Vanquish- PS3- One Hit Kills and Questionable Checkpoints? Dude... You're Killing Me

Vanquish (2010) was developed by PlatinumGames and published by Sega

Out of all possible ratings: Terrible, Bad, Average, Good, Great....

My rating, based upon my playthrough experience, is: Average

From the minds that helped create works of art like Resident Evil 4, Bayonetta, and the original Devil May Cry comes Vanquish. This is not your typical 360-era shooter, which was dominated by CoD and its various clones. Vanquish plays more like a shooter version of an arcade game- similar to Raiden (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raiden_(video_game)) where it's fast paced (or intended to be), score-based shooting to get the adrenaline pumping. Just don't make adrenochrome after your adrenaline surge. Despite being a decent shooter, the game never pushes you to jet around the maps as fast as you can with your neat suit. In fact, it often punishes it with quick death, which leads to a lot of shooting from cover. But, if you must traverse a path under heavy fire or get out of the way of the game's numerous one-shot-kills, the jet-sliding mechanic comes in handy.

Weapons shoot fine and are fun to use, even the disk launcher I hated early on had it's uses, but the upgrade system is flat-out RETARDED. Most games skill your weapons up via getting kills, not Vanquish. Vanquish only upgrades your weapons when you have said weapon in your loadout at max ammo capacity and you pick up another instance of said weapon. In other words, if you want to level up your assault rifle, you must avoid using it to keep its ammo maxed while you pick up every assault rifle you find on the map. It's quite retarded, no?

Graphically, the game is pretty impressive, but has a blur to it which dumbfounds me as they are using MSAA and not a blurring anti-aliasing method like Quincunx, which was frequently used for PS3. I believe the game is rendered at a sub-720p resolution, which may be the culprit. Other than that, it's quite impressive to behold all the action that goes on. Sound is also good, however the voice acting can be a bit hammy, which is enjoyable in itself. You will frequently hear me making fun of the overly deep, gruff performances of two of the main characters, one of which I dubbed Rug Burns.

On the controls front, this is one of those games where having lower sensitivity settings pays off. The button mappings are a little unorthodox compared to other shooters, but you get used to it. The only thing I HATED was having to press square to get out of cover. Most shooters that contain a cover mechanic simply allow you to move the left thumb stick away from said cover to exit it, not Vanquish. Learn or die.

The story is laughable, and is neither a strength nor a weakness, it's just kind of there. It's the typical bad Russian waging war on America for.... reasons. At least they made the Hillary Clinton analog/American President culpable in the plot, and when it all crumbles around her, she blows her brains out.

As for the reasons mentioned above; this game earns the average rating. It's not good, it's not bad, it's average. You may enjoy it more than me, so why not try?

Vanquish is available on PlayStation 3/4, Xbox 360/One, and PC.

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DHG played Vanquish on PS3

Part 5