"More like getting good at looking like an asshole!"

Vanquish is a third person action game set a trillion years in the future, brought to you by Shenji Mikami and the Resident Evil 4 team.  An action game is a bit of an under statement because the pacing rarely slows, the music is racing at 180 bpm, and explosions are giving birth to little baby explosions.  The player assumes the role of Sam- a smart-ass secret agent who gets involved in a war against the Russians after they (microwave) nuke the futuristic city of San Francisco.  Sam somehow always finds the time to enjoy a smoke break- especially when in precarious scenarios.  The player's adventure has them shooting their way through hundreds of millions of robots while trying to avoid death from sensory overload.

HIGHS

• Chaos of combat.  It's hard to compete with Vanquish in this area.  The visuals, audio, and gameplay all suit each other very well.  Some enemies shoot missiles the size of cars.  The player can escape these hairy moments by sliding around the environment in a few seconds because he has damn rockets on his body armor!  Many of the actions the player does puts the game into slow motion and uses up Sam's suit power.
• Lots of cool action sequences.  Whether it's vehicles shaped like giant saws that cut their way into the combat space, ships crashing across the stage, or fighting your way around a giant robot spider before  going inside and destroying said giant robot spider, these numerous sequences keep things from going stale.
• Simple and effective weapon upgrade system.  If the player has a weapon equipped and then picks up another weapon of the same type, it will be upgraded.  These upgrades span across damage, ammo capacity, and a weapon specific feature.  These are permanent even if the weapon is swapped out for another one.  Unfortunately the messaging of that was not as clear in the game, nor is it entirely clear how many redundant weapons have to be collected to get the upgrade.  This lead to some lack of experimentation and the lack of receiving upgrades to several weapons in the game.
• The mission intervals are very short so there is a great sense of progress.  At the end of a mission the player gets a bunch of stats (possibly too much) which they could try and replay for competitive reasons.
• FX are top class.  The enemy robots explode into chunks of metal, sparks, and flame.  Some bosses are destroyed leaving the entire combat space filled with embers whizzing around.  When the player enters slow motion the FX also swap out for even more high fidelity versions.  Nuts!
• Reviving fallen allies gives weapon drops which feeds into the weapon upgrade system.  Unfortunately most of the fallen allies seem to die right when the player gets to them.
• The player encounters a mini-boss called "Unknown", which I would say is one of the coolest enemy designs I have ever seen.  The enemy is encountered again later in the game in quasi zero gravity and the encounter is even cooler than before.
• Characters models look great.  I wish there was a way to see the enemy models more but they all explode into a thousand pieces or fade away after they are killed.
• Ending credit sequence... best ever.

LOWS

• The enemies don't have any battle dialogue.  As a result they are silent, patient.  This makes it very easy to be ambushed and often times combats are left with one or two enemies hiding behind cover somewhere to give the player a good scare.
• The action seems to constantly be waiting on the player.  This is especially obvious in some of the earlier missions where the player moves along open-air sections that end in silence and explode with action in regular intervals as the door is opened.
• Aiming definitely feel off- like the gameplay could really benefit from a soft aim assist or aim acceleration/deceleration.
• What is my overall objective?  I rarely had a clue.  Oh, a button!  I guess I'll press it.  What the hell did that even do?  It would be great if at least some of the times the interaction actually faced what it was altering.
• The game suffers from Crysis Syndrome where the player has all these cool abilities that run off the same energy source.  Just as the player starts to do something cool, they have already run out of energy and then they are in the middle of a war zone with their pants around their ankles.
• The odds of escaping a close quarter encounter are slim to none due to the above issue.  Melee would be great in this case, BUT IT TAKES ENERGY TO USE!  Also due to the lack of any aim assist, shooting at a close distance is very difficult.
• The mixing of the audio is shameful.  What is anyone saying ?  When the player is in slow motion, the dialogue seems to be muted down and has reverb applied, regardless of how important it is.
• Due to the difficult to hear dialogue, I had subtitles enabled the entire play through but only saw about two or three lines appear.  Where did they go?
• Gauging the player's current health is very difficult.  There is a thin line between almost dead and dead.
• Dive slow motion action interferes with game mechanics.  There is always some jackass teammate in the line of fire or some piece of cover is just tall enough, or some line of sight issue due to the camera being off to the side.  COME ON!

• If the player hits melee twice, they are locked into a five hit melee combo.  This would be great if most enemies didn't die on the second hit or have moved out of the way.  This uses up a full energy bar whether it is hitting an enemy or not.
• Dialogue is full of the ever increasingly popular jargon, "Bravo Six Pizza Dingo Niner"
• Similar to Rage, halfway through Vanquish, the environment changes and looks really great.  Now that I think of it, it might just change to a night time version of the same environment, but it is a welcome change.  Considering most players probably won't even get this far, that is too bad.

IMPROVEMENTS

• Tighten up mechanics.  If melee didn't use energy or used far less energy that would be a start.  Putting some work into the slow motion shooting someone who is behind cover and can't be shot is another.  If the player was doing really well in slow motion and was gaining more energy somehow that could also feed back into the system nicely.
• More clarity on player goals.  The player doesn't need to be beat over the head with this, but a more natural flow of "I'm here, this is where I'm trying to go, and this is how I can get there" would be great.
• Aim assist or smoother acceleration/deceleration!  I kept adjusting my horizontal and vertical aim sensitivity because it never quite felt right.  The enemies moved just too fast and my aim was always too fast or too slow.  With this tweaked up the shooting would have felt great.

CONCLUSION

Overall, the game was a blast even if I did only check out the campaign.  There is a challenge mode and other competitive stuff to jump into but I have to move on.  Considering I paid only $12 for it, that is money very well spent!

4 / 5