Vanquish Review

Cover based shooting never moved like this!

Some games like to pull you in with a deep story. Some games like to keep you hooked with huge character development system. Some games provide immense worlds to explore and conquer. Vanquish is none of these games. The key is simplicity. Oh and craploads of robots shooting at you whilst you boost around in your rocket suit shooting them in slow motion. Sound like fun?

Whilst it won't be for everyone, any notion of sense or reality is completely eschewed in favour of over the top action -in a similar manner to Platinum games' last release; the wonderful Bayonetta. You play gruff DARPA Agent Sam Gideon, sent in with a pack of marines to help liberate a space station from Russian robots, also San Fransisco gets destroyed by a giant laser or something- the story isn't really the main attraction here. Working your way through thoughtfully laid out arenas taking down robots and upgrading your weapons is the basic crux of it, with the hordes of interesting enemies increasing in toughness and volume along the way. Scenes of utter chaos are the norm, with bullets and missiles flying about in all directions, and your backup team pushing you forward at every opportunity. There is little space to breath but luckily you are equipped with the latest experimental combat suit to help you out of sticky situations.

The suit is the main attraction here, with two distinct modes- boosting around on your knees at high speeds, allowing you to gain ground and flit between cover points at whim, and slow motion, allowing you a breather to line up a headshot as you shoot past a group of slowpoke mechs. The suit doesn't upgrade, you have the same abilities at the end of the game as the start, but as you progress you learn the best ways to utilise these two functions, flanking enemies, zipping behind enemies on laser shooting walkers and taking them out, or just boosting into the middle of a group of enemies and leaving a few grenades behind. The game is constantly throwing surprises at you, and forcing you to rethink how best to approach the varied situations. Weapon upgrades are also based on how often you pick up a weapon, and happen automatically, so you can concentrate purely on blowing up robots.

The game is short, and can be completed in a few hours, especially on the easier modes, but I think this is more a reflection of the designers trying not to repeat themselves. The content of the game is very varied and creative, and ideas are rarely repeated. A slow paced sniping mission, several well designed boss sections, a low gravity section where you can walk up the walls, the list goes on. So whilst it's disappointing when you get to the end, the game is truly enjoyable and in my mind the quality of the game makes up for the length.

Basically, you zip around in a power rangers-esque exoskeletal suit shooting robots in slow motion. What more do you want, greedy! The gameplay is perfect, and I highly recommend anyone intrigued picks it up.

4.5 exploding robots out of 5

(PS3 version played)

Thanks for reading! Andrew