Why don't I ever hear about Vanquish?

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Kopikatsu

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Baron_BJ said:
I loved the game, but it has one MAJOR flaw, one that really guts the game and replay value.
If you use chapter select you lose all your weapon upgrades. If you die you lose some of your weapon upgrades. You desperately need all the weapon upgrades or you will not make it. You will save scum like a ***** to play this game (unless your playing on the shitty difficulties whereupon the game is laughably easy). It utterly ruined the replay value in my eyes; that one fucking godawful design choice ruined so much.
Er...not really. The hardest difficulty setting makes it so that your guns never level up if I remember correctly, in addition to pretty much everything being able to one shot you. Beating that was my greatest achievement.

@OP: If you do the HMG's melee (the flipkick), you can slow time while in mid-air for a bit. It's crazy awesome to flipkick out of cover and blow the heads off of five bots before hitting the ground.
 

hermes

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Because it is published by Sega. If something can be learn out of Yakuza 4, Valkyria Chronicles, Bayonetta, Binary Domain or Virtua Fighter 5 is that their strategy for marketing games in the west (that don't include Sonic) is akin to Field of Dreams: just drop it over here and, if they like it, they will come.

Pity, because they have some genuinely good games this generation, but its like they just don't care for them and expect word of mouth to do all the work...
 

King Aragorn

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For it's price, Vanquish just wasn't something I could justify. It lack content, had a pretty bland story too. It felt more like a PSN game rather than a full 60$ game.
 

Dirty Hipsters

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It's a pretty old game now, and when it came out there wasn't a lot of hype or advertisement for it. Also at the time it was a pretty shitty deal. The entire game is only 8 hours with absolutely no multiplayer or extra content other than the other difficulty modes, but it was still marketed as a $60 game. I bought the game later for $15 and enjoyed the hell out of it, but I can definitely say it wasn't worth the original $60 price tag.

The real reason I got the game though is that Vanquish was made by Platinum Games, which makes absolutely awesome games, like Bayonetta, Anarchy Reigns, and Metal Gear Rising. They're one of the best if not the best straight up action game developer and I love their games' mechanics, even though usually the games never really meet their full potential.
 

Dirty Hipsters

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xPrometheusx said:
KingsGambit said:
It was a boring, bland and generic shooter despite the "unique" elements. I played as long as I could, maybe chapter 7 ish, but ultimately it was just a boring chore to play. There are many better shooters than this and many more better games overall that I'd rather play than waste my time on something (generously described as) mediocre.
I'll second this. I played it and was completely unimpressed. It had a few unique mechanics, yeah, and it was cool to exploit the shit out of the dodge function for about half an hour. Then it got really, really boring once all the 'look it's shiny!' wore off. I don't even think I completed it, there were better things to hold my time.
You both played the game wrong. You played it like a typical third person cover based shooter when in reality you're never supposed to actually use cover. That's why you thought it was bland and uninspired, because you played it in a bland and uninspired way.

In Vanquish if you spend more than 1% of your time in cover you're doing it wrong.
 

SlaveNumber23

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Great game, but had next to no advertising and was way too short to justify the full AAA price.

Also it was released pretty close to Call of Duty: Black Ops which pretty much devoured the entire shooter market.
 

MeChaNiZ3D

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Not the most well-marketed or well-known game, but it was really good. Actually though, I'd say a fair few on here know about it and have good opinions of it but just don't bring it up that often. Maybe it isn't a quintessential example of any game mechanic and hasn't been involved in any controversy.
 

TrevHead

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This Eurogamer article feeds into this thread so I'll post it here http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013-04-17-platinum-games-president-rates-its-sales-as-a-c-or-even-a-d

I only payed £10 for my copy because I didn't have a 360 at that time, although Vanquish and Bayonetta were major reasons beside shmups that I bought a console after been a PC only gamer for a decade. As to why Vanquish didn't sell is to do with several factors.

#Back then the gaming media was very different to how they are today, they were very much in it's "Japanese games suck & western devs can do no wrong" phase which would have put alot of stigma onto a Japanese shooter.

# While I love them, SEGA are f%ucking hopeless at marketing AAA mainstream games, PR is underfunded and they often totally missread gamers & the press by sending the wrong messages. For Vanquish there seemed to be abit of buzz surrounding the game pre launch, but SEGA marketed it as a Gears clone with a Japanese twist so ppl were looking to get the same things out of the game as Gears. So when the game launched most publishers tore it to shreds because it was short and having no MP, a killer for any Gears clone. If SEGA had marketed it as the game it truly is, IE an arcade style game that is meant to be replayed over and over in harder difficulties and played for highscore it would have been looked upon in a more positive light.

# The game is oldschool like Dark Souls in that it doesn't hold the players hand at the beginning while they learn to play, western gamers generally hate that, they want a game that panders to their false belief that they are gaming gods by been a cake walk during the first 1/4 of the game by drip feeding new gameplay elements and providing spoilers, making it so any trained monkey who can hold a pad can do it. So when a game comes out which looks generic on the face of it, it comes as a shock when the game curb stomps them into the ground while providing no clues how to do the awesome things the trailer footage does. I'm sure there were plenty of westerners playing it like a cover shooter and been bored silly.

Imo Platinum is really bad at timing what the market wants at any given time. Vanquish was released when everyone was demanding MP, while Anarchy Reigns was released when the MP fad was passed and getting enough ppl to play online is hard when every MP game is turning into a MMO to attact and keep gamers online. IMO Platinum should have released AR back in 2009 and Vanquish in 2013. I would hope the make Vanquish 2 soon to capitalise on the cult following, add in Dark Souls style MP and they have a hit imo. (that or make a Gantz game)

EDIT They should get SEGA to allow them to port it to PC, it would make a fantastic £20 Steam game, do what From did and make extra content for it which they can rerelease on consoles could net them a bit of cash.

KingsGambit said:
It was a boring, bland and generic shooter despite the "unique" elements. I played as long as I could, maybe chapter 7 ish, but ultimately it was just a boring chore to play. There are many better shooters than this and many more better games overall that I'd rather play than waste my time on something (generously described as) mediocre.
I would love to see your VG collection if you class Vanquish as generic, gameplay wise, generic and Vanquish don't belong in the same paragraph let alone the same sentence since there isn't a single game that plays like it. Unless you mean purely by looks alone then I guess it does look generic (even though the suit and robots are far from generic imo)
 

Asuka Soryu

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Hm, I hated this game. I found the characters enjoyable and at time the combat was fun, but the bosses were annoying, QTE's were unwelcome and I just got sick of his suit over heating so easily.
 

Seneschal

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bandit0802 said:
Well, as a standalone original IP with only a famous name to vouch for it, it was a "small game" (which isn't reflected in its quality, just the size of its audience and cultural footprint), but it still sold 880,000 copies, according to wiki. They can't have lost money on it.

I felt it was a bit of a watershed moment, a Japanese shooter that plays differently enough from the currently-established titles that you might want to put it in a new subgenre. Umm... "acrobatic spectacle-shooter," or something. A shame it wasn't big enough to spawn imitators, then we'd know it really changed things.
 
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TrevHead said:
KingsGambit said:
It was a boring, bland and generic shooter despite the "unique" elements. I played as long as I could, maybe chapter 7 ish, but ultimately it was just a boring chore to play. There are many better shooters than this and many more better games overall that I'd rather play than waste my time on something (generously described as) mediocre.
I would love to see your VG collection if you class Vanquish as generic, gameplay wise, generic and Vanquish don't belong in the same paragraph let alone the same sentence since there isn't a single game that plays like it. Unless you mean purely by looks alone then I guess it does look generic (even though the suit and robots are far from generic imo)
I think the issue here isn't my use of the word generic, but your usage of the word unique. It was as generic and run of the mill as it is possible for a shooter to come, even with the sliding mechanic. Not only was it bland and uninspired, it had the usual 2-colour desaturated palette making it look as generic as it played. I cannot now remember any characters' names, the story (if there was one) or anything except the gravelly voices and the cigarette butts. It is as forgettable as it was boring.

The reason it's been forgotten and ignored is because there are many better games out there. Bulletstorm was better, Dark Sector was better, BioShock was better as are Hard Reset, Stalker, Borderlands and FEAR, etc.

The tragedy is that it's my attitude that's damaging the games industry and causing companies to abandon games just because the metacritic score wasn't high enough. They only want a hit, or the game is a write off; a bit sad really. As Shamus mentioned in a recent Experienced Points column, not every Hollywood film is a blockbuster. You have to have RomComs and thrillers too and they're usually steady earners. I guess mediocre doesn't cut it with games and Vanquish, which looked promising was unfortunately just mediocre.

As for seeing my VG collection, that's not a good idea. It would raise a lot of questions best left unanswered.
 

piinyouri

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Marketing.
That's really all.

Which is a shame as despite what it may look like at a cursory glance (third person military shooter) it's actually a crazy fun, challenging third person arcade shooter with a protagonist played in-game by Charlie Sheen.
 

Autofire2

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Vanquish. Is. Awesome.

And as for the guy who was saying it couldn't be completed with upgrades...lol. God Hard allows for no upgrades at all and is probably along with getting 106% on Super Meat Boy one of the greatest challenges of this generation. God Hard is awesome except for the final boss...that section nearly broke my will. It's not cheap, exactly, but its about as hard as you can possibly get without being super cheap. It takes even players who blew through the rest of God Hard 3-10 hours to finish the last boss.

What a rush.
 

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daveman247 said:
Ascarus said:
here is my review of vanguish ... couldn't play it. i simply don't have the hand dexterity to use both sticks (one to aim, the other to maneuver) and multiple buttons at once just to shoot a specific location on a moving target. i never made it past the first boss and after multiple attempts spanning a few months or so, i shelved the game.

might have been a good game, but it frustrated the hell out of me.
Too, bad... You did know to activate the slow-mo during those times right? (helps a lot) :)


OT: Lack of advertising, simple as. Has garnered a somewhat cult following though. Some of the best use of slo-mo in my opinon, second only to max payne.

Plus it had a smoke button. A whole button, just to take a fag break, could be used to distract enemies too.
one of my favorite memories of the game was tucking myself behind a wall, while a big group of enemies were firing at me, and start smoking... and when I flicked the ciggie away, the entire group all tracked and started firing on it.

dropping a rocket into the middle of them for an achievement was just the icing on the cake.