Vasara Collection review for PS Vita, PS4, Switch

As a piece of history, the Vasara Collection is kind of cool. It packages together a pair of Japanese shmups that were released in 2000 and 2001, and brings them to the whole world for the first time ever. If you?re a fan of the genre, or even if you just want to see games from decades past get wider release, it?s always nice to see releases like this that bring old titles back from the dead.

As a game, though? Then you really, really need to be a fan of the genre, because the Vasara Collection is very much geared towards those people.

Even by the standards of shmups, this one is particularly frenetic. Not only is the screen constantly filled with enemies and bullets and background images flashing every which way at high speeds at all times, you also have the story coming at you in intermittent bursts via shouted Japanese dialogue and comic book-style graphics. To describe it all as ?busy? would be drastically understating things.

And, impressively, it works pretty well. You?d think that with so much action, it might lead to severe slowdown, but that?s not the case at all. Performance-wise, the Vasara Collection is as solid as they come, even on the Vita.

But really, that performance will only be impressive if, again, you?re really into shmups. If you?re not, it?ll all seem like a headache-inducing riot of noise and colour, but for fans of the genre, the Vasara Collection is probably a must-play.

QUByte Interactive provided us with a Vasara Collection PS Vita code for review purposes.