MANTLE!
Although actually, it wasn’t wank, it was really good. I loved it. At first I didn’t quite get it, but after a while slowing down time to shoot multiple bad robots faces off just gelled. I would say that’s Vanquish in a nutshell, but there’s more to it than that. First of all, it’s tough. I played it on Hard (for the Achievement, obviously) from the word go, and there’s a neat little bug that lets you complete it with no deaths – even though you will die several hundred times. Every time you do die, or fail at a mission critical objective (such as not ensuring friendly forces survive), just hit start during the lengthy and extravagant death animation and select Title Screen. Sure, you’ll have to start from your last checkpoint, but they are very generous with their spacing, you won’t have to replay much.
Make a mistake and you will be punished. Get hit once and the game will let you know “One more hit and your dead!” by making the screen pulse red, and your suit will typically trigger it’s reaction boosting, time slowing mechanic. It’s very rare to be killed outright in one hit, these instances will be telegraphed with big winding up flourishes, such as R-Type style particles being drawn into a giant cannon before LAZERZ being spewed all over your face. It gives you time to duck behind cover, or roll around out of harms way.
This is nowhere near as crazy as it gets
The weapons were all great fun to use, and felt suitably powerful enough to destroy the hordes of armour-plated Russian robots you face. Ranging from realistic machine guns – one speedy and accurate, the second more powerful but unwieldy – and a meaty shotgun all the way through to proper sci-fi: Low Frequency Energy (LFE) gun and Lock On Lasers. The LFE shot a large ball of low frequency energy (hence the name…), which could go through scenery and penetrate enemy cover, but still damage the bad robots – interesting concept. I privately referred to the Lock On Lasers as the LOLgun.
It was pretty much the perfect length, and the missions had plenty of variation. The vast collection of different enemy types, which the game sent to kill me in different combinations over the course of the game, spiced things up no end. Overall I felt it was a unique take on the third-person-shooter genre and boosting from pillar to crate to corner sped up the usual sluggish tactics of cover based shooters. The delightful weapons, coupled with the ability to heighten your reactions and essentially slow down time, were a joy to use, and even playing through a second time to shoot all the collectables wasn’t a chore.
This game is highly recommended by me.
