Reviews// Vanquish

I'll be honest, I was worried when I played the Vanquish demo that shooting around the floor using ass thrusters might prove too unruly and uncontrollable a gimmick to hang a game on. Fortunately, it turns out I was wrong. Not that ass thrust is all Vanquish has going for it, but that is the main unique selling point if we're being honest. But... maybe we should back up a bit, eh?

Vanquish is not, in fact, the stain-removal product it sounds like. It's a third-person future shooter set in space, courtesy of the studio behind Bayonetta – Platinum. It treats the shoot-'em-up genre in much the same way Bayonetta treats the brawler genre – with a great big grin on its face.

You play as Sam Gideon, a former college athlete and now agent of DARPA (the US army's R&D initiative – it's a real thing). Sam gets to wear DARPA's ARS (Augmented Reaction Suit – that's not a real thing) and, thanks to the actions of some nefarious Russians, take it into space in the name of not getting New York shot by a giant microwave beam from space. Sam also smokes more cigarettes than any other athlete turned soldier piloting a future robot suit you ever saw. But I digress – thanks to them Russians Sam trots off into orbit with crusty old wardog Lieutenant-Colonel Robert Burns (not the Scottish poet) and a small team of marines to take back the satellite the microwave beam's sat on.

It's not just any old satellite, though - it's a ring-shaped satellite with a 30 million-strong population aimed at easing the burden of overpopulation on America, the previous owner of the satellite. Yes, it's not the most original idea, but it does make for some nice clean visuals that differ from the very tired war-torn, post-apocalyptic sort of backdrop that goes with most other sci-fi sorts of shooters. It also makes for some interesting level design. But I'm jumping ahead a bit.

That Suit

Beyond making you a bit stronger, faster and generally harder, the suit does a couple of things that your average pair of combat pants doesn't. Firstly, it gives you ass thrusters. Actually, if we're going to be honest, the thrusters are packed into your legs. The effect is the same, though – you can skid around the floor at ridiculous speeds on your ass or your knees until the ARS over-heats. Quite why anyone would decide that they wanted ass thrusters in their mech suit (other than Tony Stark having patented jet boots) is a bit beyond me, but they make for a fun mechanic that sets Vanquish a little aside from its peers.

The other ability the ARS grants you is a bit (a LOT) more standard – bullet time. This kicks in either when you're about to die or when you manually activate it by aiming and performing an evasive manoeuvre simultaneously.

The suit also incorporates BLADE, a system that will physically replicate any gun it comes across. It can only store the details for three weapons at once, so the net effect is fairly similar to just carrying your weapons, but it's a nice idea.

The good news is, the thrusters and bullet time make for some really fun play mechanics. Rather than just feeling like slapped on 'special abilities' they really affect the way you play. While Vanquish is (at times annoyingly) quite linear, it frequently opens up onto quite spacious battlegrounds.

Combat is cover-based, but with the thrusters thrown in it's a whole different kettle of piranha to your standard, sometimes slow, crawly shoot-outs. You might see, for example, a nice cover spot on the other side of the area you're in that has a beautiful line of sight on the giant robot you're fighting. The thrusters get activated, you pop off a few shots en-route and pop out of your slide just in time to land a sweet shot from your short-range energy weapon on a vulnerable joint of the robot. Landing those shots gave me butterflies.