I just finished Vanquish and it's one hell of game, but I can't help feeling that this is just Shinji Mikami's commentary on Western gaming. It's got every element that a big selling Western game has: big guns, big manly military men acting manly, a cover system, big scale set-pieces, and more.
The dialogue is just ridiculously cliche that it has to have been done on purpose and the 2 main characters seem to be having a gravelly voice competition, several times during the game several squad-mates (including one of the main characters) yells "HOORAH!!!" Speaking of your squad, the squad performs exactly like in a CoD game, they are capable of killing some baddies but you are going to have to do almost all the work. Vanquish has pretty much every space marine cliche you can think of along with the standard super simplistic squad mechanics.
Pretty much every single Western shooter has to have health regen now. Remember way back when The Getaway did it for the first time and everyone thought it was stupid. Well, Vanquish actually takes the unrealistic-ness of health regen and turns it into something that makes logical sense within the game. Pretty much once the main character Sam gets hit enough, his special suit overheats and he has to take cover and wait for the suit to cool off (aka health regen). If he gets hit enough when the suit has overheated, he then dies.
What else do Westerns shooters have to have that aren't FPSs? That's right, a cover system. But Vanquish just has a cover system for that sake of having it because you don't use cover in the normal sense (you know, to play whack-a-mole); cover is there just to jump over it in slow-mo and kill some baddies and to take smoke (I'm not kidding). Also, slow-mo/bullet time is another staple of Western gaming that is recreated in Vanquish, and is perhaps the coolest slow-mo ever seen in gaming. Vanquish takes the Western staples of slow-mo and the cover mechanic and demonstrates how to do it right.
Big name Western shooters love to do sci-fi, and most games try to make some epic sprawling story that usually fails at what it tries to accomplish. What does Vanquish do? It takes us back to the good old 80s. If you not going to be able to pull of some sci-fi epic, then go back and give us a classic America-is-awesome 80s tale with a bit of a twist. In Vanquish, you are killing a bunch of RED Russian robots, and all their weak points are RED; it's like a sci-fi Red Dawn, you gotta love it. The plot is even left open for an obvious sequel like several big Hollywood blockbusters.
What is the West obsessed with when it comes to cut-scenes? Everyone is now trying to do interactive cut-scenes for some reason. What's the point of being able to walk about during some dialogue or story exposition? Isn't a well directed static cut-scene with good cinematography better than just being able to walk about? Vanquish shows you how stupid this trend really is as the game lets you walk about in first person mode to during several intel communications. You can only just walk and it feels extremely limiting because the Sam is wearing an awesome suit that allows him to quickly slide through the battlefield and initiate slow-mo.
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Vanquish pretty much takes all of these standard Western shooter staples and executes all of them with such ease. Then, the game adds in the rocket boosting all over the battlefield and slow-mo to create a truly fun and different experience. The game throws in boss battles and grandiose set-pieces to top it off. In my opinion, Vanquish is basically a big, bombastic message to the West in how to take the standard mechanics of shooters and make something extremely fun, awesome, and unique instead of making the same game over and over.
The dialogue is just ridiculously cliche that it has to have been done on purpose and the 2 main characters seem to be having a gravelly voice competition, several times during the game several squad-mates (including one of the main characters) yells "HOORAH!!!" Speaking of your squad, the squad performs exactly like in a CoD game, they are capable of killing some baddies but you are going to have to do almost all the work. Vanquish has pretty much every space marine cliche you can think of along with the standard super simplistic squad mechanics.
Pretty much every single Western shooter has to have health regen now. Remember way back when The Getaway did it for the first time and everyone thought it was stupid. Well, Vanquish actually takes the unrealistic-ness of health regen and turns it into something that makes logical sense within the game. Pretty much once the main character Sam gets hit enough, his special suit overheats and he has to take cover and wait for the suit to cool off (aka health regen). If he gets hit enough when the suit has overheated, he then dies.
What else do Westerns shooters have to have that aren't FPSs? That's right, a cover system. But Vanquish just has a cover system for that sake of having it because you don't use cover in the normal sense (you know, to play whack-a-mole); cover is there just to jump over it in slow-mo and kill some baddies and to take smoke (I'm not kidding). Also, slow-mo/bullet time is another staple of Western gaming that is recreated in Vanquish, and is perhaps the coolest slow-mo ever seen in gaming. Vanquish takes the Western staples of slow-mo and the cover mechanic and demonstrates how to do it right.
Big name Western shooters love to do sci-fi, and most games try to make some epic sprawling story that usually fails at what it tries to accomplish. What does Vanquish do? It takes us back to the good old 80s. If you not going to be able to pull of some sci-fi epic, then go back and give us a classic America-is-awesome 80s tale with a bit of a twist. In Vanquish, you are killing a bunch of RED Russian robots, and all their weak points are RED; it's like a sci-fi Red Dawn, you gotta love it. The plot is even left open for an obvious sequel like several big Hollywood blockbusters.
What is the West obsessed with when it comes to cut-scenes? Everyone is now trying to do interactive cut-scenes for some reason. What's the point of being able to walk about during some dialogue or story exposition? Isn't a well directed static cut-scene with good cinematography better than just being able to walk about? Vanquish shows you how stupid this trend really is as the game lets you walk about in first person mode to during several intel communications. You can only just walk and it feels extremely limiting because the Sam is wearing an awesome suit that allows him to quickly slide through the battlefield and initiate slow-mo.
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Vanquish pretty much takes all of these standard Western shooter staples and executes all of them with such ease. Then, the game adds in the rocket boosting all over the battlefield and slow-mo to create a truly fun and different experience. The game throws in boss battles and grandiose set-pieces to top it off. In my opinion, Vanquish is basically a big, bombastic message to the West in how to take the standard mechanics of shooters and make something extremely fun, awesome, and unique instead of making the same game over and over.
