has to deal with it.

"G'AAAHH!!" This game is difficult… You can run deliveries at the start all you want, but it doesn’t make a lot of money. It also doesn’t advance the story, so here’s where the other mechanics come into play. Your character has two traits: Luck and Dominance.

I think Luck is more important, especially in the beginning. In the game world, you open the garages – or escaves – by using your “open” key. You can waypoint them and they stick out on the map, so they’re not hard to find. What can be hard to find are the hideouts.

Some are more obvious than others, but they spawn items inside of them. One visit to a hideout can make you more money than several delivery trips. Some hideouts are a pathway to new vehicles. Escaves will have some on hand that are broken, and you can find the parts out in the field.

After that, it’s simply a matter of hauling them back and applying them to the vehicle. You’ve got a brand new car! The challenge isn’t only finding the secret area – you also have to have a Luck skill that’s high enough for you to open it. Some items can increase your Luck, but the most reliable are tabutasks.

In other roleplaying games, these would just be side quests, but in “Vangers” they’re also a bit of a gamble. This is because “Vangers” measures time by seasons. How long they are, I have no idea. Occasionally, the tasks will have a seasonal time limit.

Get one at the wrong time, and you can fail it right when you’re still reading the briefing for it. By the way, you LOSE Luck when this happens. If you complete one, you get Luck, and you can sell it back to the store owner to get some money. It could be easy: you know – go out and squish some bugs.

Or it could be letting yourself be attacked by mosquitoes or fighting a driver way larger than you. Once you have a task, you have to complete it, or you take the penalty. You don’t have to grind it even close to max level to make money off of it, which makes doing a few tasks worth your while.

The fact that some of them don’t scale at all makes it practically impossible to complete some of these missions. Your rewards are typically the same as well, so doing something riskier doesn’t mean a better reward. Once you have your Luck high enough to open smaller hideouts, it doesn’t seem worth it to do more of them.

At least not until later in the game when you have a lot more options to work with. This is compounded by the second parameter – Dominance. The best way to get Dominance is by zapping inferior drivers who dare to come near your love chariot. Having higher Dominance means less problems in the long run.

The more bad men you obliterate – the more other vangers will think twice before shooting you for no reason. It feels incredible when drivers stop firing at you and start running away instead. But going back to the early game: you don’t scare anybody, and they want you dead.

It’s a cliff you have to get over, and nothing demonstrates it more than the first race. The wording is bizarre, but the task is simple: one escave gives the drivers a leech, and they have to take it to the other one on the other side of the map. The first one there wins.

Easy. The actual race is more of a rolling death ball, vaguely going towards the target goal. Random drivers on the road can interfere with it. I forgot to mention: when you take armor damage, you have a chance of losing an item. It can be anything in the vehicle.

You could be in the middle of a fight and have your gun pop off. Or you could be in a leech-wife carrying race and lose your leech. There it goes! So then you have to take precious seconds, backing up, turning your car around, and picking up the item you need to race with.

Every race in the game involves carrying items, and you still have to race against the season. In one race, I had to carry an... illegal Funko Pop... through an entire hell swamp, and then, right when I got there, right at the end, it moldered – the season had changed.

Minus 10 Luck, your teletubby is dead, go to hell. One time I decided to leave the escave, and I instantly died on exiting. The mosquitoes got me, so I guess the race is over for me… So why power through all of this? It’s an immensely frustrating, downright unfair game at times, and I would turn it off, but… then, 10 minutes later, I would turn it back on again and play some more.

What “Vangers” does right, it REALLY does right. Here’s what takes it from “clunky” to “cult classic”. This world has something going on… You get keys to new worlds whenever you accomplish a great feat. There’s always more to explore. The more you accomplish – the more you learn about the strange civilizations and histories of where you are.

I was always interested to see what the next world held. That being said, some of them were awful. At one point, my travels reminded me of a classic PC adventure game. Maybe one of the best ones ever made. Obviously, I’m talking about “Which Way Adventure” – the Flash browser game sensation.

A lot of things can happen in “Which Way Adventure”, and it’s… vaguely under your control. Sometimes, it’s your own carelessness, sometimes, it’s random chance, but you’ll probably be eaten by a manticore at some point. You’re interested in what’s happening, you wanna find out more, and then – BAM! – manticore… “The manticore is easily avoided if you watch for the right clues.” That’s not really true, and it reminds me of “Vangers” a lot.

Make a wrong delivery on Fostral – you might get chewed out a little bit, but nothing bad happens. Mess up somewhere else, and they might take your car and all your money, and leave you in a death trap. Being turned into a slave is the “Vangers’” version of the manticore.

It’s going to happen, but sometimes there are clues. Remember the wall painting mechanic I talked about earlier in the video? It changes colors based on the season, and sometimes, you can dig through the wall, and there’s stuff behind it. Stuff you can pick up and put into your inventory.

You can advance in rank with factions, but they want you to win a PeepShow and a Nuclear War. But the Nuclear War is just picking up kernoboos from flying creatures called jubblies… At first, I thought it was a “lost in translation” kind of thing, and it was supposed to be Kerno-war.

Like, the KRW down there would stand for it. Then it turned out the event was commemorative. It was done to represent the real nuclear war that happened thousands of years ago between humans and insects. Aliens imply that they’re functions of a higher purpose.

I think a lot of their gibberish is unnecessary, but it’s an interesting experience. You get to learn more and more about a society that’s completely alien, but has some human at its base. It’s very surreal, and the difficulty helps enforce that. If you wanna learn more of the story and the background, the game is fighting you tooth and nail to get to it.

Without going into spoilers, the game does have multiple endings. It’s a long trek to get there, and, depending on your path, it could also be repetitive. Still, the turning from the hunted to the hunter is a powerful one. After enduring constant attack, being on the offensive for once is great.

Every defeat of an enemy feels satisfying. Blowing up another car and getting his cargo early on could be a huge boost. This is what kept me going – these little victories along the way and learning more about the game. It’s an incredibly original setting, but to get more details and make it to the end, “Vangers” will fight you every step of the way.

There won’t be any spoilers in this video. The ending requires a lot of context that I can’t give. It uses very specific jargon and it’s also a big wall of text, just like the prologue was. It’s very meta, kind of silly and kind of cool. I’m glad I saw it.

Was it worth the grind at the end? Maybe not, but it’s a game I won’t be forgetting any time soon. Not to mention, the music is really catchy. It always feels like you’re going forward towards something. I didn’t always know what that something was, but it kept me interested the entire playthrough.

The same studio’s done some other games, which I’d like to check out some time in the future. “Perimeter” is an RTS prequel to “Vangers”, set in a human and bug war. I’d like to try that sometime. Some people told me they tried “Vangers” when they were 6.

I can’t imagine that, cause I had “Reader Rabbit”, not this… If this looks up your alley, it’s only $6 on GOG. It could be unfair and frustrating, but I understand why there’s a fondness for it now. ‘Cause I have some too. “Vangers” is about exploring and fighting in a surreal alien world, and I’m not gonna show everything.