Another hit from Shinji Mikami. While this definitely isn’t his magnum opus it stands close to the top of the third person shooter genre.

I’m not a huge cover shooter fan as I find them too slow paced, dull moment to moment gameplay sitting behind cover waiting for health to recharge, and problems with the gunplay. This game definitely alleviates those complaints with the slow mo and sliding mechanics that make the game much more fast paced that a traditional cover shooter and lets you adapt your tactics on the fly. There’s no “right way” to play this game because each situation the game presents you with will have you making constant decisions on the fly either taking cover or pressing out into the open to slide behind enemies or to better tactical positions.
The gameplay stays fresh for the brisk 4 hours it took me to beat this and there are just enough guns and just enough enemy types/bosses for the player to stay engaged. This is definitely a game meant to be played multiple times as there’s definitely a bit of a learning curve at the beginning but once you get the hang of the mechanics you’ll want to come back because the gameplay is extremely satisfying as you get better at it.

My main complaints with this one are all pretty minor.
A wish there were a few less cutscenes and first person walking sections which are really just cutscenes. They make the pacing a bit choppy especially with how short some checkpoints are.

I also wish the game let you manage your cool down when your health hits critical. I get that it’s supposed to be punishing but I think the risk reward of letting the player manage the cooldown themselves instead of it automatically also going into overheat can be frustrating.
Lastly I wish the upgrade system was different. As you upgrade weapons in your inventory you’ll also lose upgrades upon death which is very punishing. I wish the game found a way to reward you for not dying vs punishing you for dying.

Oh and the most minor of my gripes is I wish each chapter gave you a letter score just because I have no idea how my scores for each mission stack up.

I’ll definitely be coming back to this one on a harder difficulty and compete against myself to set new high scores and maybe try a no death run.

Really wish this had become a franchise because the story although over the top and a bit cliche was pretty fun and the unresolved plot lines would have been cool to see fleshed out in a sequel. Sam kicks ass

8/10

A shut-your-brain-off cover shooter. Shoot grunts, shoot bigger bullet-sponge guys, shoot boss in weak spot, rinse-repeat for 5 or so hours. Not a bad time for an afternoon, but not a blast either.

It would be a lot more fun if the game had a big arsenal of unique and satisfying weapons to match its sorta goofy vibe, a la Resistance or Ratchet and Clank; but the only ones that felt any good to use, to me, were the most rudimentary: shotgun, assault rifle, HMG and rocket launcher. Suffice it to say, that got old.

Stray thoughts:

- The sliding-around-real-fast gimmick is fine, but sort of ancillary-feeling. Certainly not as foundational to the game as the marketing made it seem.
- I do really like a lot of the animations and enemy designs (the melee feels really bad but looks cool).
- The story is just mind-numbingly stupid.
- Played this on the 360, and goddamn were we tolerant of performance issues back in the day; the frame rate in this thing absolutely crawls in crowded sections, and the untoggleable motion blur looks like smeary ass, but I don’t remember anyone complaining about that in their 9-score reviews.
- Music is completely anonymous—not mixed loud enough? Seems like a missed opportunity for a game like this.

Bottom line, this is crazy overrated, but it’s got its charms if you go in with modest expectations. Grunt enemies DO fly backward when you hit them with a shotgun blast, which is my litmus test for good gunplay, so thumbs up.

Vanquish is an odd beast. Its story barely makes any sense, but it's so wild and hilarious that it doesn't really need to. A boost/bullet-time gauge and a plethora of weapons encourages fast and dangerous playstyles in a cover-shooter. But despite it all, it's genuinely a great time, albeit quite short.

The only real issues I had with the game were how weapons upgraded, and how your health works. Having to grab multiple duplicates of weapons while your ammo is full really causes you to fall into a trap of using a few specific weapons for the whole game, even if other weapons would be better options in given situations.

This game has that shooter trope of "your health recharges when you're not taking damage", and all that has ever done for me is make it extremely unclear how close to death I really am. Granted, you'll reach critical health or die quickly in Vanquish, but a health gauge to match your boost gauge would've been nice too.

Also, the loading screens have text blurbs that expand upon the game's characters/lore, but alas, my computer is not a 7th gen console, and the game loads in one second flat, before I get the chance to read anything. There also aren't very many secrets or unlockables, which seems odd for a Platinum game, but a highly linear adventure isn't always a bad thing.

Platinum's take on the third-person cover-shooter is definitely a cult classic in my eyes. If you haven't played it, you're definitely missing out. You can even get it on current-gen consoles and PC, you basically have no excuse. Pick it up and give it a shot.

Vanquish might feel like a game of a bygone era, when Japanese developers were trying to make dudebro shooters and when the chosen palette of colors was limited to greys and browns, but surprisingly enough most of the game has aged quite well, and that's thanks to its fantastic gameplay, that eventually inspired other games as well. The movement is very satisfying, and the pace of the game turns it into an action game, more than a shooter, which you can take advantage of with the mechanics of boosting and AR, which essentially speed up or slowdown the action significantly. The use of them is basically the defining element of the game, and the result is insanely fun. The set pieces of the game are also surprisingly cool on their own, and deliver some really action-packed moments. It's not a long game at all, but every moment is very satisfying, and you're constantly on the heat of the action. The bosses are repeated a bit, and sometimes their difficulty comes from their number, but I thought most encounters were actually quite good, with a lot of memorable ones. Last but not least, the story is very cheesy and quite dumb, reminiscent of a B movie's plot, but of course it's quite fitting to the crazy setting and the accompanying action of the game.

Overall, a short but extremely fun game, and despite the fact I'm not a fan of shooters or character action games, I loved it quite a bit.

Vanquish is one of the only shooters released in the aftermath of Resident Evil 4 that I can claim is good with no caveats. It's a mechanically-rich game with infinite replay-value.

I really don't want to say a single thing to detract from the above statement, especially because it's so petty, but I don't want to be disingenuous about my feelings; I'd have liked the walking sections that punctuate fights removed in the PC port.

For my taste, it's a perfect game and my goty for 2010.

Pure video games. First time playing this since it came out and I'd forgotten just how much of a "video game" it is. Vanquish isn't worried about telling a story let alone a good one. Like Doom 2016 and Eternal it has plenty of modern day gaming elements like actual cutscenes, but none of that shit matters. Get out there and shoot the shit out of robots for 4 and a half hours. It does this all so right and constantly that being upset about the near nonexistent story would just be silly. Game feels great and it's fun. All I need.

Platinum's output from Madworld all the way to Bayonetta 2 is just so, so special. It's such a sadness their CEO is going to lead them to a slow bleed out from working on live service bullshit.

This game has the Platinum Games staple with over-the-top action and ridiculous story bits. I loved the setting and presentation but what truly makes this game stand out is the gameplay. Combat focuses in fast movements including a sliding rocket mechanic that is very fun to use as well as cover-based shooting to allow for a more defensive stance.

I did play this on the hardest difficulty because I felt like facing a challenge at the time but I felt like this hindered my experience with the game a little bit since combat sequences required more careful approaches and use of extensive cover-based shooting instead of the more fun open w/ sliding mechanics that can be explored in lower difficulties.

It's good but I don't really get it.

Like, mechanically, everything is so fantastic, yet it feels like the game opposes its own design? You can slide, roll, dash, go slow-mo after jumping over cover, clearly, motivating players to not use cover and rush into a fight like a badass. Yet, there are times when the best way or the only way to take down enemies is through turret sections?? It's like Vanquish wanted to break the conventions of what a third-person shooter at the time should be (Gears of War clones) yet it still adheres to these standards in its levels, enemy design, and overall narrative. It's strange. I found myself getting bored at times, or just uninterested in the combat, while other times I was really feeling it. At times, it felt like Platinum Games was trying too hard to be cool, which they never do! Sam feels like an MGR Raiden-Light although clearly being written beforehand. Some of the setpieces were jaw-dropping in concept, while others were very mundane. I feel like I can say this about a lot of the different aspects of the game. It's hit or miss. Still fun when its hits, but boring when it doesn't. Also, screw Act 5 Mission 2's ridiculous difficulty spike

Hit or Miss/10

Vanquish hurts me, because it's such a fun game. Nothing else is quite like it, even games like ULTRAKILL, which share the core concept of "what if DMC was a shooter?" go a drastically different way. And in terms of gameplay, Vanquish is damn perfect. Every single action is so so satisfying, every mechanic is perfectly balanced with every other one, and there is so much depth while remaining very accessible.

And yet... that's it. There's nothing else to Vanquish. The story is the most basic military sci-fi shooter plot you could imagine. You've probably already thought of half its plot points, and you'll probably figure out the other half by the time you've seen the intro. The dialogue is boring, the characters are uncharismatic, and it even ends on a cliffhanger. The game is short, lacking in variety, reuses its bosses like it's a fetish and never truly feels like it's making the best use of its potential. And the reason that hurts so much, even though it's still a good game on its own, is that if it, or a sequel, had been capable of truly iterating on their mechanics, they'd have been a damn masterpiece.