The more I see of Vanquish, the more interested I get. While it does partly look like a very white Gears of War, it also throws in a few things to mix it up, like a heightened sense of speed in close combat or a morphing gun arm. While none of those conventions are new per se, mixing them all together may make for one tasty gameplay gumbo…or a mangled casserole of failure. Vanquish has a new trailer highlighting the A.R.S. Battle Suit (because what else would you use it for?), the same one you’ll be manning when the game drops on October 19th.
So there you have it folks, possibly the last of the Vanquish trailers we’ll see before next Tuesday. Call me crazy, but I think I might be sold on this game. The one thing that concerns me is how busy the game looks when everything is going all at once, but I guess I’ll find out how it shakes down soon enough.
This looks good, I’m certainly interested. One thing that I’m slightly concerned about is with all that speed, rocketing kneepads, morphing gun arms etc etc how well is it going to control? Without a 360 or PS3 I’ll be getting it on PC if at all, but did anyone hear anything at E3, PAX, TGS or anywhere else about control issues?
I played the PS3 demo and didn’t have any problems with the controls. It’s a fun game, though I don’t know that it will make you want to set Gears of War or Uncharted aside. I don’t play a lot of 3rd person shooters, so I’m probably not the best judge. I read where somebody compared it to Gun Valkyrie because of the rocket slide feature. I wouldn’t say that; Gun Valkyrie’s control scheme could make the most hardcore gamers wet their pants in terror but Vanquish controls rather well. Your power moves (bullet time slow-mo, rocket slide, melee attack) all generate heat and your suit will overheat if you try to string too many moves together.
The demo has some good moments. The slide enables you to drastically alter the tactical situation of any combat and it’s really fun taking down a twenty foot tall mech with a single, well placed melee attack (can’t spam it because of the heat limitations, though). The only problem is that the game asks you to do a lot with the controls. On the one hand, it wants you to utilize cover and punishes you for getting caught out in the open, but on the other hand it gives you these abilities that require you to expose yourself to enemy fire in order to put them to good use. It’s kind of like playing two different games at once, it’s a run and gun shooter that encourages you to keep moving and getting into the thick of things like Borderlands but also forces you to utilize cover and negotiate lots of battlefield obstacles like Gears of War. Maybe the full game will lean more clearly towards one or the other and not alienate both crowds.
On an unrelated note, Vanquish also looks like it throws you into a lot of ridiculous situations against crazy enemies, which is starting to make me think of it as a 16 bit era game in 3d. Remember how you’d always be fighting weird and giant enemies in games like Contra 3, Strider, and Shinobi (both Revenge and Shinobi 3)? That was back in the days before the existence of every enemy had to be justified by the game’s story and setting; developers threw some weird-ass shit in those games with no obvious explanation. Why do you fight a 50 foot tall Mecha-Godzilla in Shinobi 3 or a similarly gigantic robot gorilla (which is inside a room without a door big enough for it to fit through) in the second level of Strider? Nobody asked questions about this sort of thing back then and Vanquish seems like it has that same sensibility.
Hey look, Michael Bay made a video game!