Game Review - Vanquish Demo/Game

So I know this game came out last October 19th (2010) but I saw the game listed in the Spotlight on my Xbox dashboard today and decided to check the game out. Sega’s official plot:

The story of VANQUISH™ is set in the near future. Russia and the United States are vying for ownership of the world’s fast-depleting energy resources and the US has constructed a space station in order to harness energy from the sun. Russian forces capture this space station and divert its harvested solar energy into a blast wave that destroys San Francisco, aiming to force the US into a total and unconditional surrender. In response, the US tasks its armed forces with recapturing the space station before the Russians can annihilate their next target –New York.

Directed by Shinji Mikami, the creator of the Resident Evil series, VANQUISH™ is a sci-fi shooter game that sees players take the role of Sam, a government agent kitted out with a futuristic battlesuit. A versatile war fighter with a huge arsenal of weaponry at his disposal, Sam also has an array of martial arts skills that he can use to take down his robot enemies.

Fast, fluid and frenetic –this is gaming at its most explosive and exciting, as you storm into battle.

Experience a game character like no other –Sam is the ultimate weapon, donning a futuristic battle suit of destructive firepower and superhuman speed and agility.

Fight your way through the enormous, open environments of the space station. The most advanced, futuristic city in the skies becomes home to the action.

This game plays a lot like Gears of War and BulletStorm in the control set up, the cover system, and the weapon d-pad weapon scheme. Its fun title, with some good battles, though at time it felt was never ending. You don’t get fancy things for head shots, and with how the weapons fire, I couldn’t really tell if I was doing more damage for shooting the heads.

I will say, that Graphics did look pretty great.

You’re basically in an armor suit similar to Crisis, or Halo, but the thing that sets it mostly apart from Gears, is that does have a melee system that’s not just quick kills. You can get right up into the enemy robots face and start hammering them down with punches and kicks.

This game is incredibly straight forward, as you pretty much duck and cover, kill things, move forward, have to fight one big bad boss and mini bosses.

You can try out the Demo on both PS3 and Xbox 360, it’s also available in stores, and for direct console download at $39.99. I wish I could get to try the full game so I can really get a vibe on the storyline for this game. The game carries no co-op or multiplayer.

Basically, without much else to go on, you’re getting another Gears Of War, BulletStrom game without the things that make those two great fun games. If you like mindless shooting, this is for you. This is a rather small review of the game, but there really wasn't much to say about it.

-Sean Chapman