Both PlatinumGames and Shinji Mikami had a lot of eyes on them in 2010. Platinum was still a young studio with only three releases to their name, and were already showing a trend of developing games that were critical darlings but commercial failures. Famed Director Shinji Mikami (primarily of Resident Evil fame) had been out of the spotlight for awhile, the last game he directed being the 2006 PlayStation 2 beat-em-up God Hand with Capcom funded Clover Studios (whose staff largely became PlatinumGames after they were shut down). He had left Capcom completely after that, announcing that he was opening his own small studio called Straight Story. This studio would prove to be nothing more than one established to work with Platinum (as a contract employee) on a single game though, that game being Vanquish. There were many who were very curious as to how Platinum’s next title, and Mikami’s first non-Capcom affiliated title, would turn out.
It wasn’t a big surprise that Vanquish turned out to be a third-person cover-based shooter, given Mikami’s success story with heading the Resident Evil series in that direction with Resident Evil 4. He also noted that Vanquish was heavily inspired in both look and feel by the 1970s anime Shinzou Ningen Casshan (or just Casshan) by Tatsunoko Productions. The main character wears a battle suit somewhat reminiscent of Casshan’s. He even wanted to capture the feeling of Casshan’s speed, which resulted in a more frantic shooter with faster game play than usual and a mechanic to match: The ability to slide at a high speed, allowing the player to reach cover in hectic situations. In addition, Vanquish also features a bullet-time mechanic (referred to as “AR Mode”) which allows the player to slow down the streams of bullets coming from all directions, and focus on their target without interruption for a limited time (this is managed by a meter that ticks down, temporarily overheating the main character’s suit when it runs out). It’s not clear whether this mechanic came about as a direct result of Bayonetta’s (Platinum’s previous title) Witch Time or not, but it works well regardless. Combining it with the slide results in some very fun and over-the-top situations.
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| You can make Sam smoke a cigarette when you’re behind cover, and later throw it out to use as a distraction. Nothing more distracting to a robot than cigarettes… | The only think that tanks were really missing was saw blades! |
Given that this is a Platinum developed game, the game play being Vanquish’s strongest point is also not a big surprise. As usual, the game feels just perfect. The faster pace makes it a slightly more fresh take on what by this point was already a well worn genre, with Platinum’s signature beat-em-up feel still present (maybe because of the powerful melee attack that can be used in addition to a variety of different guns). This also wouldn’t be a Platinum game if it didn’t have a difficulty curve, so you’ll undoubtedly find yourself dying quite a few times while you get used to the mechanics. Once they click though, you’ll feel completely unstoppable. The difficulty curve doesn’t feel as brutal as something like Bayonetta though, and checkpoints are frequent enough to where you don’t feel like you have to redo very much when you die. And while there are points assigned at the end of each missing, this is missing Hideki Kamiya’s famous ridiculously strict grading system. All that means is that you won’t feel like you’re terrible at this game when you end up getting a way worse score than you had imagined. Vanquish throws plenty of challenging mini bosses and big set piece bosses at you, but in the end the pool of enemies is not a very large one. While you would think this would result in the game feeling stale pretty quickly, it never seems to. Instead you get a feeling of mastery over enemy types that previously gave you problems, as you find yourself with more upgraded weapons and just getting better at the game in general.
Our main character, DARPA agent Sam Gideon, is armed with the previously mentioned Augmented Reaction (AR) Suit. He’s under orders from the President of the United States to work with special government unit Bravo Company (and their leader Robert Burns) to rescue a scientist named Francois Candide who can help to prevent another mass attack on the US from Russian nationalist force The Order of the Russian Star. Of course his mission goes in all sorts of unexpected directions from there. The story is that of a generic sci-fi action movie, and the writing s pretty awful. These characters all live up to their cliched action movie archetypes, spout terrible dialogue and they’re all just kind of assholes. The quality of the voice acting goes right along with the writing, in Japanese or English. If you find yourself into the campiness of it all though, you’ll be better off sticking to the English. It feels like it was probably written first, so there’s a little bit more “color” to it than the Japanese.
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| Also giant spider robots. | The dialogue writing may be bad, but it sure makes for some great one-off screenshots. |
Despite the horrible writing and my own general lack of interest in shooting games (though I will generally play a third-person shooter over a first-person one), I really had a blast with Vanquish. If you look at this as a big dumb action movie in game form, it’s very easy to just shove the story and writing off to the side and focus on the joy of the finely tuned game play. Vanquish embraces that it’s okay to be a very video game-y game in every aspect, even down to the 2D shooting sequence that is the end credits. It features no multi-player mode and a rather short campaign, which got a lot of criticism at the time of release. This may just be the anthem of an older game who has less time than he used to, but I felt that the length was perfect for a game of this type. There’s even a decent amount of replay-ability if you want to go for trophies/achievements, or complete the ridiculously difficult Challenge mode that the game offers. It upholds the high standards of PlatinumGames, and I can’t recommend it enough to anyone in the mood for a game that’s a lot of fun with a slightly steep but surmountable learning curve. And for any who may be agonizing over which platform to play Vanquish on, there’s no need to worry about this being a repeat of the Bayonetta situation (in which 360 was the lead platform and the PS3 version was abysmally ported by another company, resulting in the PS3 version being vastly inferior). PS3 was used as the lead platform this time, but Platinum was much more conscious of performance across both platforms. While the PS3 version is usually considered to be slightly superior due to it being the lead platform, both versions play just fine.