Vanquish

Let's be clear from the get-go, Vanquish is a single player only, 3rd person cover based shooter with a short campaign.  At full price, this is a difficult game to recommend.  That said, I picked this game up on ebay for $40, and I'm extremely happy with it. 


Vanquish presents the player as the typical protagonist, and is bound by a loosely explained science fiction story.  The reason I'm happy with it, is because this game is just so much fun to play.   The gameplay is all based around speed - moving quickly and slowing down time.  The environments are typically large open totally chaotic battlefields with allied and enemy characters filling the air with a ridiculous amount of weapon fire.  It reminded me of 80's GI Joe cartoons where everyone just seems to be blasting away with wild abandon.  The weapons reinforce this with all the usual suspects being here, but also multi-targeting lasers, EMP devices, disc launchers and others that encourage you to experiment and treat you to surprising effects.


The disincentive to getting too wild is that taking damage causes the player to loose his ability to move quickly - requiring you to shelter to recover before you can join in again.  On higher difficulties I found the game mechanics to be well balanced, the challenge is there and the controls and tactics are deep enough to reward you for taking it on.


On the topic of enemies I really enjoyed their design here.  There's little guys and huge bosses but they all present their own challenges.  I especially liked the various mid-sized robots known as Romanovs.  I kept being surprised at all the tricks they could pull out.  Often in these games there's one tactic for each enemy - but the enemies here seemed to again invite you to try different approaches and to experiment.  


Most importantly in all this - the game is fun.  There's a sense that the designers themselves were having fun when they made this game.  There are jokes here, a script that his so corny it seems that it must have been intentional, there's a robot dance party and even an homage to DeGrassi High!  Best of all, there's a tactic by which your character takes a smoke break mid-battle.  Its goofy - I mean look at this:

You need a sense of humour to want to play as this guy.  




I hope that gives you the idea of why I really like this game.  It reminded me of playing games like Contra for my NES years ago.  At that time they could be frantic, difficult, stunning and thoroughly enjoyable experiences.  To me, Vanquish is all these things. If you have the chance I recommend you check this one out.


J