PG 1 | PG 2

Vanquish is the latest third-person shooter from Sega. You may not have heard about this game due to a real lack of marketing, but if you’re a hardcore gamer, you need to add this one to your collection.

This game brings me back to the games of yesteryear
I’ve been playing video games for almost as long as I can remember. My Uncle had one of the many versions of Pong and from the early age of two, I would sit in front of his wood trimmed TV and play my brains out. As soon as I was old enough to go to the arcade on my own, I would walk there everyday I could and blow any money I had to progress to that next level or beat the top score. Over the years the difficulty and intensity of video games has changed a lot from what I was used to as a kid. I’ve been longing for an Xbox 360 or PS3 game that would make me feel like that kid again, frantically shooting at enemies and doing anything I could to stay alive. I’m very excited to let you know that Vanquish is that game.

San Francisco - Home of the best cooked human organs
The game starts out with a video sequence of a large beam from space touching down in the city of the Golden Gate and heating everyone up to the point that they boil from the inside out. At least I think that’s whats happening. A few moments later we come to learn that the Russians are behind it and that we have 8 hours to save New York. Don’t worry, you’re going to do it in around 5-6 hours. That may seem like a short campaign, but believe me, there isn’t one second of that 6 hours that I didn’t have sweaty palms from the insane action going on. The story is extremely cheesy and the dialogue is insanely corny. Its like they pulled the text from a bad NES game and got some voice actors to record it. Its so bad that I get a major kick out of it. It really makes me feel nostalgic because so many of the lines feel like they were pulled right out of some of my favourite NES games.

This Gideon can’t be found in a hotel nightstand
You play as Sam Gideon, a member of DARPA, who just happens to be the proud owner of an ARS or Augmented Reaction suit. This suit has many special abilities which make this game so incredibly fun to play and allows Sam Gideon to teach the Russians a very important lesson about how its not cool to make people cook from the inside out.

The suit has this thrust ability that allows you to slide around at lightning speed. On top of that, you can throw the game into AR mode which is just like bullet time in any other game. Combining these two abilities is amazing. See a group of robots across the field? Slide over to them in not time and switch on AR mode to slowly take each one of them out while you watch their bullets whizz by you. It such an innovate combination. Anytime your health gets really low the game will automatically trigger AR mode so you can get the edge you need to stay alive. It’s a great mechanic that I’ve never seen in any other game. It felt like playing Metalstorm for the NES for the first time where you could change gravity on the fly. You can also go into cover like in most over 3rd person shooters you see out there today, but don’t stay in any one place too long or you’ll get flanked by a squad of angry commie robots.

The enemies in this game are intense. First of all, there are always a myriad of them coming at you, and not just one type, and bunch of different types with different mechanics. It feels like an 2D shoot em up where there are bullets and enemies coming at you from all directions and you have quickly dodge and shoot in order to bring them all down. Enemies will hide from you, flank you, pop up to shoot you just after you empty a clip - needless to say - the A.I. is very intelligent. You’re not alone in the fight, and some very competent friendly A.I. is usually helping you on your way. One of the things I really love about this game is that the A.I. on both sides engage each other all the time and as you’re running (or sliding) across the battlefield you’ll see all kinds of confrontations going on that make you feel like you’re part of something, instead of all enemies focusing all their attention on you.