Orange Envelope Get! (Vanquish)

Vanquish showed up in the mail the other day and completely took over my life...for a few hours. Everything from the ridiculous characters to the giant robots to the incredibly strange dialogue had me hooked. Weird in-game mentions of eBay, explosions, a main character who smokes mid-battle, it's all here. Coming from the studio that developed Bayonetta all the craziness came off as completely warranted.

Vanquish starts off some basic tutorials that, while helpful, do not prepare the player for how insane some battles can truly be. After learning how to move Sam, the dude in the crazy powerful suit, the player is treated to the complete and utter obliteration of San Francisco at the hands of the merciless Russians. What follows is a 4-5 hour adrenaline rush that features cover based shooting and insane boss fights. The basic shooting mechanics are very similar to most third person shooters, except some of the buttons are different. While most shooters use X to reload Vanquish uses X to take cover and RB to reload and pick up weapons, a switch that causes constant confusion with me throughout my playing. Besides that one little confusion, that can probably be switched in the controls, the game controls extremely well.

Using the left bumper the player can preform a slide maneuver to get around the battlefield quickly. This comes in handy against enemies with weak spots and when you need to take cover quickly. There is also a slow motion effect used when you preform a dodge and quickly aim afterwords. This is tied to the suits power and drains as you stay in slow motion. The gratification of tying the two together in Vanquish is incredible, boosting around a level only to cut into a slow-mo sequence to gun down three incoming enemies is immensely satisfying.

The guns in Vanquish are varied enough that it feels like most situations have multiple solutions. You have the standard shotgun, heavy machine-gun, assault rifle, rocket launcher, and grenades (both fragmentation and EMP). Then there are the more unique guns including a lock-on laser which can take out multiple enemies and a LFE gun that is basically an EMP shotgun. Coupled with the tight controls the guns help Sam make quick work of any nasty Russian robot he comes across.

Boss fights in Vanquish are done incredibly well and add a great feeling of scale to the game. Some of the monstrous bosses can kill Sam with a single shot and make the feeling of boosting away from sure annihilation exhilarating. There is nothing like dodging a death blow last minute only to turn around and finish the fight with a well placed shot. Even the smaller bosses make for great fights as their speed and deadliness make the fight more about boosting away from their incoming assaults and quickly finding cover when needed.

The story is ridiculous, as it should be, and the voice acting is actually pretty good. Sam comes off as some strange mix of Solid Snake and Marcus Fenix with his gruff voice and constant quips in the middle of crazy situations. At times it feels like the localization wasn't done as well as it should be but that often feels like a plus rather than a problem. Hearing characters spit out strange dialogue during a fight or after a battle makes the whole universe feel like some strange alternate reality filled with uneducated super soldiers, it's great.

Above all the shooting and craziness is a meta-game that keeps track of just about everything you do. From your deaths, to the percentage of cover you use, to your score for each level, and so on. At the end it is all tallied up to show you how you did and what can be improved, and incentive for many to go back and improve. While this constant reminder of "yes this is a video game" detracted a bit from each section it also challenged me to not die for extra points and to try and best my scores from previous levels. After beating the game any act can be replayed to increase your score.

If I had to nitpick about anything it would be the following two problems. At times it feels like the EMP grenades are the most powerful weapons in the game and can solve almost any situation. Also, due to the cover mechanics sometimes the best solution is to take cover and pop out to gun down enemies slowly which detracts from the rushing feel of the whole game. Also, the soldiers you're with typically do nothing to help but their chatter is usually pretty entertaining.

My time with Vanquish was great, albeit brief, and I'd highly recommend it to anyone wanting a great rental. It's a fantastic game that has a lot going for it, the hinted sequel is something I'd love to see in the future.