Developer: Bohemia Interactive
Publisher: Bohemia Interactive
Platform: Nintendo Switch, Xbox One
Tested on: Nintendo Switch
Vigor (Switch) – Preview
Shooters have always been a popular genre, becoming even more popular with the appearance of the battle royale subgenre. Vigor takes a bit of this subgenre and changes some details here and there. Published and developed by Bohemia Interactive, Vigor is currently in Closed Beta for Nintendo Switch, pending a date of release.
Vigor’s main gameplay loop consists of going into an area with 6 to 12 players to collect resources. These resources can be later used to improve the player’s shelter and craft weapons and consumable items. Generally, most resources can be found spread around the map in random quantities, but better ones come with the airdrop, the main event in every map.
Since it’s still in Beta, more than that, Closed Beta, matchmaking queues in Vigor are quite long, taking up to 15 minutes at times to find a match. Other loading times have this same problem, taking about three minutes to start the game and another one for some transitions.
The graphics are really well done but fundamentally flawed. Most of the textures on items, characters, and sometimes the environment look grainy and low quality. In several cases, characters have appeared with the lowest quality possible face before loading the actual one, not that this meant much of an improvement. Audio effects have similar problems, the soundtrack is non-existent and the SFX are fine, but lag behind the player’s movements, making it seem like they’re coming from a different source.
Vigor doesn’t have much of a story going on, just a single text panel at the start of the tutorial. It is 1991, right after a nuclear war. Norway has become the last stand after Central Europe has been devastated, with a lot of people fleeing there, where they all try to survive.
As previously mentioned, the gameplay is a 6 to 12 player, third-person shooter battle royale. The difference from the usual formula is that one can choose to leave whenever they desire, which can be done through any of the different exits found around the map. This means collecting some resources and running away is a more than valid strategy.
In the case the player decided to stay and hunt other players, they’d soon find out they might happen to be at a disadvantage, since all equipment in Vigor carries over from game to game, as long as the player survives. If they happen to get killed, they lose their entire inventory. The exception to this would be their starting loadout if they happened to pay the “insurance” bonus from the three available before the start of the game.
Besides the actual matches, the game doesn’t have much to offer. The base building feature comes as little more than a reason to get resources instead of just shooting other players, offering next to nothing if you choose to improve it. New schematics for weapons can be discovered, but they only come from the airdrop, and even then are random, it ends up being way safer to gamble on finding some around the map, running away, and paying for the insurance on any following matches.
Several gameplay modes are scheduled to be added down the line, along with a season pass and more cosmetic items.
Conclusion
Currently, Vigor feels absolutely barebones, the graphics are horribly optimized and the wait times are way too lengthy, but after all, it’s a beta. Most likely most, if not all, of these issues will be fixed sooner or later. The gameplay itself is nothing out of the ordinary, with the exception of being able to run away from battles, other than that it’s a fairly standard shooter.
Vigor (Switch) - Preview,
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