David Braben’s three dimensional action game, Virus, was the late eighties inspiration for this game, V2000. It is an underrated sequel that came along about a decade after the original. Developed by Frontier Developments Limited and released by Grolier Interactive in 1998, V2000 is a third person perspective space shooter that also became popular on the Playstation. The game was nominated for numerous brilliant awards, but was not a great commercial success, leaving its name somewhat obscure.
Like the original game, V2000 centers around a plot that involves aliens using a virus to possess creatures from several different worlds.
David Braben’s three dimensional action game, Virus, was the late eighties inspiration for this game, V2000. It is an underrated sequel that came along about a decade after the original. Developed by Frontier Developments Limited and released by Grolier Interactive in 1998, V2000 is a third person perspective space shooter that also became popular on the Playstation. The game was nominated for numerous brilliant awards, but was not a great commercial success, leaving its name somewhat obscure.
Like the original game, V2000 centers around a plot that involves aliens using a virus to possess creatures from several different worlds. These aliens have opened links between the worlds and travel between them freely. Large hives have emerged and the aliens, as well as the creatures they possess
are beginning to mutate. The user’s goal in V2000 will be to locate and destroy the aliens and any uncurable mutations. The local peoples and creatures will be rescued.
V2000 has thirty levels on six different worlds where the aliens have taken over using the virus. The controls are mouse based, and are quite honestly, a little difficult to manage at first. The user can expect to crash often during his first few runs and it will seem as though the game requires god-like reflexes in order to be mastered. However, once the controls are mastered, hardcore gamers will be able to navigate in their sleep. The game is very challenging. Enemies are numerous, but there is a nice variety of power ups to help boost the player’s ship and make the firepower more impressive. Many of the power-ups in V2000 were not present in the original game, so users can look forward to a few surprises.
Aside from the challenge of the game, it was praised very highly for its beautiful SVGA graphics, which (at the time) were top of the line. Even the backgrounds featured some awesome attention to detail, such as the rolling ocean waves. Overall, the look and feel of the game were both vivid and engaging.
V2000 may have come a long time after the game that inspired it, but that just gave programmers a lot of time to think about how to improve on the original Virus game. V2000 is very challenging, and probably will just be a big frustration for beginning gamers, but those with a few flights under their belt will likely find this one to be quite entertaining.
