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Vanark Intoduction - Playstation

1,114 views · Published 20 March 2011 · 12:40 · Indexed 26 October 2026

Channel: Vysethedetermined2 · 2011 · Gaming

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Jaleco has published and/or developed quite a few games for the Playstation, many which were upbeat, unusual, and entertaining. Sadly, quite a few of the good ones were only released in Japan, but they have localized some promising titles overseas as well. BRAHMA Force: The Assault on Beltlogger 9, Dragonseeds, and Nectaris: Military Madness are a few worth mentioning. However, when it comes to the relatively obscure releases from Jaleco, Vanark is one of their best. Developed by Asmik Ace and Bit Town and released relatively late during the Playstation's reign, Vanark is an uncommon shooter that's a combination of Star Fox and Panzer Dragoon, with a bit of an emphasis on story with the ability to navigate between various areas between missions in a Resident Evil fashion and with non-stop action reminiscent to an old-school 2D shooter. We uploaded the intro over three years ago but now have the technology to properly record the game, which is necessary since the graphics are, well, let's save that for later.

The stage is set in the 21st century. The natural environment of Earth was already in jeopardy due to depleted natural resources, destruction of the ecosystem, global warming, population growth, and food shortages when a nuclear explosion put an end to the planet. The survivors decided to emigrate to Mars, "The land of hope". It was there that the "Earth-Forming Project" began, an effort to transform Mars ecosystem to that of Earth, which was almost complete by A.D. 2200. However, viruses that created the atmosphere died out, and plants and fish started mutating due to the unnatural shift in the ecosystem. The source of the outbreak was traced to a science center known as "Zero Field". In a desperate bid to save Mars and not let their efforts go to waste, the most elite members of the MDF (Mars Defense Force), a special astro trooper unit by the name of "Vanark", was sent to neutralize the threat and discover why monsters were being created and emanating from Zero Field and its "zone".

If you own a copy of the game, you'll notice the case says "Extreme Shooting" and "No other shooting game has prepared you for Vanark", and they're probably right; Vanark is a pretty intense shooting game. It's one of the few games I've ever played that has "adjustable difficulty" in more than one sense of the term. Besides having your staple "Easy-Normal-Hard" settings, you also have an "Auto" setting, which adjusts the difficulty depending on your performance in the game. While the game has seven primary stages, they are well designed and hectic from start to finish, with branching paths and enemies/bullets coming from every direction. If Normal isn't tough enough for you, you can get raped in Hard mode, or if you want a more balanced experience, set it to auto which adjusts to your ability. The Auto feature alone is an excellent feature to have in a game and it makes you wonder why most others don't have it.

The flow of the game consists of talking with characters in your headquarters and going through missions and simulations while advancing the story. As you progress, you'll gain more weapons as well as new assist pilots who specialize at different things from determining the safest routes to identifying enemy weaknesses. Characters talk to you during missions and may provide more or less useful information depending on the stage or their area of expertise, and sometimes you'll want to take different characters just for the trivial differences in the dialogue. At the end of stages, you're ranked based on accuracy and damage taken, though it is partially misleading. "Accuracy" has nothing to do with shot accuracy, but how many enemies you take down on a level based on how many there are total. You can be ranked from Novice to Ace and D-A. To gain Ace, you have to have a shot-down rate above seventy percent.

The audio/visuals are good for the most part, though the ship interior and character models are fairly poorly designed and blurry and move at a low framerate. The stages themselves are nicely designed and sharp, with plenty of effects and atmosphere. The music and sounds  themselves are good, though you'll barely hear the music over the sounds of your carnage (by default, though the levels can be adjusted). The gameplay is solid, though the ship could've been a tad more manueverable. Overall, Vanark is a good game that doesn't do much particularly different, but is a well-constructed, challenging game (the script could use some cleaning up though). We have put up an intro and sample for the game now. Enjoy.

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