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Vanquish

The NZA

By The NZA
in The Game Room

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  • 2 months later...
Maldron Hondonian

Maldron

Posted
Posted

My ONLY grip was the voice acting. But after playing the demo a couple of times I noticed the option to switch to original Japanese!!!! Hope they keep this in the retail!!

 

I didn't have any problems with the voice acting. There's bad voice acting, and there's voice acting that doesn't match preconceptions. Hazama in Blazblue is bad voice acting. This wasn't too bad.

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Maldron Hondonian

Maldron

Posted
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Space - were you referring to the VA being hammy? cause i took it that was the intended effect.

 

demo brought my interest up a lot, looking to borrow this one day when a local's done. boss fight was crazy-action.

 

You know what you're dealing with when they switch the american voice of an american character to the "original Japanese," NZA. Just shush and move on, be better than petty old me.

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  • 1 month later...
spiffytee Hondonian

spiffytee

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"It's the other details in the description that you need to be mindful of, though. Vanquish is the fourth game from Platinum, its second HD outing after Bayonetta, and pulling the strings are none other than Shinji Mikami and Atsuhsi Inaba, the two men behind – respectively – Resident Evil and Okami. With that heritage you can expect the unexpected; you may well have played dozens of other cover-based third-person shooters, but you've never played anything like Vanquish.

 

To call its action intense is an understatement; Vanquish's gunplay zips along with an alarming urgency as you dart between cover and dodge streams of bullets. Enabling this high velocity is the Augmented Reaction Suit that the lead, Sam Gideon, finds himself in charge of. It's a remarkably agile bit of kit that allows for some spectacular acrobatics; at the base level there's an evade manoeuvre that sends Sam into a series of overplayed cartwheels as he dances between gunfire.

 

 

It's a mechanic that's teased out well; hit the left bumper during a successful dodge and time will slow to a crawl momentarily, enabling Sam to line up headshots. The effect – dubbed AR in the game - also kicks in when the armour takes critical damage, giving a brief window in which to extract Sam from danger, though in both counts it puts a considerable strain on the suit's power reserves.

 

There's one more move in Sam's repertoire and it's certainly the most dazzling of the lot. The left bumper sends him scooting across the floor on both knees, propelled at speed by the suit's own rockets in a pose that makes him look like he's at the climax of the world's greatest guitar solo. It's an exaggerated alternative to Gears of War's own roadie run, but in Vanquish you get to be the rock star.

 

Shooting's no slouch either, and true to the model laid out by Bayonetta there's a few flavours to hand. Casual Auto does all the hard work for you, auto-locking to a certain degree and restocking ammo without you having to resort to the reload button. Move further up the difficulty scale and the stabilisers are kicked off; what's left is a perfectly reliable mechanic that's served by an enjoyable arsenal.

 

Four weapon slots are available and they're changeable on the fly. Come across a discarded weapon that's not currently equipped and it can be swapped out, and each one can be upgraded through the course of play too. The weapons range from the mundane – assault rifles are joined by heavy machine guns and shotguns – to the more outrageous, with the disc launcher that happily slices through the midriffs of robots a particular favourite. What's more satisfying is how each weapon comes with its own little melee attack, the disc launcher being used to churn through enemies when used in close quarters.

 

Indeed, Vanquish seems to sometimes veer into the realms of parody. Its story of a future cold war played out by space marines with necks and arms thicker than you could ever imagine certainly raises a smile, and throughout there's the occasional touch that lets you know Platinum's got its tongue firmly embedded in its cheek. Cutscenes are interspersed with improbably gruff dialogue – Vanquish's tough guys make Dom and Marcus seem like a pair of giggling schoolgirls – and on the battlefield there's a button dedicated solely to flipping out a cigarette for a mid-fight smoke.

 

That doesn't stop its sci-fi vision from being frequently breathtaking, though; there's a slick efficiency to the presentation that's met with some wonderful imagery, whether that's the sleek design of the ARG suit itself or some of the wider shots of the inverted ring world that hosts the first act. If it can maintain the pace and urgency of the first act then one thing's for sure; if you thought that you were sick of third-person shooters then Vanquish is most certainly going to prove you wrong." - IGN first look

 

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Off to get that demo!

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