Vanquish

        We begin by seeing a nice view of San Francisco. Family’s walking through the park, sunlight glistening off the water, which is soon abrupted by a giant space station that by using a power much like the Death Star to destroy the city, from here Russia demands The United States to surrender or else they will fall. Obviously with this being the United States, and a video game surrender is not an option. So you, Sam, the man that is wearing the powerful ARS battle suit your off to go find one of your friends that has gotten kidnapped and to stop the weapon that will bring about another great war. Sadly that’s about as far as the story truly goes. Along the way more is revealed but its full holes and questions with no answers.

     One of the things that stood out to me was how even though the games main protagonist is a mechanical battle suit we are not stuck in the silent era, and more importantly the places you go aren’t lifeless. Everything is bright and full of color, it’s good to see that were not always stuck in a dull grey/dark brown like in most games that is trying to be considered hardcore. Combat is where this game shines its brightest. Even though it does steal its main concepts from Gears of War and a lot of extra visuals from Metal Gear, what they add makes the experience something that should be played at least once. Along with the usual running, gunning and hiding behind the walls large enough to be used as cover, you’ll be implementing your suits AR mode, when in this mode time slows down and thus all enemies are a much easier target but by using this your suit will start to heat up and when it reaches it max you’ll be vulnerable to enemy attack, using this in conjunction with your suits grind rails to very quickly rail around entire areas and getting behind enemy lines you’ll be able to pick off targets and locate weak spots with ease.

    This game only has a couple of different weapons throughout the game but cool thing they’ve done with this is you only have 1 weapon that is able to record up to 3 different weapons into its databanks and thus transform into it at any time, so when you trade a old gun for a new one you really just trading the memory banks, which is easier for the weapons upgrades which you find by picking up newer versions of it or random enemies will drop a upgrade which you can give to any weapon of your choice. So I’d say choose your 3 favorite guns and then just leave it at that. What a lot games do too much these days is throw in Quick Time Events that aren’t needed and end up throwing people off, luckily this game doesn’t do that, the QTE in this game are minimal, and many you can initiate if you choose so, if not just keep using your gun, but the ones that you do active are usually outrageous. One thing that didn’t keep up with the games amazing visuals and fast-paced battles are the voice acting. Every main character failed to portray the being that there acting to be, and Sam seems to have a problem with himself so he’s trying his hardest to be the next Solid Snake, but fails at that as well.

     I had a lot of fun playing though this game, its fast, tons of action and many collectables to find and upgrade you’ll be able to have more to do after the main campaigns 6 to 7 hour play through, sadly though after beating this game once I don’t have any real reason to do so again, except for those who want to find everything and put their skills to the test in GOD HARD mode there really isn’t much to come back to.

I give it a 7.5/10