It’s crunch time at school, and that means that I am writing papers and doing projects at the last possible moment. While I am doing that, I also play games and make sure that people get what they want. A pseudo-Regalia-like but with robots.

This week is V. A Proxy

V. A Proxy is a fast-paced, movement-intensive action RPG from PyroLith. The demo is still up on Steam and will be released for the PC at a later date.

V. A Proxy is about a battle bot that has awakened loooooooooooooong after the inhabitants of the world have been gone. The world is ruined, but it is new and it is overrun with machines from the old world.

There is a story here, but V. A Proxy is more concerned with traversal and exploration.

Once you run through the tutorial, V. A Proxy opens up in more ways than one. You are given a load of traversal options: You are already incredibly fast, and you are given a double jump, with a third jump being a dropkick; holding the jump button allows the players to push through even more distance. The traversal is even more fun because the environment is built with the movement in mind.

This world is vertical, and jumping from rooftop to rooftop makes the expanse look and feel so small, but it is so much goddamn fun moving in this video game.

V. A Proxy‘s other focus is on the parry section of the combat. The player can initiate combat with pretty much anything in the open part of the demo, and it’s good because you will need to understand how the combat and the parry work to master it.

Enemies hit really hard, or V.A. does not hit hard because it only takes a few times to be warped back to a rest site to go again. The parry gives V.A. a window to block all incoming damage, so understanding enemy patterns is key to the spectacle. V.A. has a choice during the beginning of the game of a weapon and what I think is a perk, and I chose the scythe initially, and what a spectacle it was. The scythe, I think, doubles as a gun, so the weapon is short and long-ranged in combat. The player can also target individual enemies to make fighting them a little easier, and it works because, coupled with the movement, you will be dancing all over the enemy.

V. A Proxy is a looker, but I cannot really tell you if I really like it because I was moving so fast all the time that areas were gone in the blink of an eye. The game looks like a PS2 game with a super grainy backdrop. The environment is beautiful, with overgrown skyscrapers and highways. I can’t forget the skybox that has an enormous red eye and is constantly looking. It’s all great.

The sound design has everything that makes a game like this good. The combat sounds are loud and have a heaviness to it, and the combat music is fast-paced and catchy. There is no real voice acting, and the cutscenes have voices like old N64 games like Banjo & Kazooie, which is a bunch of “beeps” and “bops.”

V. A Proxy has all the things that I enjoy in video games: Going really fast and reenacting anime battles. The combat is such a treasure in this game. with the demo setpieces V. A Proxy shows off fantastic combat, though it starts to hurt my head after a while. The movement is sleek, fast, and a joy to partake in. I was joking around sliding, and then it hit me that I should be chaining the slide into a double jump dash, and I then shot across the map.

V. A Proxy’s demo was a joy to play, and I sure as hell will go back to it when all my final projects are done for school.