It's a modest attempt at capturing the current success of Western based shooter games, where squad based tactics, swift shoot outs and linearity are a harmony. But in reality it's a laughable parody at the premise as well, because Platinum Games thought that they captured the essence of success.
Instead, we get a familiar arcade like shooter, with gimmicks such as the umpteenth return of bullet time, or that knee slide that frankly was the reason I wanted to play this game. The fast paced action combined with the available arsenal and the listed abilities make up for some quality time.
The characters however are stereotypes to the core, with a prodigy child armed with interesting legs, a permanent smoker jackass and a diehard warlover, almost as if he is the godfather of the cast of Gears of War.
Voice casting was set to Japanese because that's awesome as usual, but it also means that I won't have to judge it because of being a foreign language, so it was alright. The graphics are pretty sick in their details, but the color white was used too much.
Framerate drops were non-existant for me, although others have reported seeing it happen. The primary location seems to be similar to The Citadel from the Mass Effect series, but instead it's an arcadefest now, with dull robots, giant walking mini bosses and humans are almost extinct.
The conversations seem to be professional in general when speaking of mission briefings, but the casual chats were sometimes ineffective or generic. Music wise, it is fainted by the voice acting and the heavy gunfire and explosions.
Functional controls do make up for a fun ride in the short time you will experience Vanquish. Platinum Games made sure that all of the traditional aspects of a third person shooter are there, such as cover locations, melee attacks and of course sniper rifles.
The arsenal is also straightforward and the more experimental looking weapons weren't stealing the show either. That clearly belongs to boosting around, on your knees, doing badass flips upon switching off your ability.
By the way, these gimmicks are handicapped by an overheat system, so that you won't abuse the heck out of them. Vanquish is quite crazy enough with the provided speed of it's animations and gameplay, so we don't want too cause to much epilepsy or whatever affected diseases can come up from this.
I do applause Shinji Mikami for having created this game, because it's definitely a fun game, however the impact was totally missing when speaking of the plot, the characters, the enemy design, the pretentious approach towards the genre and the lasting appeal.
Vanquish lacks crucial substance, but delivers exceptionally as an arcade style based third person shooter. It's a hit and a miss. The rush was there, but the flow was missing in action. Recommended for those longing for heavy action.
Rating: 7.7
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