Review of Vanquish

Vanquish is the latest third person shooter from acclaimed director Shinji Mikami (he who designed Resident Evil) and now that I’ve played the game right though, it’s time for a review. But before we begin here’s something to ponder. Have you ever thought how bad things would really be if the future was how movies and video games predict? Why when we’re supposedly all in favour of peace, freedom and tranquillity for all do we create visions of the future that always seem to portray such things as; Nuclear Fallout, Alien Invasions, Zombies and Giant Destructive Robots? Whatever the reason may be, if we are to believe that Platinum Game’s latest offering; Vanquish is an insight to our future then I’m afraid we should all be worried.

So it’s the future and it appears that the long standing animosity between the US and Russia has still not worked itself out. Why you ask? Well possibly the unexpected mass destruction of San Francisco by a Russian military faction probably has something to do with it. Now with a microwave weapon powerful enough to destroy an entire city, the Russians are demanding the total surrender of the US within 10 hours. If the US President fails to surrender the super weapon will be fired upon New York City, just think how many Yellow Taxi’s and Bagels will go up in flames!

So with no other choice to make the President orders an immediate military strike upon the Russian space colony that holds the weapon. Esteemed war hero and ruthless solider LT.Colonel Robert Burns has been drafted in to lead the force. You take control of Sam Gideon, a researcher at The Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (or DARPA for short). Sam is supposedly accompanying the mission to test his latest invention, the Augmented Reaction Suit (ARS). It soon turns out however that he is literally going undercover in his special suit in search of his friend, the kidnapped Dr Candine. Candine is the original designer of the weapon technology behind the Russian attack and quite possibly is the only guy who knows how to destroy the weapon of mass destruction.

That’s the story out of the way but what is the game like? Well let me ask you this: Can you imagine putting Gears of War, Killzone and Transformers into a food blender and mixing them down into a rather smooth paste? If you can then you have a terribly over active imagination. For the rest of you I’ll have to try and describe Vanquish with some choice phrases instead:

Third Person Shooter, Science Fiction, Bullet Time, Advanced Weapons, Cover Mechanics, Robotic Enemies and Giant Bosses.

Your character Sam is nothing but a tough misunderstood guy in a suit which just so happens to make him the world’s greatest solider. The ARS is so powerful that Sam can run, jump, slide, punch and shoot with all the power of a superhero – the problem is that the ARS too powerful for its own good and will regularly overheat if any of its functions are overused. So at first it may appear that you’re too strong for the game as you pull off amazing stunts like sliding around on the floor with rocket speed, just remember you’ll have be careful not to use too much juice and leave yourself vulnerable to attack while your ARS is cooling down.

The game itself plays like Gears of War; you and your group of brick shithouse military ‘buddies’ move from area to area encountering hordes of robot enemies as you go. When it comes to the frantic firefights you need to know where the power of your suit ends and the use of cover mechanics begin. It’s all very well having a powerful suit that can make you slide around and enter bullet time at will, but it won’t help you out that much when it suddenly starts to overheat and left you’re face to face with dozens of baddies or a boss the size of a building. The cover system works just as it does in GOW, press the X button when you’re near a wall or crate and you’ll be instantly covering behind it ready to shoot at distance.

There’s a lot to like about Vanquish. There’s almost no let-up in the action, for every 30 seconds of walking around you’ll have three minutes of frantic shooting. Yes when you boil it down you’re just walking from scene to scene waiting to either trigger off the next cut scene or firefight but on the other hand you’ll never get lost or have to wait long for something to shoot at. Graphically Vanquish is yet another HD game that looks stunning but in a bland sort of way. Uninspiring futuristic locations with only the occasional fire to color things greet you at every turn. It’s only when things get busy and the guns start firing that you realise how much is going on and how smooth the framerate is (most of the time). Explosions and bullets of all color appear all of a sudden from everywhere and when you combine that with oodles of motion blur, you might think you’re back in the 60’s.

With the good inevitably comes the bad. The story and characters in Vanquish are so generic and stereotypical that the cutscenes end up being funnier than they should. The simple cover mechanics are a joy to use but you’ll soon work out that you can shoot through many of the obstacles whilst being fully cloaked from harm. The enemy AI is pretty bad too, sniping them at a distance is easy when they just stand there waiting to be ‘activated’ by your presence. Even when they do know you’re there it’s usually quite easy to shoot their heads when they’re ducking for cover.

Overall Vanquish is a fun action shooter with great presentation; it’s a single player affair that concentrates of the shooting and getting through the game quickly with a decent highscore. The massive set pieces and boss battles are great but don’t set the game apart from the competition. By all means buy and enjoy Vanquish but with the only replay value being online Leaderboards and local highscore, don’t expect it to stay in your console for more than two weeks. 6 out of 10.

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Related: Vanquish review, Gears of War