Vanquish is a crazy action packed third person shooter from Shinji Mikami who is also the creator of the Resident Evil series. The main character is Sam Gideon of this futuristic third person shooter and he’s pretty much a bad ass. The game pushes the player to fully utilize Sam’s combat suit to destroy enemies in style. What you get is a game that has a quick pace, has cool action sequences and pushes your character to its limits, which may not have been something you’ve seen from Platinum Games previous game Bayonetta. Unfortunately, it doesn’t have as many incentives to keep playing after the first playthrough.
The story takes place on a space station named Providence. It is under attack from the Order of the Russian Star, which is an army of Russian extremist. The extremist attack San Francisco, which causes the United States to send their troops to stop them. That’s where Sam comes into play. He is equipped with the ARS battle suit from a military research group called DARPA. The suits creator, Professor Candide was captured by the enemy. So now Sam must assist the military while conducting a rescue mission of his own. While in control of Sam, he is supported by operative Elena and Robert Burns who leads the troops into enemy territories.
The gameplay is where Vanquish shines. There are various weapons for Sam to use in combat. Each gun is given to use in certain scenarios on the battlefield, like when Sam sneaks into an enemy base and must shoot out the searchlights with a sniper rifle. All weapons are upgradeable, giving you extra ammo and damage. The upgrades are found through the course of the stages and can only be used for one of the three weapons that you can carry. There are two grenade types as well: frag and EMP. The cover system is quick and responsive. It doesn’t matter whether the cover is low or high, Sam is always protected.
Sam’s suit has a slowdown-time mechanism that engages when manually triggered or when the suit has received too much damage. When triggered, it assists with aiming and trying to escape from danger. Sam’s suit is stocked with boosters that help him move across the battlefield with a lot of speed. It is useful for getting into and out of danger. One trick I enjoy using is Sam’s cigarette decoy setup. He pops open his visor and takes a puff then flicks it away to distract the enemy gunfire, it’s a useful maneuver to use. Sam’s battles take him across many platforms, elevators, steep inclines, dark caves and speeding trains.
Enemies come in various forms, using long rang and short range weapons. Bosses are BIG compared to Sam and are quite challenging. Be cautious because most bosses have instant kill attacks to keep Sam on the move.
The visuals are pretty slick here. This sci-fi shooter character models were very detailed, especially the ARS battle suit. All of the structured scenery and backgrounds are crisp. Framerate is smooth even during battle sequences where there are many, many, things flying across the screen.
Keep in mind, Vanquish is always going to keep you on your toes. In this game there’s always something to shoot at. There is a score display on the left side of the screen. Points go up when you score kills with style and fast completion time. Also there are challenge stages that help out with the replay value of the game, but more could have been added.
An addition of some sort of mutliplayer would have been nice but we understand the focus here. The characters never seem to fully engage you after a couple of missions as well. Boss battles can get real frustrating with some of the instant kill moves but you get used to them. Completing the campaign takes around six to eight hours and their’s not much to go on beyond that aside the challenges but I strongly suggest to not rush this game.
Vanquish is a flashy, hi-octane and a great looking game with responsive gameplay and cover mechanics after you get use to the button placement of course. The game’s story has its highs and lows but it is all about the action. The game is made to be challenging and great to play This is a good time for anyone, besides Sam is a total bad ass!
[starreviewmulti id=2 tpl=20]
Overall = 8.1