Its been Vanquished

Vanquish is a new release from the acclaimed game designer Shinji Mikami; who is known for creating the Resident Evil series. He has also worked on Clover Studios titles such as God Hand, and Viewtiful Joe. Vanquish is a third person cover shooter, which is easily described as a bullet hell game. It can be quite difficult at times, it is extremely stylish, and overall its a perfectly polished 3rd person shooter with standard mechanics that are typical of the genre.



Story

Vanquish doesn't have a great story, and it is definitely one of the games weak spots. Recently the Russian government has been over thrown by a terrorist group and has declared war on America, demonstrating their power by destroying San Francisco. You play as Sam Gideon, who pilots an "ARS" (Augmented Reaction Suit, I believe) which gives him super human abilities such as bullet time, super human strength and speed. He and the American military are sent to the space colony which destroyed San Francisco. Their mission is to prevent New York from sharing the same fate. The story is really quite bland, but this can be overlooked because of what kind of game it is.

Characters

There are very few protagonists throughout the game, and none of them get any real character development. This drags the game down a bit, but what lacks in this area makes up in others.

Sam Gideon, the main character, is a DARPA agent trained to use the ARS . He was a "Star" college football player and ended up getting injured or something and somehow got involved with DARPA... The game doesn't touch his background at all except during loading screens, which move fast and give you very little time to read anything. He is a typical "righteous" protagonist who tries to save lives while doing the mission, rather than focusing on his objectives unlike his marine counterpart.

Colonel Burns is the aforementioned marine counterpart, and happens to be the complete opposite of Sam. The chemistry (what little there is) consists of vulgar bashing on each other which, admittedly, can be quite funny at times. He is an old war veteran and has been given command of the marines that are left on the space colony. He focuses on the mission and sacrifices anything to get it finished, even his own men. He is an asshole to say the least, and... as a character he can be really annoying.

Elena is Sam's partner who gives map and intelligence support from a small ship in orbit around the space colony. Supposedly she is a genius with an IQ of 184, but the game's story never really touches on her past either. She has very little interaction with the characters other than giving support. Well, at the end of the game there is a not-so-subtle interaction with Sam.


 The antagonist of the game is the leader of a Russian nationalist terrorist group, Victor Zaitsev. He is your typical genderless looking Japanese antagonist who is, to be frank, nothing to write home about. He is actually in the game very little, only in the beginning and the end.





Graphics

You know how games of a certain genre look alike (Gears of War, Call of Duty, most first person shooters in general)? Well this game is the complete opposite. Vanquish is bright and vivid, but lacks a little color. Most of it consists of bright grays and whites, and whatever other colors there are in a futuristic city. The character designs were done really well, and the large enemy robots are quite reminiscent of Michael Bay's Transformers movies, but more aesthetically pleasing. The environments looked excellent as well, and when you went in to AR time (bullet time), it was a visual feast to see the bullet streams and explosions in the breif time you had to observe such a spectacle.

Game Play

This is where the game really shines. The easiest way to describe the battle mechanics is to take Gears of War, and boost the speed about 20 times. The game makes you rely on taking cover, and requires you to think carefully about your actions- much like Gears of War.

The first 20 minutes of the game will Wow you, simply based on what you can do. Sam does the most ridiculous things; such as boosting towards an enemy, kicking them in the chest, then aiming at an enemy to activate bullet time mode so he can shoot 2 or 3 enemies down in slow-mo. Its that god damn ridiculous. Of course, you have to learn the battle mechanics to do such a thing... and you had better do it fast, cause' if you run out there running and gunning against tons of enemies; you'll die within seconds. Its nice to have a game feel like you are doing everything instead of doing some lame quick time events to do such awesome actions.

The weapons in the game handle really well, and are fun to tinker around with. I did not use very many weapons out of the few there already are (about 13...) since to upgrade the weapons you either had to pick a double up while you had full ammo, or use an upgrade chip that drops very infrequently from enemies. The upgrades were not that deep, but it would have slowed down the game play if they were. Since the game does not require you to access any menus at all, it would have felt awkward to have one for upgrades and it would ultimately slow the game play down. Most of the upgrades consisted of boosted magazine or ammo capacity, but you definitely could tell a difference between the final upgrade and the one before, so it was required to make sure you keep it up.

What makes the game even more enjoyable is the difficulty. Like I said before, you can not just except to run and gun through everything, you actually have to utilize cover and find the perfect opportunities to do the awesome, over the top actions. Sometimes its hard to find those moments, because the game throws a new opponent at you every few acts and you have to learn their attack patterns and adapt new strategies. Although, the new enemy ends up only appearing a few times throughout the game and you end up fighting the same ol' red Russian robots. This may seem boring, but their actions end up switching up later in the game, adding variety. There are very few large enemies in the game, and you end up encountering one of the only ones right in the beginning, which spoils the drama a bit. When another one appears later, it gives off a "Seen it" reaction.

Now it may sound monotonous fighting the same enemies over and over again, but the game will only last you 5 hours at the latest which prevents the from becoming dry. This is kind of a down point, but I was not expecting anything too long since Bayonetta was a pretty short game (8 hours), and Platinum games made that as well.

Re-playability

The only re-playability you will get out of the game is either by trying to get on top of the leader boards, or actually finishing the challenges you receive for beating each chapter. Unless you are a trophy/achievement whore, have fun getting those. Honestly, I feel the actual game play is enough for several play-throughs, since its such an adrenaline rush of a game.

Overall Vanquish is an excellent game. It will definitely not be known for its story or characters, but rather what it has done to the cover shooter / 3rd person shooter genre. It took traditional mechanics and threw in little polished innovations that made it a truly fun, and awesomely stylish game.

4.25; 85%

sources

http://sega.eff-bee-eye.de/?p=99 (elena picture)
http://www.giantbomb.com/robert-burns/94-15663/ (Robert Burns)