Mini Review – Vanquish

Third-person shooter.

In Soviet Russia, Augmented Reaction Suit wears you.

Gareth

I reviewed Platinum Games’ last effort, Bayonetta, and really loved it so I was looking forward to their new third person shooter. Vanquish is a super slick and stylised take on Gears of War and the like and it is mostly successful.

Whetting the appetite for that Rise of the Robots sequel.

You play as heavy smoking, Solid Snake sound-alike Sam Gideon who happens to be wearing an Augmented Reaction Suit which makes speeding around environments and feats of super human strength not a problem. It even enhances his reactions, conveyed to the player with a bullet time style time slowing mechanic. Very helpful when you’re fighting Russian robots on a shiny space station (all the story you need whilst playing this game).

The action is very fast paced and sliding on your knees past an enemy as you blast him with a shotgun before drop kicking another robot in the face as they all explode around you is very satisfying. The visuals are really nice as well, maybe not the most detailed graphics in the world but everything looks suitably futuristic and the whole game moves at a good speed even when there’s a lot going on.

Playing on Hard mode this game took me just over eight hours to complete. Played on an easier difficulty it will probably take you significantly less as there were moments which were a real challenge that I had to repeat a few times but the length felt about right. You go through the stages at a fair pace and if you’re into beating your own scores (or others’ with the online leaderboards) then this game will hold a decent amount of replay value for you. You can revisit any level once you’ve completed it and there is also a Challenge Mode to test your skills.

Overall this probably isn’t the best game Platinum Games have created, but it is still a quality product. Enemies are introduced at a decent rate to stop things becoming too repetitive and some of the stuff you can pull off is truly epic but I couldn’t play it for too long, a chapter every play session was generally all I could manage (there are five chapters all together). That was just me though and I can imagine Youtube videos being uploaded as I type this showing people doing insane things on God Hard mode and if you’re a fan of third person shooters but are a bit tired of constantly hiding behind cover then you may well get a kick out of this.

7/10