Vanquish Review

With the recent announcement of Platinum games being put in charge of Metal Gear Rising I thought it was high time we took a look at Vanquish again.

So the most important thing for a third person shooter is of course gameplay.

Vanquish is fast and frenetic throwing wave after wave of robot’s in the path of your bullet time assisted… well… bullets. It’s immediately engaging and provided enough of a difficulty curve that kept the game interesting in fact one of its best features is its challenge and survival modes which span 5 waves of enemies with an ever ramping difficulty curve, too this day I have yet to complete those.

You can only carry four weapons on you at any one time, not only this but as the game goes on your chosen weapons will rank up. However in my experience I tended towards using the assault rifle and the heavy machine gun for a predominant portion of the game, this is a shame as these are the starting weapons. I just never found the drive to use the disc launcher or the multi laser and there was no incentive for me to do so.

To match the blistering speed of the game Platinum has employed bullet time to great effect in Vanquish. There can be a great pleasure found in getting head shots or shooting a grenade you just threw so it blows up quicker, all while sliding along the floor on your knees. It’s like every little boys dream when he would find a recently polished floor and just go sliding around the place.

How about the story?

Well it’s typical Japanese melodrama and bad voice dubbing, I’d let Sam go even though he sounds like a 50 a day man. But for what this story is, a tool to push the gameplay forward it serves its purpose. It’s pretty standard to be quite honest big bad Russian takes over space station, uses it to cause massive destruction so you got to stop the bastard, not really much more to say.

Presentation?

Again it’s not going to set the world on fire. The future is very white and grey apparently with helpfully bright red Russian robot hordes and to honest I think there could have been more enemy variety rather than just the same 4 or 5 types of enemy with different weapons.he art style though is great and really succeeds in capturing that anime, gundam-esk type Japanese robot design. Sam’s character model in particular with all of its constantly moving parts and a really sleek but powerful sort of design is great and really sells you on the speed and power this guy is meant to have.

Sound/Music?

Sound can really bring a game to life and this game is full of that believe me the sound of gun fire and missiles passing by is a constant back drop to your endeavours. One of the best parts of this game is hearing just the amount of enemies pounding your position with some crazy cannon in a giant dudes chest coming straight for you all while trying to figure out what to do next.

The music on the other hand tends to get a little lost but still does its job of carrying the tempo of the game nicely with synth, ambient, trance type electro music which suits the rest of the game to a tee.

Overall I had a great time playing Vanquish, it’s a little niche due to its kind of hammy story but to me that’s just part of the charm like and old Kung Fu movie. It’s fast paced with solid game mechanics a decent look and feel with a real challenge available if you’re looking for it.

This to me spells great things for Revengance a situation in which I want Platinum to bring its approach to game play and action and Kojima to bring the story, voice work and character design. Ultimately the styles of a game like Vanquish and the Raiden character mesh quite well… I mean remember this scene…

Thanks for reading.

I was recently pondering “what are my favourite gaming achievements and memories?”

Well to be honest answering that question with just one is tough, but to me there is one achievement that at the time seemed impossible but was completed. It may not have been the most difficult thing to do ever but on Dynasty Warriors 3 at the attack on Hu Loa Gate I took on and beat Lu Bu in one on one combat.

Now I can guess what you’re thinking that’s not that impressive and you know what I’ll take my hat off to that but for me at that point in time it was one of my proudest gaming moments.

Here’s a video of the intro to his arrival into battle:

So what are some of your favourite gaming achievements or memories?

Recently I had my old copy of The Legend Of Dragoon, LoD for short, repaired and proceeded to blaze through that mother in a week and oh my lord if I hadn't forgotten what a bloody brilliant game it is. And so in its honour I decided to review it for all those who missed out on what could be one of if not the most brilliant JRPG of all time.

GRAPHICS:

In my opinion the least important part of a game, especially if it's a rpg. LoD was released shortly after Final Fantasy VIII, December 1999 but wasn't on store shelves in Europe till 2001, by Sony and so obviously it's somewhat dated. However in my opinion the graphics still hold up pretty well and while playing it I couldn't help but smile as it immediately transported me back to the glory days of the rpg. For this review however I'll be comparing it to its nearest rival the previously mentioned Final Fantasy VIII. Out of the two I'd have to say that Final Fantasy VIII has the slight edge in cinematics (although LoD was the first rpg I played to actually have a voice cast a leap Final Fantasy didn't make till 10, so thumbs up) but in terms of in game graphics I'd say they're on par with each other. LoD however has some of the most beautiful pre-rendered backgrounds I have ever seen and at points literally makes your jaw drop with the sheer detail involved.

GAMEPLAY:

LoD's over world is very similar to that of Final Fantasy X with linear towns and points of interest connected by set paths, this obviously isn't as good as the more free roaming over world that you'd get in rpgs from a similar period but at the same time I didn't feel it detracted at all from the overall experience and it does help to move the storyline along quickly. The star of the show however is the battle system which takes the old turn based game play and adds a sort of quick time element in which you have to hit certain buttons, X mostly, to extend your attack to complete combos that increase the damage dished out by your characters, this was also used in the game Lost Odyssey but with less effect. Some may think of this as tampering but it helps address a lot of the problems that others have with turn based gameplay by keeping the player engaged, looking for more damage and avoiding counter-attacks.

STORY:

LoD opens with the main protagonist, Dart, returning to his home from a failed quest to find and kill the person that murdered his parents only to find his village under attack and his close friend/love interest Shana captured by an invading empire. Dart sets out to rescue Shana but soon finds that things aren't as simple as a b c and his life is about to get a whole lot more complicated (I'm not going to tell you the whole thing you've got Wikipedia for that but lets just say you get dragon powers, yet another thumbs up). Being a JRPG LoD does suffer from melodrama syndrome to some extent but as most of the in game convos are in text it'll never really hit you, unlike the more modern fully voiced JRPGs. The story moves nicely and keeps you interested easily portraying the sense that you're a small man caught in an adventure epically bigger than you are. As well as this it never gets too silly or unbelievable and twists and turns will have you second guessing yourself and wanting to know more about the characters you're playing as and against. Fleshing out its characters with interesting back stories is yet another thing LoD does extremely well giving them all believable motivation or at least the sense that they've been swept up.

SOUNDTRACK:

This one is going to be short, it’s a JRPG done by Sony you know its soundtrack is fantastic already. Sure there are probably better ones but it does its job of setting moods and conveying emotion well... and that’s all it needs to do.

VERDICT:

I’ve played this game multiple times and it never bores me. It’s got a great story, engaging gameplay, characters that can be related to and dragons what more do you need guy? Nothing that’s what! This game is one of my all time favourites and takes pride of place in my collection. If you haven’t played it yet and you’re into RPGs you’d be a grade A* fool not to pick it up. Now here’s where we hit the biggest issue with the game, it’s as rare as a Faberge egg and nearly as expensive with a used copy easily setting you back £30-£40 (that’s $45-$60) on eBay or brand new from Amazon for a whopping £99 ($153). However when you get it it’s yours for life and it’ll never leave your game shelf except when it’s in your machine, and hell it can only get more rare so who knows you might even get more for it ten years down the road (I ain’t selling mine though)

An easy perfect 10 if there ever was one.

Fifteen years ago, nearly to the day, a game was released that changed my life. That game was Final Fantasy VII.

I was a fresh faced seven year old yet to truly experience what the gaming world had to offer me, besides jumping on turtles and eating mushrooms which I could do at the local petting zoo, boy was I in for a shock. On the suggestion of my best friend at the time I managed to nag my parents into shelling out for, what I would later describe as my favourite game of all time, Final Fantasy VII which by the way I recently completed again for the umpteenth time.

The story compelled me, the graphics amazed me, the music spoke to me and the gameplay enraptured me… I was hooked and from that fateful day that my brand new PSX span that disc I was an RPG nut and I’ve never looked back.

So… what happened?

You know when you were young you’d go to a family party or dinner and there’d be that one relative, be it an uncle or a cousin or whoever, that would have you is hysterics and would make what you thought was dull bearable but then many years later you’d see them again and you realise that they’re actually a massive tool well that’s what Final Fantasy has become to me. How could something that was so great fall so far.

I recently saw the Final Fantasy XII-2 trailer and no word of a lie I actually felt sick. “What the fuck is this?!” I cried. This wasn’t the series I remembered, not even close! The story looked generic, the gameplay was shallow, the graphics… well they looked quite good to be honest but worst of all, WORST OF ALL was the music. I’m sorry but when did Square decide that instead of using a beautiful, wondrous, fairy tale-esk, Nobuo Uematsu penned main theme that had been a staple of the series since the original it was going to go with pop garbage.

Then it hit me you know that joke about the abused house wife who keeps going back because “no really he’s changed this time”… that’s me! I’d given XI a go, sat through XII, drudged through XIII hell I’ve even played through the entire of X-2 all the while telling myself this was just a blip and any second now I’d turn a corner and it would be the same game I’d fallen in love with so many years ago… wrong, WRONG!

You see although people say that games aren’t art they’re wrong because if, like me, you consider art an expression of emotion through a sensory medium then that’s exactly what Final Fantasy VII was. VII dealt with issues that had rarely been explored in video games at that point in time most likely due to the death of Nobuo Sakaguchi’s mother near to the release of VI. It openly questioned what you as the gamer were doing, for example Cait Sith near the end of the second disc destroys the very first thing you achieved in the game, the destruction of the Mako reactor, by openly telling you that you’d killed innocent people and destroyed families to complete your goal and was that so different from what Sephiroth was trying to achieve, the game had what we call subtext. In fact here’s a fun game without describing what they look like or what their job is tell me about the characters from each game.

Final Fantasy VII:

· Cloud was a lost soul empty of emotion and feeling who through the course of the game not only regaines his memory but discovers who he truly is and wants to be.

· Barret whose anger burned reactors to the ground was actually angry at himself for letting his friend die.

· Tifa is a mothering and caring character but is also shy and repressed keeping her pain locked in her heart, see what I did there.

· Aeirth is a girl who has been treated terribly by people her whole life but yet is still full of unconditional love and peace despite the past, even to the point where she makes the ultimate sacrifice to save the world.

· Red XIII is the last of his kind who mistakenly resents his father for being a coward and so faces adversity head on.

· Cait Sith is actually Reeve a man ashamed of what he and the company he works for is doing and who personifies redemption.

· Yuffie is cocky and brash but this is because of her strained relationship with her father who she has never been able to impress.

· Cid is a bitter man whose dream was crushed when he is forced to choose between everything he’d ever wanted and the life of his friend.

· Vincent is a cold man who saw his one true love fall into the hands of a mad man and was unable to save her for which he blames himself and seals himself off from the world.

· Sephiroth never fitted in. Raised by the Shinra electric company he has never truly known love or what it’s like to belong and has always known that he was different from everyone else. So when he thinks he’s discovered the truth about his origin he finally knows his place is by his mother’s side. What’s even more tragic is that even this is a lie and the truth is that there never was any love for him from his only living family… only curiosity.

Final Fantasy XIII:

· Erm… uuuummmm… the black guy’s got a chocobo in his hair and that kid’s mom dies at the beginning… I don’t know.

(The worst thing is that, that isn’t even a joke I can barely name half the characters in that game despite only completing it last year.)

You see over the years the series has changed, it’s become less about pushing boundaries of what subject matter could be put in a game or how video games can reflect personal struggles in real life and has instead become pulp, more about the glamour of saving the world and less about why you’re doing it.

To take it back this whole issue is personified for me by doing one simple thing listening to two pieces of music, the Final Fantasy main theme and the god awful XII-2 theme New World, and understanding what each tells you and which means more even though one doesn’t have any words. To me the main theme is majestic, full of highs and lows and has a sweeping epicness despite its simplicity whereas the XIII theme is simply like every other song on the radio generic and shallow and if that isn’t an allegory for the difference between these two games then I don’t know what is. thank you for reading and enjoy.

Final Fantasy VII Main Theme:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=88_PGUa69aE

Final Fantasy XIII Theme 'New World':

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E6bkfhLbw4Y