Vanquish

Blog Post: Really enjoyed this game

LouBattle — Wed, 18 May 2011 15:45:00 GMT

To make a point short and sweet...this game in my opinion rocks!! Graphics are awesome, i found it fun to play, and it reminds me of a cool looking anime mech action movie. Now this game may not be for everybody. Players looking for a lot of variety won't find it in this game. Anyone looking for an action packed TPS without much of a storyline, and anarchy waving at just about every corner, need not look elsewhere. Vanquish isn't much fun after you beat it, but it's a keeper in my video game collection. Everything just flowed so smoothly with all the destruction going on in the levels. Hopefully, a sequel for this game will be in the works in the near future(with a better story,a few minor kinks fixed, and maybe an awesome multiplayer mode as well).

Blog Post: Vanquish

Paul Shade — Sat, 16 Apr 2011 19:37:00 GMT

Platinum Games has become known for smooth, fluid gameplay and off the wall stories with Bayonetta. Does Vanquish appear on the scene with the same motion or should it simply disappear back into the shelf?

Gameplay

On the outside Vanquish looks like a fast paced third-person shooter and it can certainly be played like one. There is plenty of cover in each room for you to bunker down and pick off enemies without being in too much trouble. However, this isn't what the developer intended you to do, instead they give you something called the ARS suit and tell you to go have fun. Sadly the suit's usage is never needed to beat any part of the game.

The ARS allows you to slide around the map for a limited time while still firing your weapon. You can also slow down time so you basically don't miss your shots and you don't get hit either. The ARS acts as a great evasion tool in massive combat areas, which is basically the whole game. So what could be wrong with a suit that doesn't let you get hit while letting you dish out the pain?

First off the limited time you can slide is just that, limited, extremely limited. You might have enough time to kill three or four enemies before you run out of time and overheat, leaving you vulnerable to get ripped to pieces. Enemies don't move around too much either so you will find yourself on their end of firefights with no where free to take cover.

Second is the fight or flight system built into it. If you get hammered enough times your suit will automatically kick into slow-mo time so you can find cover or kill your enemies in relative safety. This is really pretty nice but it also restricts your usage of the suit, if you are overheated you won't go into slow-mo after you have been ripped up, and you always seem to get ripped up when you are overheating.

Next is there are no upgrades to lengthen the time of the suit's slow-mo or slide or even a way to make it cool down faster. What you get at the start of the game is what you get the whole way through until the end boss where you lose your suits safety limits and it finally becomes awesome, for five minutes.

Melee attacks instantly drain your suit and make you overheat. that would be fine if you instant-killed enemies when you used it but you don't. This makes using melee attacks impractical in just about all cases.

The problem with this is that when gamers go into a TPS they want to sit in cover by habit, it is safer and just how most TPS titles are played. While the mechanics of this game try to pull gamers away from that there is never a time where you have to use the suit to slide or go into slow-mo. In fact when I did I found myself in more trouble than when I sat back in cover because I would end up overheated and surrounded by eight enemies. These enemies are the type that only go after the player mind you, despite having a good number of AI allies on your side.

The AI isn't anything special. It uses cover and charges at you. There are different enemies but that doesn't really stop them from all doing the same thing over and over in every room. Your allies aren't much better but you can revive downed allies which is cool but in the long run not important.

The suit is cool and the abilities you have it make the game look flashy and fun. But really all it is doing is covering up for a faster paced TPS that really isn't anything special. You go from room to room doing the same things over and over.

Gameplay: 6.75/10

Story

The world has gone to hell and Russia is trying to take power, that is basically it. There are some plot twist but it feels like Vanquish dropped you into the middle of something, expected you to know what was going on, and then finished a story that you had no idea started.

The characters are pretty bland and poorly voiced. Sam tries way too hard to sound like Snake from MGS and even smokes cigarettes like Old Snake in MGS4. Burns never changes his tone of voice from the "I'm a hardened marine!" voice. The others aren't much better either. The writing really doesn't help the actors either as it is just jokingly bad most of the time.

You never hate the enemy, hell you hardly know him or why he is doing what he is doing. Typically power struggle is all I could get from the story. Outside of the end boss there are no other enemies because you fight robots the whole time, thank god because I wouldn't want to hear more voicing in this game.

Luckily the game isn't about the story, it is about the gameplay. It feels like this story is a parody of other games, even so it is poorly do if that was the intent.

Story: 5.5/10

Sound/Music

The music isn't too bad. I liked the opening menu music a lot even though it doesn't sound like anything special. Some of the in-game tunes were good and filled the background nicely when the action wasn't going on.

The sounds were hit and miss. The background sound of gunfights was well done but I don't feel the guns sounded that good when you fired them. Explosions sounded alright but I never really got a sense that I was in the middle of a warzone.

Sound/Music: 7.5/10

Graphics

Vanquish isn't ugly but it isn't awe-inspiring either.

The detail on your suit is really good, watching the steam vent when you overheat is a nice touch but when you move away from Sam it gets dull. Everything is white, bleach white or at least it feels that way. Yes there is some foliage here and there but there needed to be more color.

Breakable cover would smash in tiers regardless of where it was hit. Enemies are the infamous color red, mostly but not all of them. Hallways tried to look different but in the end you would run a straight line to the next door looking at bland scenery that was a boring color, being white.

Parts of this game look really good but some much if it is boring to look at. the animations for sliding are really cool as are the animations of Sam flipping around . the cut scenes look alright too.

Graphics: 7/10

Replay

The game takes five hours on normal. After you beat it the only thing left to do is beat it on a higher difficulty or do challenge mode which boils down into a leaderboards contest. the game has its moments of fun but there isn't anything to really do once you beat this game and that can happen in one sitting.

Replay: 5/10

Other

This game can be fun and the ARS can make it that. The problem is that you aren't ever forced to use it and leave your comfort zone of cover. I like what Platinum Games tried to do here but in the end it is just another TPS with a mechanic that doesn't need to be used. That's a shame because it looked like a blast.

Overall: 6/10

Blog Post: Game Over... continue? Vanquish

Game Over... continue? — Sat, 19 Feb 2011 16:18:00 GMT

An ode to Vanquish by Simon…

Oh Vanquish, I had such high hopes for thee,

Especially considering your pedigree.

But even coming from the makers of Resident Evil,

Could do nothing to prevent this from being drivel.

For no matter how awesome that suit might be,

In the end I’m afraid you disappointed me.

I guess I should elaborate a bit... Vanquish was one of those titles I had my eye on but waited for the price to drop before getting it.

Now I kinda wish I hadn’t bothered. I’ll put this out there early… I rarely trade in games, but Vanquish is already back at Gamestop.

Where to begin… how about the nonexistent, nonsensical story? You play as one Sam Gideon, a chain-smoking bozo who works for DARPA (Defense Adavnced Research Projects Agency). I think Sam's a ***, but apparently he's a genius who has created wondrous new mechanized body armor called the Augmented Reaction Suit (ARS).

After an incredibly lame tutorial introduces us to the marvels of the ARS and the laughably bad lip-syncing that plague the in-game communications (more on that later) we suddenly bear witness to San Fransisco getting obliterated by a solar array that has fallen into the hands of… wait for it… the Soviets! That’s right, they’re ba-ack! With legions of Communist robots no less! Oh, the humanity!

Aaaaaand that’s pretty much it... Sam gets dropped off at the array by his inappropriately dressed handler Elena Ivanova (I still can’t tell if that was supposed to be ironic or not) with Bravo Company and their commander Lt. Col Burns, a giant with a mechanical arm that can transform from a shield to a Gatling gun (ain’t technology grand?!), in an attempt to take the station back before it’s used to fire again on another target in the good ol’ US of A. They introduce a crazy bad-ass Russian antagonist, but then he doesn’t show up again until the very end. There is a bit of a side plot about Sam finding his mentor, Professor Candide, who makes a couple brief appearances, but I never really understood why…. actually I never really understood any of it to be honest.

So you guide Sam as he fights through wave after wave of Red Robots before the next strike. The plot "twists" (notice the quotation marks?) are so numbingly obvious you’ll roll your eyes. There is no character development to speak of. The actual ending was so stupid I threw my hands up in frustration and shouted a loud "WHAT!?!" at my TV. It’s one of those where the plot is so bad it’s not even funny... like it doesn't even count as a "plot" as defined by Webster's.

This is made all the more unbearable by the atrocious sound work. Seriously, it’s just plain awful. The bland recycled pseudo-futuristic technobeats are bad enough, but pale in comparison to the dialogue. Sam goes around spouting one-liners and poor puns that would make Ah-nold blush. But he is actually outdone by Lt. Col. Burns, who is, simply put, a walking cliche. Burns and Sam’s banter is unbelievably bad, bordering on embarrassing.

Graphically Vanquish ain’t too bad, but it ain’t great either. The in-game animations are pretty good and the cut-scenes are okay… but then there are the moments when Sam communicates with his teammates and handler via his helmet. You get to see a HUD and in the upper left corner an image of the incoming caller. But then they start talking… it’s some of the worst lip-syncing I have ever seen. It's almost like they didn’t bother re-animating it for the English version (I kinda want to play the Japanese version just to see if it matches up then). What’s odd though is that the lip-syncing in the cut-scenes is spot on… it’s very weird. It feels cheap, almost half done. But then so does the rest of the game.

The ARS suit is definitely the highlight of Vanquish. Straight out of a Japanese manga, the fashionable evening wear allows Sam to rocket around the battlefield with quick thruster bursts. It does actually work pretty well. But be wary, there is a limited amount of juice you can use. If you overuse the suit it’ll overheat leaving you relatively helpless for a few seconds.

Adding to the suit is a clever "Bullet-time" mechanic that allows Sam to slow down time. Zooming around behind an enemy position, then slowing time to blast the evil Russian robots to bits before they even have a chance to turn around is pretty satisfying. But this also uses the power supply on the suit, so keep an eye on the meter.

Sadly, that’s really all the game is, barring some bigger versions of the robotic menace complete with classic highlighted weak points. The novelty of the suit wears off by Act 2. The level design is pretty repetitive with lots of invisible walls guiding you. For a guy with a crazy awesome rocket suit, it's surprising where he can't go. In the end it becomes a slog through similar areas and level designs where Sam must shoot a bunch of bad guys, keep an eye on the power meter, and wait for Elena to unlock the barricaded doors or the elevator to arrive…

There is also a fair sprinkling of ‘Quicktime’ events to keep things interesting. You’ll need to be on your toes for these, but I think they are more forgiving than in some other titles. It seems like you're given more time to react to the on-screen prompts.

Oh, and Vanquish is short... like, really short. I beat the game in four hours. But considering that I was really ready for it to be done, perhaps that is a blessing in disguise.

I find myself in the uncomfortable position of not recommending this game, the first time I have done so. Vanquish is different enough to warrant a rental, but with so many great titles out there to play, why bother? The thing is, it’s not completely unplayable. The core dilemma here is that rather than creating a well rounded game with a cool mechanic, Vanquish was based around a gimmick. The ARS suit is pretty cool and is fun early on… until you realize this is all there is to the game. It never develops from any standpoint: be it gameplay, design, or story. Seriously, aside from the suit the best design decision was the "shooting gallery" end credits sequence where you get to shoot the developers in an old fashioned arcade style shooting gallery. I found it was oddly enjoyable... I wonder why?

Cheers,

Score = 6.0 / 10

P.S. Want to read more of my reviews? Go to Game Over... continue?!

Blog Post: Awesomely Unique

A23X — Wed, 27 Oct 2010 18:51:00 GMT

First off, Vanquish was action packed from pretty much beginning to end. There's always all this crazy crap goin on in the background and a million things goin on at once on your tv screen almost like some kind of crazy futuristic anime. The cool thing about it is that all of the gameplay mechanics and controls go off without a hitch. Smooth and fluid action packed mostly because of that awesome exo-suit thing. It does start to get a little old after a while and the game itself ends sooner thatn you'd want it to. Voice acting could of been better but at the same time all of the awesome fast paced action is pretty much keeping you distracted. And you're always looking for that uber cool slo-mo moment where you can either blow something or someone up while either boost slididng away of just leaping out of cover like some crazy gymnist holding a crazy lookin futuristic assault rifle. Weapon selection was my favorite. Variety was ok, but the the style in which each weapon was selected was the most creative thing anyone could do. I give props for that. It looked like each weapon would schiz out in a ball of static and electricity like some kind of tranformer changing itself into the next selected weapon. Overll I thought the game was very original and extremely unique. Now if only they can expand the story a bit, throw in some more alternate fires to weapons, less cheesy voice acting, just a tad bit more character developement and you've got yourself an epic game. Don't forget more slo-mo moments, I just love those. :D I give this title a solid 8.

Blog Post: This game is epic fun!

Bradfordz — Tue, 19 Oct 2010 17:07:00 GMT

First off, Vanquish is awesome for what it's doing. It's full of action, style, and just plain fun. It's one of those games that should have a trailer made of only gameplay, because that's the selling point. It just looks and feels so cool. There's no multiplayer, and the story is not at all that deep, and those are the only real drawbacks. If you want to have a lot of fun, doing a whole lot of cool looking stuff, all while moving faster than most other shooters, then this is a definite buy. Read on at your own risk. It's time to rant about Dan Ryckert's review!

Why oh why did the kind people at GI allow Dan Ryckert to review Vanquish?! I would usually get even more upset about such an obviously unfair review, but I'm sure most people here are aware of Dan's lack of dexterity. Why let the worst gamer, review a game that requires you to be at least a passable gamer. I guess I could see why you would compare Vanquish to Crank, but a lot of people really enjoyed Crank, and what other films are that intense and just plain nuts?! You can say the same thing about Vanquish. Give it credit for what it's doing, instead of faulting it because you're not good at it. I can't believe you used the term "one-note"! I'm not sure if it's the boost, ar-mode, or awesome melee, you're talking about. I just almost did a complete circle sliding around a robot, all while shooting it's leg joints with my heavy machine gun, followed by a backflip kick to an enemy that got too close. After the giant robot collapsed, I gave him a few good rounds from my shotgun.

GI, get it right. Ever since you guys started doing Replay, people here have witnessed how bad Dan is at controlling game characters. There is no such thing as a good gamer who just so happens to suck at certain games. That guy can't even jump normal gaps in platformers! Dan really shouldn't be reviewing games. I get a laugh while watching Replay, but not when I'm trying to figure out what new games to purchase.

Blog Post: Vanquish Review: A One-Note Burst Of Adrenaline

Dan Ryckert — Tue, 19 Oct 2010 05:01:00 GMT

If Vanquish were a movie instead of a video game, the most appropriate comparison would be Crank. Like that Jason Statham vehicle, Vanquish moves along at a breakneck pace, briefly stopping on occasion to offer blink-and-you’ll-miss them scenes that push along the barest possible skeleton of a plot. While some of the action is exhilarating, the game’s generic characters and one-note gameplay keep it from reaching the high standards set by Shinji Mikami’s other works.[Excerpt]

After a brief tutorial, you’re immediately thrust into a futuristic U.S. vs. Soviet Union conflict. Long story short: You have crazy battle armor, the Russians have an army of robots that want to kill you, and a crazy dude wants to blow up New York City. Cutscenes are brief and don’t do a fantastic job of pushing the narrative forward, but something tells me that the story wasn’t the first order of business for Platinum.

You play as Sam Gideon, a tough-as-nails chain-smoker whose voice resembles a Muppet impersonating Solid Snake. Outside of that, you don’t learn much about your protagonist. What he lacks in personality he makes up for with his Augmented Reaction Suit, which is a fancy way of saying “awesome body armor that lets you rocket-slide into robots.”

Most of the fun Vanquish offers is related to this suit’s abilities, whether you’re rocketing from cover to cover or performing a missile dropkick on a robotic commie. If a dozen enemies are coming down a staircase towards you, it’s hard to not feel like a badass when you rocket-slide away from them in slow motion while throwing a grenade over your shoulder. The game is at its best when you’re using these abilities during one of the many giant set piece moments.

However impressive the action is, the game is a one-trick pony. Boss fights start recycling early on, the weapons aren’t particularly impressive, and you won’t care about the story for a second. Outside of a “snipe the spotlights” section and a ridiculously brief zero-gravity area, most battles are of the “stand here and survive until the elevator is ready” variety. The game is also very short. Don’t be surprised if you finish your first playthrough in four hours or less.

If Vanquish had been fleshed out with better characters, more variety, and a more substantial campaign, it could have been great. As is, the awesome suit amounts to little more than a fun toy in a forgettable world.

File: Vanquish

Annette Gonzalez — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 23:52:00 GMT