Story:
The story in this game is its weak point. Sometime in the future, Russians hijack a space colony that doubles as a super weapon (referred to in the game as a weapon of mass destruction) and destroy San Francisco with a microwave gun, that makes people's heads explode and blood boil. The US then retaliates by launching an all out attack to re-take the colony/super weapon. You play as Sam, one of the American attackers, and are assigned to a special unit, whose mission isn't really all that clear from the get go. The story moves from here but isn't really compelling or told very well. Towards the end you things just happen for reasons that aren't all that clear, and when the credits roll up (or shoot up, you'll see) your left thinking... is this it? There's obviously a set up for a sequel.
Gameplay:
The difference maker is that your not a member of the military, but of DARPA (if you've played Metal Gear Solid you'll know who they are), and your sporting a nifty battle suit that gives you some great abilities on the battlefield.
The gameplay is slick, fluid and polished. It can play out like a traditional third person shooter with standard cover mechanics and weapons array, but what really makes this game stand out is the suit. Firstly it has a propulsion system that allows you to literally slide around the battlefield on your back, ass, or even knees like a rock star. The next best thing is while doing this you can enter a bullet time mode, which means you can pull off some pretty cool maneuvers.
You can also enter the bullet time when your not power-sliding after doing a combat roll which is good coming out of cover, blasting a few robots, and jumping back into cover.
Level design is straightforward works well, with permanent and destructible littered around
As far as your enemies go, they're all robots until the very end of the game you get to splatter some human blood. There's some variation in the standard enemies but not much, but the funnest parts for me came in the mini-boss and boss battles, which there are quite a few of.
There's also some good mission variation. Just before things start feeling a bit samey the game throws a few curve balls to keep it fresh and challenging. My favourite part in particular had me power-sliding across a collapsing bridge thousands of metres in the air while going into bullet time to headshot numerous Russian Robots as I did it. Fun! Also, there's a good feature that lets you replay missions, cos some of them you'll want to.
I played through on normal difficulty and it was challenging in stretches, and the game has a steep learning curve. You'll die a few times figuring out how to best take down some of the bosses, and the difficulty of standard enemies ramps up as the game goes on. It never feels frustrating though, and mostly you'll die because you made the wrong decision, jumped out of cover at the wrong time, or power-slid too fast into the thick of things. Often it will pay to sit back and take out some enemies from a distance before sliding in for the stylish take downs. Still, I managed to complete the entire game in 5 hours 32 minutes (it tells you), which is pretty fast, and this coming from someone who usually takes time to finish a game.
Overall its fun, if not a little short.
Graphics & Sound:
The graphics are solid for a multi-platform title. There's a decent amount of detail in the main playable character's suit, and it's nice to look at with all it's moving parts, especially when changing weapons. NPC's though can leave a bit to be desired, but some of the enemy robots (bosses and mini-bosses) look downright cool.
The design choice seems to have been 'sterile' future, and for the atmosphere of the game it works. Being a Japanese game, there's a strong element of 'anime-future' to it- which you'll understand if your an anime fan. Some parts of the game don't look great close up, with some repeated and low res textures and some jagged edges here and there, but as a sum or parts it all comes together nicely. There's also some neat blurring effects from explosions and when your using your power slide, and the bullet time looks terrific.
There's always a lot going on, but it never makes the frame rate suffer and the game runs smooth throughout, exception being some minor pauses when game saves or has to load- but there aren't any loading screens.
The sound only rates a mention to say its not bad. What you'd expect and nothing less. Weapons have a nice punch and bullet time sounds cool. The voice acting is horrible though, in English anyway. But there's lots of language and subtitle options.
Closing
Vanquish is a good game to play, but it is short and the story is lacking. Also, I can't really see myself playing through the whole game again, though I will probably go back for some individual missions. It was fun while it lasted with all its quirky little touches. If you are looking for a fun distraction from the usual titles you play, then Vanquish should do you. Other than that, I can't recommend it to someone who wants to invest some serious game time into something, there are much deeper titles for the money.
From the cosmos to crash-landing back on good old planet Earth, come read through the best sci-fi-nastically games on the PS3
Starhawk over Warhawk?...... Dude, NO ONE should listen to you.
Odd choices for "best" more like you settled as these being the "best" that available to you at the time, cause a lot of these blow or were average to poor performers that ended up in bargain bin.
Missing too many great sci-fi titles here. The Void, The Resistance Series, Killzone 2 and 3, Enslaved, man.. there were so many, this is redicu-list.
I agree that Starhawk shouldn't be above Warhawk, however I must say that Starhawk multiplayer was incredible for its time! Many people wrote it off bc the single player was quite terrible, bc it was basically 1 huge tutorial for the multiplayer. But I can tell you never spent any significant amount of time in MP. It was doing incredibly tense base building w air, foot and land vehicle (and mech!) combat long before Fortnite was ever a thing.
I bet it would have been much better received if it had just ditched the story mode all together. So many people like yourself completely wrote it off based on reviews by reviewers that let the criticism of single player weigh heavily on their scores. I bet you didn't even play it.
There's also the less acclaimed 'assault on dark Athena'
( also, not saying this to you specifically but there's both resistance and killzone games on the list, it's amazing how even something so simple and innocent as a game list can be turned into misinformed vitriol here lol )
Glad to see Resonance of Fate. Enslaved was pretty good too. I’m sure there are others nobody has listed but I’m too tired to try and think of anything
GF365: "Here are our picks for the ten most underrated third-person shooters that you might not have played before or even known about."
Actually great list TBH I agree with all 10
I hope one day we get some remakes for the following
The saboteur(with a proper remake and quality of life features this game could be great)
Scarface world is yours
Binary domain ( such a great game with great story)
GUN(this needs a remake)
Space marine 40k(such fun time)
Would also like to suggest adding the mercenary series even the 2nd game which is disliked by many is a fun time
I recently finished Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine and found it to be very enjoyable.
The game respected the lore and the gameplay was quite decent.
The color palette was a bit underwhelming (backdrops and setting) and recycled but I think that it deserved better.
Here's hoping for an amazing sequel
We all know not every game franchise can live on perpetually. Let's look at five games that have vanished and, hopefully, nudging the universe in a direction that brings them back.
I heard Doug Tennepal recently released a comic book of Earthworm Jim, my wish maybe he can find an indie dev or creat a studio himself that could make another Earthworm Jim game but I'd personally want it in the retro style of the first two games.
The Strike series needs to be rebooted. Vehicular games in general (excl. Arcade and Racing Sims & Kart style games) need more lovin.'
Renegade Ops was great but didn't quite scratch the itch a Strike game would.
