Vanquish: Rocket-Sliding Into Our Hearts
Is this the real rockstar of third person shooters?
On paper, Vanquish is likely to get eyes rolling into the back of heads; in SEGA's new game you're a grizzled, cocky space marine in a mech-suit, and it's your job to lead an all-American army against hordes of Russian robots. There is, as you'd expect, cover-based gunplay and rechargeable health – you'd be forgiven for thinking that over the past couple of years you've played this game countless times before.
It's the other details in the description that you need to be mindful of, though. Vanquish is the fourth game from Platinum, its second HD outing after Bayonetta, and pulling the strings are none other than Shinji Mikami and Atsuhsi Inaba, the two men behind – respectively – Resident Evil and Okami. With that heritage you can expect the unexpected; you may well have played dozens of other cover-based third-person shooters, but you've never played anything like Vanquish.
To call its action intense is an understatement; Vanquish's gunplay zips along with an alarming urgency as you dart between cover and dodge streams of bullets. Enabling this high velocity is the Augmented Reaction Suit that the lead, Sam Gideon, finds himself in charge of. It's a remarkably agile bit of kit that allows for some spectacular acrobatics; at the base level there's an evade manoeuvre that sends Sam into a series of overplayed cartwheels as he dances between gunfire.
It's a mechanic that's teased out well; hit the left bumper during a successful dodge and time will slow to a crawl momentarily, enabling Sam to line up headshots. The effect – dubbed AR in the game - also kicks in when the armour takes critical damage, giving a brief window in which to extract Sam from danger, though in both counts it puts a considerable strain on the suit's power reserves.
There's one more move in Sam's repertoire and it's certainly the most dazzling of the lot. The left bumper sends him scooting across the floor on both knees, propelled at speed by the suit's own rockets in a pose that makes him look like he's at the climax of the world's greatest guitar solo. It's an exaggerated alternative to Gears of War's own roadie run, but in Vanquish you get to be the rock star.
Shooting's no slouch either, and true to the model laid out by Bayonetta there's a few flavours to hand. Casual Auto does all the hard work for you, auto-locking to a certain degree and restocking ammo without you having to resort to the reload button. Move further up the difficulty scale and the stabilisers are kicked off; what's left is a perfectly reliable mechanic that's served by an enjoyable arsenal.
Four weapon slots are available and they're changeable on the fly. Come across a discarded weapon that's not currently equipped and it can be swapped out, and each one can be upgraded through the course of play too. The weapons range from the mundane – assault rifles are joined by heavy machine guns and shotguns – to the more outrageous, with the disc launcher that happily slices through the midriffs of robots is a particular favourite. What's more satisfying is how each weapon comes with its own little melee attack, the disc launcher being used to churn through enemies when used in close quarters
Attacking becomes an exercise in balancing the demands of the fight with the limitations of the suit, and rather than serving as bullet shelters the cover's there more to allow Sam and his suit a chance to recharge before the next onslaught. Indeed, staying still in Vanquish is often a fatal error – cover will crumble and enemies will flank you, meaning that to stay in motion is to stay alive.
Vanquish's enemies give you little room for respite either. There's admirable variety in their scale, running up from squat grunts that happily attack on suicide runs – putting to mind Halo's lower order of enemies – through the bipedal mechs that make up the numbers and all the way up to gargantuan bosses that fill several screens and fill entire arenas with their missile fire.
There's an equal amount of variety in the play; the section we played takes up the entirety of the first act, giving us a look that goes just beyond what's been released in the recent demo on Xbox Live and PlayStation Network. After the energy-sapping duel with the hulking spider boss Argos (it took us just under 20 minutes at our first attempt – download the demo yourself and see if you fare any better) the action funnels into a series of underground tunnels for an extended escort mission
The stretches of stark black shadow threaten to turn it moody, though it's soon back to its hyperactive self as strutting metal jellyfish appear on the scene. They've a tendency to detonate near to the APC that's being escorted through the tunnels, so what follows is an exercise in crowd control as you struggle to kill them before they kill themselves.
Vanquish's opening act comes to a climax as Sam comes face to face with the villain of the piece, Victor Zaitsev, a comically-voiced Russian suited and booted in an augmented outfit not dissimilar to the player's own. It's all heady and breathless stuff, and the action's absurdist tone isn't dissimilar to the gloriously eccentric Bayonetta.
Indeed, Vanquish seems to sometimes veer into the realms of parody. Its story of a future cold war played out by space marines with necks and arms thicker than you could ever imagine certainly raises a smile, and throughout there's the occasional touch that lets you know Platinum's got its tongue firmly embedded in its cheek. Cutscenes are interspersed with improbably gruff dialogue – Vanquish's tough guys make Dom and Marcus seem like a pair of giggling schoolgirls – and on the battlefield there's a button dedicated solely to flipping out a cigarette for a mid-fight smoke.
That doesn't stop its sci-fi vision from being frequently breathtaking, though; there's a slick efficiency to the presentation that's met with some wonderful imagery, whether that's the sleek design of the ARG suit itself or some of the wider shots of the inverted ring world that hosts the first act. If it can maintain the pace and urgency of the first act then one thing's for sure; if you thought that you were sick of third-person shooters then Vanquish is most certainly going to prove you wrong.
Vanquish: Rocket-Sliding Into Our Hearts - Xbox 360 Preview at IGN
