Review | Vanquish

Oh those wacky Japanese. When they get things wrong western gamers are often left scratching their heads in befuddlement. When they get it right though, they seriously get it right. Vanquish is a 3^rd person shooter which has seemingly come from out of nowhere and it has spent the weekend shredding my screen with a riot of spectacle and action.

The game is set in the future where the population of earth has swelled, leading nations such as the United States to search for alternate living space and power sources. They get this in the form of a massive orbital colony which houses some 30 million souls and is powered by solar energy. And that’s when the Russians seize the colony and use its energy to burn L.A – meaning that literally by the way; the opening video clip shows people exploding as they boil from the inside out – charming.

Faced with a demand to unconditionally surrender or lose New York next, the President – seemingly a clone of Hillary Clinton does the next best thing and sends an armada of hundreds of warships to take back the colony and blow up as many Russian robots as possible. That’s where you come in. Sporting an experimental battle suit you’re to be in the forefront of the fight as well as being earmarked to rescue some genius who’s been kidnapped, fun times. That said the plot is a little ho hum, with lots left unexplained and leaps of logic that can be said to be a little too much.

But it doesn’t matter. The weak story is simply a vehicle to get the player to large set piece battles involving a grizzled veteran with a gun for an arm (of course), giant robot enemies (of course), massive boss battles with glowy weak spots included (of course) and a power suit complete with a near jet pack like booster (of course). Did I mention this game was made by the Japanese?

Culling influences from the likes of Halo and Gears of War (it looks like the former and plays more like the latter) you’ll generally find yourself fighting alongside a small squad of marines against hordes of enemies that look suspiciously like Mass Effect’s Geth. Somewhere along the way the Russian population must have replaced their human population with identical red robots…I guess. Your suit’s weapon is more or less a transforming gun (oh those Japs again!) which can morph into one of 3 stored weapons. Possible variations include your standard assault rifles, shotguns, machine guns, sniper rifles and rocket launchers as well as a rather interesting disc thrower and something called an LFE which fires a pulsating ball of…something…at the enemy which does a great job of bowling over vehicles.

The weapon upgrade system is rather odd and I didn’t catch on right away which lost me some opportunities for improvement. While auto upgrades can eventually (and rarely) be found, most of the time you’ll be mastering your guns by not using them. See if your ammo is a maximum and you scan an identical weapon it upgrades it to the next level – more ammo capacity, damage etc. Fire so much as a single shot however and scanning the tasty looking gun on the floor will simply refresh your ammo. It’s interesting but I wish they didn’t take this approach – it’s a pretty good way to discourage using variation in your weaponry.

It’s not all guns of course. Wearing a super suit has its advantages which includes the ability to ‘boost’ which is a fancy term for sliding along the ground on your ass really really fast. Triggering another button while doing this (or coming close to dying) can also activate a bullet time effect – you know the sort, the world slows down around you while you cap your hapless foes. Pandering to the need to not overpower you too much of course is that using this boost overheats your suit requiring a cool down effect. Inexplicably  melee-ing an enemy also activates this overheat which is rather a good reason to not get up close and personal with the bad guys, regardless of how fun it is to do it.

The game is on the short side of things – some even claim to finish it in 4 hours (more like 8 for me) however there is a fair chunk of replay value added. Clocking it unlocks a super hard mode and there are also a number of challenges to open up…mostly revolving around completing levels in a time trial like system. These scores can then of course be compared to other player’s online. That however is the limit of the online functionality, the game doesn’t even have multiplayer. Not that I mind however, I’ve long been of the belief that shoe horning multiplayer into every game that includes a gun can degrade the quality of the single player game.

You will have fun with Vanquish. Its rock solid gun play is matched with a visual flair that only the Japanese seem able to pull off. The sense of scale in this city in the sky is amazing and some of the bosses are near sky scraper like juggernauts. The action is great, the sound it great and the story…well not so much but who cares. Buy it or rent it, Vanquish is well worth checking out.