Gamer--freakz

Gamespot score:9.0(Editor's choice)

my score:8.0

(+)Pros:-Solid shooting mechanics,-provides a good variety of innovative looking and well designed weapons,-great visuals,-suit mechanics are amazing and adds a great sense of speed to the game,- slow motions when nearing death increase the tension,-little but incredibly fun boss fights.

(-)Cons:-Short,- too little replay value.

Gameplay time:Less than 10 hours

Like shooters? Then you are in luck today. Like innovative and creative shooters? Then you are in for a treat. If you people are tired of old genric run of the mill shooters like socom or call of duty, try something like vanquish. Vanquish is different from most modern day shooters, and while it may not be the most realistic one, it makes up for it with insane speed antics, an amazing world, and fantastic gameplay. Vanquish is perfect for those looking for a unique and innovative shooter. Its even better if you just like shooters as a whole, since vanquish, by itself, is already a generally fun and great shooter. Vanquish goes out of the box, and lets you do stuff that many other normal shooters don't usually let you do.




Vanquish's backstory is something pretty original, but it might seem a little too familiar at certain parts of the game. Basically, one day, the united states get bombarded by a satellite laser, destroying the city and melting people up. America sends a team of its best soldiers into space to stop this big ass laser shooting satellite, also known as a colony. Amongst its soldiers is sam gideon, an agent of nevac, a specialized group with some pretty impressive technology. Sam gideon is armed with a state of the art combat suit, which makes him far superior than all the other US soldiers. Sam is stationed into a squad led by burns, a big burly squad leader that obviously doesnt click well together with sam himself. Together with burns and his squad, sam heads into the colony, to stop whoever is responsible for attacking the united states, and also to find a professor of nevac who happens to be on the colony himself.





The visuals are downright fantastic.

Vanquish is a sci-fi third person shooter, and if you couldn't tell already, its a pretty damn good looking one. Since the setting itself is more or less futuristic sci-fi, everything looks incredibly mechanical and detailed, making it one hell of a beautiful game. If you robots, moving gears, tires and constantly transforming robotic parts, vanquish is like a gem in a treasure chest. Yes, its that beautiful, everything, ranging from enemies, characters, environments to the weapons...it all looks gorgeous. Speaking of weapons, this game is pretty creative when it comes to them. In this game, there is only 1 weapon, and that is the BLADE, a highly technoligal transforming gun that is held only by sam. Through the game, he collects modules and blueprints, allowing his gun to transform into what he just collected.

You get to pick great weapons, ranging from machine guns, heavy machine guns, shotguns, disc launchers, electric guns, rocket launchers and more. You get to equip 3 modules at once, along with a grenade. You will find boxes or weapon stations throughout the game, allowing to switch weapons if you want to, or need to. The shooting feels great, every shot you take makes you feel satisfied as you see your mechanical foes blow up into bits, and combined with the fact that there are so many guns to test out, you got yourself one hell of an awesome shooter. Oh and lets not forget the great boss fights. Though little, these bad boys look awesome and have awesome attacks to compliment with thier awesomeness.




Detailed mechanical foes with terrifying abilities and attacks stand in your path.

 Of course, vanquish is far more than that, what makes vanquish so special....are its suit mechanics. As said earlier, sam gideon is armed with a state of the art combat suit, which makes him far superior to his squad mates. The suit that sam wears allows him to speed across the battlefield at unbelievable speeds, and this is fun as hell. Many a time you are forced to you your high powered suit to speed to a certain location for meeting the game's objectives, but when you use it on your own accord in battle, you will find out how fun is it to zoom around. Your suit grants you 3 features, one is to zoom around the field at insane speeds, one is to allow melee attacks (which may I add, are mostly one hit KO), and another is to slow down time when you are near death. All 3 of these features, though are useful in thier own ways, drain your suit energy.

When you are out of suit energy, you cannot use any suit functions until your energy is restored. Your suit energy auto regenerates, so no problem there. The melee attack is self explainatory, it gives your enemy a few good smacks. You can also dash up to an enemy and give them a nice uppercut kick. The dash is awesome, it speeds you across the battlefield so fast that enemies cant hit you most of the time, and this is a good escaping tool. It helps you get behind cover, or to close the distance between you and an enemy. The slow motion feature kicks in when you are near death, and it slows all enemy movement around you, allowing you to quickly find cover and protect yourself. If you survived the slow motion sequence, it means you are out of danger. These suit mechanics are so sweet that they themselves make this one hell of a crazy shooter.




Boss fights are of course, pretty damn awesome in this game.

No game is without flaws and vanquish is no different. Being a shooter, it suffers from one thing, and that is game lenght. The campaign itself is generally short, less than 10 hours, if I may add. I cleared the game on normal difficulty in 6 hours plus, and about 4 and a half hours for my 2nd run on hard. Its not a long game at all. And other than a few challenge missions (which are ridiculously hard), there isnt any replay value at all. My 2nd run with this game didnt give me as much satisfaction as my 1st run, and a 3rd run would definetely bore me already. Theres also no online gameplay, all we have are a bunch of leaderboards to compare scores. Kind of a letdown, really.

Vanquish is a great, innovative and "out of the box" shooter. It plays well, it looks great, and it definetely hits the mark for an above average shooter. To me, this easily tops games like call of duty, medal of honour and socom, in terms of standard. As mentioned at the beginning of the post, vanquish is highly HIGHLY recommended for those looking for something different in the shooter category. But if you can, rent this (cant do it here in singapore), cause after you finish it a few times, you are just gonna put this aside.




Happy gaming.