On the face of it, Vanquish looks like just another generic cover shooter, but it’s anything but that. Fast movement and an incredibly satisfying power sliding system enable you to zip across arenas at breakneck pace, dodging bullets and dispatching enemies with the well-timed usage of your slow-mo ability. Cover shooting is still a viable option but is nowhere near as satisfying as sliding out of the way of bullets and missiles as you see them brush past your face in slow motion before you return fire and take out those attempting to murder you. The gameplay is fast and frenetic but gives you just enough time to catch your breath and not make it feel like you’re just making your way through endless shooting galleries. I can’t stress enough how good the moment to moment gameplay feels.
Enemy design is also top notch, with creative visuals, robust AI and plenty of variety, with new enemy types being introduced regularly throughout the campaign. I particularly enjoyed being able to break down larger enemies by dismembering their body parts before finishing them off. Another high point is the fantastic and varied level design, taking advantage of the futuristic setting, evolving battlefields and verticality to make for some really memorable sequences and set pieces. There’s some decent weapon variety to use on these missions too. It’s just a shame that they are not well balanced, meaning you’re probably going to use a similar loadout for most of the game, and being only able to upgrade weapons that are fully loaded is such a pointless requirement.
The game’s narrative is pretty generic and forgettable. It’s the sort of plot and characters that could’ve been put into any action movie and is not engaging whatsoever. The premise is interesting enough, but the execution is poor. The highlight for me genuinely might be how realistic they managed to get smoking a cigarette to look in cutscenes. Luckily the gameplay is the focus so this didn’t really detract from my experience too much.
Vanquish gave me some of the best thrills I’ve had playing a videogame. It’s slightly marred by a lacklustre story and some questionable design decisions, but that doesn’t stop it from being a stellar third person shooter.
2010 Ranked
Ranked Shooter Campaign Recommendations
Enemy design is also top notch, with creative visuals, robust AI and plenty of variety, with new enemy types being introduced regularly throughout the campaign. I particularly enjoyed being able to break down larger enemies by dismembering their body parts before finishing them off. Another high point is the fantastic and varied level design, taking advantage of the futuristic setting, evolving battlefields and verticality to make for some really memorable sequences and set pieces. There’s some decent weapon variety to use on these missions too. It’s just a shame that they are not well balanced, meaning you’re probably going to use a similar loadout for most of the game, and being only able to upgrade weapons that are fully loaded is such a pointless requirement.
The game’s narrative is pretty generic and forgettable. It’s the sort of plot and characters that could’ve been put into any action movie and is not engaging whatsoever. The premise is interesting enough, but the execution is poor. The highlight for me genuinely might be how realistic they managed to get smoking a cigarette to look in cutscenes. Luckily the gameplay is the focus so this didn’t really detract from my experience too much.
Vanquish gave me some of the best thrills I’ve had playing a videogame. It’s slightly marred by a lacklustre story and some questionable design decisions, but that doesn’t stop it from being a stellar third person shooter.
2010 Ranked
Ranked Shooter Campaign Recommendations
2 Comments
Yeah the power sliding is so good
FallenGrace
2 years ago