Still, there’s plenty more to keep them satisfied, and the game’s rough presentation and slightly disappointing campaign are easy to forgive when the basic gameplay is so solid.
It has quality in some of its parts, and some dogfights are truly fun and exciting. Unfortunately there are some big problems: the challenge level of some missions is completely unbalanced, and technically the game has a lot of glaring flaws.
It is enjoyable just as how is unstable. And boy it is unstable.
It can and will crash while you play it, the campaign feels half coocked, the ai is terrible, kinda broken and tends to crash itself to the ground, the sound is buggy and the machine gun sounds will destroy your ears.
However the gameplay is solid, you can manually unlock any plane you want by messing around with the planes folder, it has a lot of mods brought up by the community and its quick action mode is thrilling. There is a lot of wasted pottential and its infuriating when it crashes or when you find something broken, but i genuinely enjoyed it. Grab it on sale though. And play it with a cotroller, that way you can properly enjoy the gameplay.
This game had a great potential to be an ace combat clone with cell shading and good gameplay. Unfortunately the developer has lost interest about halfway through the project, turned to pumping out thousands of aircraft that all look the same; instead of fixing major bugs and updating the story. Even with the new planes, only 8 are playable in campaign. Suffice to say... this game is a cautionary tale of what happens to early access games.
There's a great arcade flight sim in here somewhere. Vector Thrust offers a huge number of unlockable planes, thrilling dogfights and a bevy of modes, but its abysmal campaign and wildly inconsistent quality should have been caught in Early Access.
Early access gone wrong. The techical aspects are sometimes terribly bugged, and the single player campaign is just wrong. Ace Combat fans should just look elsewhere.
Not a single element in this game stands out as remarkable or even remotely average. Flight Combat fans have a choice, they can download War Thunder for free and enjoy it, or they can buy Vector Thrust and despise it. Easiest. Decision. Ever.
Note: I did get this game for free. I got it awhile back from the developer to play but I could never play it due to my laptop. Now that I upgraded to a decent Gaming PC, I can play it and give you my review on it. Getting the game for free doesn't affect my review at all.
Like Ace Combat or HAWX? Well it's not like those games at all.
The keyboard control is horrible, it feels like you are flying a tug boat in the air. You can't change the mouse sensitivity (it's really slow in the menu screen). If you pause the game in-game, you can't view your options nor look at the controls. If you change graphic settings, the whole game needs to be rebooted in order for it to take in effect. The in-game music doesn't put you in that fighter mood/style, and the jet fighters look like they are made out of cardboard.
Sadly because of the horrible keyboard control, I couldn't even get past the prologue because the combat was clunky. I was trying to put out my flares so I won't get hit by a missile but I pressed every letter on the keyboard to find out it's not there. It would have been nice to pause the game to look at the controls, but that's not an option.
I think the only decent thing about this game is that it's Steam Workshop availability in which you can use custom jet fighter skins. But so far, that workshop section is not very popular.
I ll make it short. Vector Thrust looks bad and makes no attempt to make up for its poor graphics by having amazing flight avionics ... or at least being fun. The unlocking system is no fun, the various planes all feel pretty much the same to fly. The enemy AI is horrible (worse than even ancient flight simulator AIs from 2 decades ago).
Is there anything nice to say about that game?
The cartoon-ish look is kind of unique - ... and that's it in terms of positives (and even that is a matter of taste)
terrible game, stuck and truncated gameplay, missile system that looks more like you are throwing a potato at the enemy jet not to mention the hp of bomber-type planes in which if you shoot down 3 you run out of ammo; there are and the bugs, I would hang up, freeze, and the worst bug when buying jets in campaign mode because there’s simply no option until you reset there, now imagine you’re in the middle of the campaign stuck on a mission for having a bad jet and discover that you have to reset the game in order to progress ?! it is practically unplayable. in summary vector Thrust tries to have the quality of ace combat but it is not even H.A.W.X 2.
SummaryVector Thrust is an action-arcade combat flight simulator, with a cel shaded art style for PC. With an extensive variety of game modes Vector Thrust aims to please both players wanting to get straight into the sky and those who love a flexible, diverse and customizable gaming experience.