Vanquish - Review

Picked up Vanquish over the weekend as i had a few days of gaming to fill in before Christmas break. Played the demo a while back and quite enjoyed it. Pretty much played it flat out over the last 2 nights and here's my thoughts.

Controlled-chaos. It's balls to the wall, over the top, don't blink or you'll miss something kinda game. At it's core it's essentially a 3rd person cover based shooter, it's super fast paced and exhilarating and turned out to be quite addictive.

Loved

Gameplay

There's plenty of over the top methods to go about the shooting madness. The controls are pretty standard for 3rd person shooting games but there's a nice little addition. You have a boost button which is used speed things up, you can do the boring stuff like sliding into cover but I found it far more exciting to do things like boost about on my knees while shooting, at this moment the game goes into bullet time and it's pretty badass. Bullet time can also be activated while jumping over cover and evading which makes out for some pretty spectacular shooting. I know bullet times been done like a million times before in games but this really makes use of it well and suits the game perfectly.

Spectacular moments

I lost count of the number of times I said "wow" to myself, there's a ton of show stopping moments, not just gameplay induced but stuff going on in the background was pretty impressive also. The scale of the game is generally pretty impressive, not quite as comparable as God of War say but it really does have wow factor moments.

Cinematics

Some brilliant cut scenes to go with the over the top action. Some neat touches where you switch to an FPS view where the mission briefing is delivered to you, hard to explain but it's a nice touch.

Graphics

Highly polished and super slick. The action gets very intense and the game handles it very well, no slow down or pop in.

Hated

Gameplay (variety)

Although I absolutely loved the gameplay it's a shame there wasnt a little more variety to break up the intensity.

Story

Haven't got a clue what i was fighting for or why. Some of it was a little predictable but it didnt really matter tbh.

Length

Was over a little too fast, tempted to go thru it again on a harder level as it was a little easy on Normal.

Evaluation

I'd recommend Vanquish to anyone who likes fast and frenetic action games, it's like a cross between Gears of War and Bayonetta with some God of War epic scale throw in for good measure. Although it was very short and didn't have a lot of depth to the experience I really enjoyed it and would like to hear everyone else's thoughts. Try the demo which is on the market place it pretty much gives you a perfect taste of what the game's all about and how it plays.