I don't think I'm surprising anyone by saying that PlatinumGames has made a fun action game here - at this point, it's something to be expected. My praise for Vanquish comes from concepts: it's a refreshing take on seventh gen third-person shooters, where speed and power management take precedence over hiding and waiting. After fumbling through the first few levels, the game finally clicked for me: I began to see new areas as gardens of opportunity rather than simple arenas to shoot through. Accelerating at top speed, slamming boots-first into a robot's face, slowing down time to shoot on the fall down... It's exhilarating stuff. There was never a time in the game where the combat felt explicitly unfair: the wide range of weapons, movement options, and open areas gave a ton of wiggle room. The tools are always there, and it's up to you to utilize them best. The upgrade system encourages the player to pick favorites, and helps cement a playstyle that works for you. I favored the assault rifle and sniper, but I can just as easily see someone maxing out heavier and/or more niche armaments. Definitely going to come back to this one someday and play it on a harder difficulty.

This was alright. Great production for sure, but everything cool in the gameplay is buried in the military cover shooting. Why does a guy with jet boots on his legs need soldier buddies to stand around getting shot at? Why is the recovery so damn long? How come you’ve got zero space to slide until they have u running down the hallway like it’s recess?

How come the weapons suck? Not every gun, but there’s one called “LIFE Gun” that shoots a big fat ball of electrical energy. But that mf curve like busy bitch and can barely wipe out one guy. LAME. The whole campaign has that undercurrent for me after beating act 2 and uninstalling.

Playing Vanquish is like having three seizures at the same time, all while jumping with a parachute from a skyscraper. It's up to you to figure out if it's a bad thing or a good thing.

I'm 100% sure that this is exactly how Shinji Mikami and all of Platinum Games percieve the United States and americans, and I'd say it's about 90% accurate. This game was made by (talented) monkeys, for monkeys, so it's just my thing. The story is stupid, and most of it is told through goddamn loading screens, that last about 2 seconds, so you better read fast. But of course it's not about the story, but the incredibly realistic and absolutely not charicaturised cast of characters; from the top of my head i can't remember a single name, but there was the dude that looked like Raiden who was really cool and smoked like 4 packs of cigaretts in a 7 hour game, the old bionic commando, who's sometimes an asshole and sometimes a little puppy sweetheart, the hot lady, who was there because she's hot, and the russian guy with the same name as the italian volleyball guy (big fan). I'd say that's about it.

The gameplay is fun even though it's pretty unpolished, and it's really easy to see that at higher difficulties (you get one-shotted sooo many times without knowing how you actually died that it's hard to count).The shooting is simple but fun, the cover system surprisingly works pretty well, most weapons are fun to use and there's a good enough enemy variety for a game of this lenght. The bossfights are really cool when they're not completely unfair, with 10000 bullets flying everywhere and 0 covers (but this may be a problem of higher difficulties), and there are a couple that stand out (like when you have to kill dr Manhattan twice). The game works best when you're moving everywhere at the speed of sound, but i'd hoped that there would have been more mechanics related to the dash, other than the slowmo. The highlight of the game though are the cutscens; you can smell Shinji Mikami a mile away.

It's dumb fun, but I think this will appeal only to a certain kind of public. It's roughnessess are forgiven only because this feels like an indie project without an indie budget (and I say this in the most positive way possible). Surely not the game of life, but you'll play this with a big, stupid smile on your face most of the time (when you're not trying destroy your room cause of the oneshot deaths). It also has the greatest end credits of videogame history.