It would be nice if any of this worked. The puzzles are neat, but they're neither compelling enough narratively or mechanically to be the main driver of the story, as opposed to a game like Murder By Numbers wherein dull picrosses were pulled forward by a charming mystery-comedy romp. Here the general tone is maudlin macho Takenism, sitting through dull text conversations to find out dull plot revelations while in the interim suffering through horrendous art direction, as this team never met a visual asset problem it couldn't solve with stock photos and a hastily applied Posterize filter. Every aspect of this game gives the feeling that it expects another part to pick up its slack, and when none of them do, the rope flies right away.

The problem with games like this is that when combat is the only way to get through a situation there's going to be a point where combat encounters all feel the same and the best way to get to the fun parts is to open up the console. Still, great characters, interesting structure, my only big reservation is that I thought I really fucked up during the endgame and then I looked it up and my choices didn't really matter to the final outcome which takes a bit of the bite out of all the tough questions in the final few missions.

Very fun vibes, love the Sudapilled UI choices, but two major issues:

1: this needs a compass. I get that part of the point of its UI design and collectible placement is to disincentivize reliance on fast travel and encourage exploration and hint finding, but I would like to at least have a decent way to tell where North is when I'm trying to make my way around a very confusingly plotted island.

2: I really wish the audio tags on dialogue were less frequent or that you could have a. Bubsy esque verbosity slider so that every new text box didn't come with a canned line you've heard five times already.

Otherwise, fun little murder mystery.

If Alpha Protocol is a game that shows the frustrated ambitions of the PS3 generation, Vanquish is a game that shows that generation's frustrating lazinesses. It's a game with one idea that does nothing to make that one idea work in a context beyond simply describing the mechanic. There's more fun to be had in the second after you're told "you can do a rocket slide and go into slow motion" and imagine that happening than there is in the game. Part of that is because it puts all its cool features, the rocket slide, the super punch, the slow motion, and the sometimes available laser gun, on the same cooldown so you can't juggle between a bunch of cool ways of playing, you can do one at a time and in between you have to play Gears Of Halo in the normal Gears Of Halo way. The other part is that there's no style or charm to the actual world and story, just reheated Metal Wolf Chaos without any of the chaos, just you doing Battle: Los Angeles with a guy who sounds like every drill sergeant and shooting Russian Covenant robots or whatever these enemies are supposed to be. It's Metal Gear Rising but without all the interesting parts.

I love the basic gameplay here but
a: the campaign is kind of busted and kind of just seems like a way to remind you of all the features you already have access to in Freestyle, which is the real game
b: the selection just kind of bottoms out at a certain point and I ended up with no incentive to level up because nothing I can buy is interesting
C: there's a funny little glitch on PS4 where you can only export like a minute of video before the audio stops happening and in a game explicitly about music that kind of blows.

Still, it's a game I can sit with and be enthralled for like an hour straight just putting different stuff together, I love it.