Vanquish

[Alpha Six]

Just beat the game.

Is it short?

Yes. You can easily beat the game in under 6 hours.

Is it fun?

FUCK YEAH, IT'S RETARDED FUN FROM START TO FINISH.

Is it hard?

OH MY FUCKING GOD YES THIS GAME GETS SO HARD AFTER THE FIRST ACT AND SOME OF THE BOSSES ARE JUST PUNSHING AND THIS IS ON NORMAL DIFFICULTY

Is it worth $60?

In my opinion?
Fuck yeah.
This game will send you on a hardcore adrenaline rush from the second you pick up the controller. The action in this game is frantic, fast, and non-stop.
Upon beating an Act, you unlock a Challenge stage that usually depends on killing waves of enemies. And these challenge stages are hard as balls. You compete to beat your old time, as well as beating the times of many other players around the world (which is generally where a lot of replay value is in this game).
Even in the campaign, there are little secrets hidden about, and it's a lot of fun to strategically collect weapons (In this game, you scan weapons to pick them up. You can hold up to 3 weapons at once. These weapons are upgradable with little weapon cubes that pop up out of enemies occasionally. Another method of upgrading, however, is to collect weapon duplicates. You see-- when you have a weapon, if you pick up the same weapon, it'll refill your ammo 100%. If your ammo is ALREADY filled up all the way, a little icon will show up above your weapon. When you do this three times, the weapon automatically upgrades. Upgrades carry over, too-- so if you decide you want to use a different weapon for the time being, you can pick one up and not worry about having to re-upgrade your weapon all over again.)
The story? It's not really "great" but it's definitely pretty solid. The basic plot is told to you in the intro cutscene-- from there, it's almost purely character interaction between Sam, Lt. Col. Burns, and your assistant Elena. With a little tidbit thrown in every now and then for story development. The story is never forced to you through loads of cutscenes, so you can enjoy the gameplay almost the entire time.
Bosses in this game will fuck your shit up. You're almost guaranteed to die at least once since you're still trying to figure out the enemy paths.
You start the game with four difficulty modes: Casual Auto (automatic targeting system), Casual (Easy), Normal, and Hard. Upon completing the game on Normal difficulty, you unlock GOD HARD. Now, I haven't played Hard yet, but I can only imagine it being painful-- and God Hard taking it a step further.
Special kills in this game are hilariously over-the-top. If you played the demo, you probably remember shoving the missile down the giant Argus robot's arm. If you thought that was sick, you haven't seen anything yet. The special kills in this game are the kind that are so awesome and over-the-top that you can't help but giggle the whole way through, and you'll probably find yourself pausing the game after doing that to go "HOLY SHIT WHAT THE FUCK DID I JUST GO OMG".

Unfortunately, this game has no multiplayer element in it (for now). The lack of multiplayer does not hamper on the overall experience that this excellently programmed game will deliver to you. And yeah, you'll probably wish you had multiplayer while playing this game, but when you think about it, a game like Vanquish is built almost entirely for single player.


Overall I'd give this game a 9/10-- it's a solid game experience that is only hampered by a short campaign, but the overall experience and post-game Challenge modes make it worth the $60. I have a feeling I will be occupied by this game for a long while.