If Vanquish lasted about half its actual runtime it might honestly have gotten an 8 or a 9 from me, unfortunately it does not. The great first half in which you get to grips with the boosting and slow mo abilities and their synergies embody the old adage "easy to learn, hard to master" and rewards good play with, well not having to play a cover shooter basically.

I really don't like cover shooters, I find them to be the definition of tedium as you pop in and out of cover, the challenge being more a test of your patience as you wait for your regenerating health to refill. So far Deus Ex HR is the only one ive ever enjoyed much, even Kane And Lynch 2 whose aesthetics I sort of enjoyed had utterly mind numbing gameplay for the most part.

The genius of Vanquish is that its a cover shooter only if you're bad at the game. You can play Vanquish as gears of war but the various mobility and bullet time abilities mean ideally you will never be behind cover if you can manage them without overheating your suit's regenerating energy bar. These are a joy to get to grips with and whilst I am fairly shit at this game (on normal) it was easy enough to achieve some mastery that on later levels I was barely ever in cover. And I know because the game keeps track of that stat.

Typical for Platinum games, the game scores you on various parameters though unlike Bayonetta or the like you don't get Graded, just a score which is a bit harder to grasp. I however like this system because I always find being graded, usually poorly in these games on a first runthrough to be kind of demoralising. I know its supposed to make me want to try for a higher score on a second playthrough but it just feels like a slap to the face to finish a level with some effort and get a D for your trouble.

The story of Vanquish is dumb, but not dumb enough to be funny. You play as a DARPA engineer whos tagging along with Scottish Poet Robert Burns in order to stop Mecha Putin from blowing up New York with an orbital laser. Now the scottish poet line is a joke in theory but there's an achievement called For Auld Lang Syne so maybe he WAS actually named after the poet? The main character's voice acting is also slightly annoying.

I don't really have all that much insight as to why the game falls off, its mostly just repetition, annoying and boring sections for the most part. Its also when the freshness of the mechanics had worn off and my skills hit a plateau; not that the game was particularly hard on normal difficulty. The boss fights are mostly bad and tedious and the later levels have way too many bullet spongy enemies, even when you maneuver yourself to hit their glowing weakspot I had to unload way too many bullets from max upgraded weapons to down the big fuckers.

I know a lot of the fun in Platinum games is playing it again but trying for higher scores or difficulty modes but nah, I'm good game.

Also SPOILERS I guess but as soon as I met with Robert Burns I literally said to myself "well he's going to be a boss later" and lo and behold who do you fight near the climax. The only semi clever thing about the story is that after you kill the final boss it turns out it was a remote controlled robot and not actually Mecha Putin but you flee the exploding station. You then get an achivevement called "the End of Major Combat Operations". Then "Not Hillary Clinton" kills herself and Mecha Putin implies sequel hook. Now maybe this is me giving the game too much credit but that phrase was used by George W Bush in his infamous "Mission Accomplished" speech aboard the USS Lincoln after the initial invasion of Iraq : "Major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed" Of course as we all know, that was not the end of it and indeed the US would keep fighting an insurgency in Iraq for years. This implies of course that the "War has only just begun" despite our fight in this first game being done. IDK it just jumped out of me when I saw that.