Simply insane!
Vanquish was always a game I meant to get into but never did. I heard fantastic things about it in the past, but had heard that the original console versions of the game were not the way to go. Understandably, I waited. I eventually picked up the Bayonetta/Vanquish double pack steelbook for PS4, and had every intentions of playing the game that way, but since I got a semi-competent PC, I went for that option, and I certainly chose the better way to play this for the first time.
Vanquish is a simple to learn, hard to master 3rd person cover shooter, where you break past the usual bonds of just hunkering down in cover for inconceivable amounts of time and do pop shots from chest-high walls for 7 hours until the credits roll. Vanquish may have those elements, but it actively discourages you from just sitting in cover all day, rather engaging you in crazy moment mechanics that see you zipping around combat arenas at mach speeds when comparing to other traditional cover shooters. The sole job of Vanquish is to provide a high-octane adrenaline high as you pull off the most insane of tricks in a fluid ballerina dance of carnage, and it fulfills that role near flawlessly.
The gameplay of Vanquish is something that just cannot be accurately described in writing; it’s something you have to experience for yourself, but make sure that if you are to play it, that you give it a go on either of the current-gen ports or the PC port. As far as the PC port, I ran into few issues but nothing that actively hampered my experience. I had brief frame drops for a while, but after doing some simple menu configurations I ran a buttery smooth 60 FPS at 1080p at high settings with my mid-range PC, and I did encounter a single hard crash towards the beginning of the game, which was frustrating, but the game’s more forgiving checkpoint systems didn’t cause too many issues. Using the mouse and keyboard for your control options ultimately feels like the way to go, here. The precision of the mouse is something that feels needed to keep pace with the rest of the game; actively making sure you keep pace with all the insanity happening around you. The ability to zip around quickly with the mouse means that I was able to get effective headshots and target weak points with far more ease than what a gamepad would provide, but I guess now that I’ve experienced what seems to be the best way to play, I’m more curious than ever to try my PS4 version to see how a gamepad stacks up.
Anyway, Vanquish may be a simply fantastic game, but it does have its faults, though not many.
The first issue I have with Vanquish is that I just couldn’t really get into its narrative. I understand that for a game that’s just SO gameplay focused, that the story is more of an afterthought than anything else, but I never really cared for what was happening at any point in time. This also relays into the dialog, which is super hokey as expected coming from Shinji Mikami, but its funny moments mostly land flat with its one-dimensional characters that just scream at each other like Gears of War characters.
I also would’ve liked to see a bit more enemy variety. I honestly like that most of the game already has a rather good variety of robot enemies with variable move sets and weapons but killing robots over and over again does get tiresome after a while. Boss encounters shake this up a bit, each of which are all rather great, but I could’ve done with a few more enemy types to really keep the pace going stronger. Ultimately, the enemy variety issue isn’t that big of a problem, mainly because the game is rather short, so it never outstays its welcome. For a “normal” difficulty run, I finished the game at around 6 ½ hours, which was just fine for me.
My last complaint comes from certain enemy types which can be super cheap in their attacks. I know that Vanquish ultimately gives the player the upper hand in combat scenarios through the ungodly speed given to you, but no matter the game, I have always hated one-hit-kill attacks, and this game has a few, which had me stuck in certain points of the game. Without those attacks, I honestly could’ve finished this game closer to 6 hours flat, but certain cheap attacks can either do the aforementioned one-hit-kill, or you can draw the short straw from the luck stack in certain QTE scenarios where you can start a QTE with good footing, but end it being swarmed by enemies, making it nearly impossible to make it out alive.
So, yeah, don’t play Vanquish for the story, that’s obvious, but if you want a stupid, phenomenal gameplay experience unlike any other, this is a MUST PLAY, and you have to play it NOW!
Vanquish was always a game I meant to get into but never did. I heard fantastic things about it in the past, but had heard that the original console versions of the game were not the way to go. Understandably, I waited. I eventually picked up the Bayonetta/Vanquish double pack steelbook for PS4, and had every intentions of playing the game that way, but since I got a semi-competent PC, I went for that option, and I certainly chose the better way to play this for the first time.
Vanquish is a simple to learn, hard to master 3rd person cover shooter, where you break past the usual bonds of just hunkering down in cover for inconceivable amounts of time and do pop shots from chest-high walls for 7 hours until the credits roll. Vanquish may have those elements, but it actively discourages you from just sitting in cover all day, rather engaging you in crazy moment mechanics that see you zipping around combat arenas at mach speeds when comparing to other traditional cover shooters. The sole job of Vanquish is to provide a high-octane adrenaline high as you pull off the most insane of tricks in a fluid ballerina dance of carnage, and it fulfills that role near flawlessly.
The gameplay of Vanquish is something that just cannot be accurately described in writing; it’s something you have to experience for yourself, but make sure that if you are to play it, that you give it a go on either of the current-gen ports or the PC port. As far as the PC port, I ran into few issues but nothing that actively hampered my experience. I had brief frame drops for a while, but after doing some simple menu configurations I ran a buttery smooth 60 FPS at 1080p at high settings with my mid-range PC, and I did encounter a single hard crash towards the beginning of the game, which was frustrating, but the game’s more forgiving checkpoint systems didn’t cause too many issues. Using the mouse and keyboard for your control options ultimately feels like the way to go, here. The precision of the mouse is something that feels needed to keep pace with the rest of the game; actively making sure you keep pace with all the insanity happening around you. The ability to zip around quickly with the mouse means that I was able to get effective headshots and target weak points with far more ease than what a gamepad would provide, but I guess now that I’ve experienced what seems to be the best way to play, I’m more curious than ever to try my PS4 version to see how a gamepad stacks up.
Anyway, Vanquish may be a simply fantastic game, but it does have its faults, though not many.
The first issue I have with Vanquish is that I just couldn’t really get into its narrative. I understand that for a game that’s just SO gameplay focused, that the story is more of an afterthought than anything else, but I never really cared for what was happening at any point in time. This also relays into the dialog, which is super hokey as expected coming from Shinji Mikami, but its funny moments mostly land flat with its one-dimensional characters that just scream at each other like Gears of War characters.
I also would’ve liked to see a bit more enemy variety. I honestly like that most of the game already has a rather good variety of robot enemies with variable move sets and weapons but killing robots over and over again does get tiresome after a while. Boss encounters shake this up a bit, each of which are all rather great, but I could’ve done with a few more enemy types to really keep the pace going stronger. Ultimately, the enemy variety issue isn’t that big of a problem, mainly because the game is rather short, so it never outstays its welcome. For a “normal” difficulty run, I finished the game at around 6 ½ hours, which was just fine for me.
My last complaint comes from certain enemy types which can be super cheap in their attacks. I know that Vanquish ultimately gives the player the upper hand in combat scenarios through the ungodly speed given to you, but no matter the game, I have always hated one-hit-kill attacks, and this game has a few, which had me stuck in certain points of the game. Without those attacks, I honestly could’ve finished this game closer to 6 hours flat, but certain cheap attacks can either do the aforementioned one-hit-kill, or you can draw the short straw from the luck stack in certain QTE scenarios where you can start a QTE with good footing, but end it being swarmed by enemies, making it nearly impossible to make it out alive.
So, yeah, don’t play Vanquish for the story, that’s obvious, but if you want a stupid, phenomenal gameplay experience unlike any other, this is a MUST PLAY, and you have to play it NOW!