Vangers: One for the Road (PC)

CNET editors' rating: 2.0 stars Mediocre
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Overall score: 4.8 (2.0 stars)
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Gamespot editors' review

• Reviewed by: Chris Gregson
• Reviewed on: 08/11/1998
• Updated on: 05/02/2000
• Released on: 07/31/1998

Confusing. Off-putting. Indecipherable. Mystifying. These are just a few of the words that crept into my mind as I wrestled with what should have been a fairly straightforward game of driving, combat, and resource management. A vague interface, nonsensical nomenclature, in-game dialogue that borders on the psychotic, unrewarding action sequences - all these help make Vangers feel as if the main design goal was to ensure that only the most stubborn, dedicated gamers would have any desire to stick with it long enough to reap whatever joy it might have to offer.

Things start off innocently enough with an intro (in the manual) that explains how humankind discovered the secret of interstellar travel through Passages, presumably something along the lines of a wormhole. Failing to learn anything from our past, we simply conquered the worlds we visited and exploited their resources with total disregard for the inhabitants - until we ran into a race called the Cryspo (sounds like a cereal from the 1950s, doesn't it?).

As the Cryspo forced the human settlers to retreat into sealed cities, the colonists resorted to genetic warfare. The result was a new race, the Lostie, which combined elements of human and Cryspo anatomy and culture. The Lostie live in escaves, underground cities built by humans during their battles against the Cryspo. Vangers, it turns out, are a clan of Lostie - and it seems that the Infinite Mind (umm, I guess that's like a supreme being or something; it's the thing that gave Earthlings the technology of the Passages) planned the entire affair in order to create the warrior race of Vangers.

That's the abbreviated version, so unless you buy the game you won't get to experience the sensation of moving from comprehension at the beginning of the introduction to dazed confusion as the narrative starts introducing concepts like bunch cycles, the "Bouillon of Spawn," the bios, and other ambiguous terms. Vangers' developer K-D Labs is obviously trying to make some comment on the human condition here: In describing the Lostie, for instance, the intro says they live "on the rubble of powerful and ancient civilizations... practic endless cult cycles in an attempt to establish a rationale for their existence." Yes, the Lostie are a pretty clever little metaphor for mankind - but a better idea would have been to attempt to establish a rationale for the existence of this game.

Of course, you're wondering just what you do in Vangers. Well, Vangers drive mechos, armed vehicles that can venture to the surface of a planet and travel between escaves. When you enter an escave, you can buy mechos, weapons, items for trade to earn beebs (beebs also happen to be creatures that roam the surface of planets), and take on tabutasks - specific jobs that can earn you the really big beebs.

And it's in the escaves that you meet counselors - caterpillar-type creatures you can interrogate to learn more about phrases like "phlegma," "Feenger," "beeborat," "cirt," and other bewildering gobbledygook. Counselors don't speak a language you can understand; you read generally unhelpful text responses as you hear a bunch of grunts and guttural sounds and stare at some crummy claymation model contorting its insect-like face.

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