Vanquish

[Fairweather Pure]

This game is a Japanese version of Gears of War. However, it's missing both Co-op and online which are the best thing about Gear IMO. Other than that, it's fucking awesome. If you own a PS3, make a point to play through this game at some point in time because it is the closest you'll ever come to a Gears game. It is a cover based shooter, but instead of being slow and methodical like Gears, it's hyper fast and furious with dozens of things going on all around you at any given time. It looks Japanese and it feels Japanese. It's lighter, faster, and a bit more complicated than a Gears game. But above all of that, it's fun as hell. They added some amazing touches to your suit that allow you to slow down time and to jet across the floor from cover to cover. The additions are all well thought out and important to mastering the game play. The Bayonetta people had a hand in this, and you can feel the influence all over the game (point scoring and level medals being one of many things).

Huge con incoming: The game is like, 5 hours long. Rent it or get it on the cheap. It should be in the cheapie bin real soon. I think most people will be really impressed with this game. It was much better than I was anticipating.

[Aslanna]

$60 for a 5 hour game. Or even "four hours or less" as GameInformer seemed to think was a reasonable amount of time to finish it... Who thinks that is good value? How can the developer/publisher even justify that. I'm sure they'll probably blame low sales numbers on piracy. Piracy seems to be the usual scapegoat for poor sales of shitty games.

[Fairweather Pure]

This is just a guess, so bear with me...

I think that this particular development team doesn't feel it's enough to simply play their games, they want you to master them. They expect multiple playthroughs from anyone that buys their games. On the plus side, both Bayonetta and Vanquish offer unique and varied tool sets for you to learn and master. Doing so changes the flow and pretty much the very nature of the combat in both games. It seems like a Japanese mindset is pretty heavy in both games. I could be totally wrong though!

[Funkmasterr]

Not defending the game as I haven't played it and probably won't, but fair pretty much pegged it. Re playing games and competing for high scores is very much the Japanese folks style, as opposed to the multiplayer, achievement hunting style thats taken over elsewhere.

[Aslanna]

Well unfortunately for the game most reviewers seem to think the replayability of Vanquish is pretty low. I'm not going to bother finding out for myself so I'll just take their word for it.

[Siji]

$60 for a 5 hour game. Or even "four hours or less" as GameInformer seemed to think was a reasonable amount of time to finish it... Who thinks that is good value?

Not me, but lots of people praised Splinter Cell: Conviction which was the same length and no multiplayer to speak of. It seems to be a trend lately.

[miir]

I borrowed Vanquish from my brother in law...
Unless you blow through the game on easy level, never dying.. you'd be hard pressed to finish it in 5 hours.
He finished it in 8-9 hours.

Personally, I think that's still pretty crappy value for a full priced game.

[Winnow]

I wish there was a cut-scene mode for games where you could just watch the cut scenes and be done with it.

[miir]

Finished it in a little over 8 hours.
Not sure how anyone could finish it in 4.
There were a few bosses who gave me some trouble but there weren't any that I spent more than 20 inutes on.

I suppose if you played the game through and learned all the bosses.. then went back in easy mode and skipped all the cutscenes you might be able to finish it in 5 hours.


I loved every minute of the game.
There were so many 'OMFG that's so fucking cool' moments.
The pacing was excellent.
The voice acting is top notch.
The set pieces, level design and boss designs are amazing.

I'm pretty sure I would feel the same way about the game if I had paid full price for it.... it's THAT good.
I will go back and play though some of the challenge mode levels... but not until I finish Singularity.

[Fairweather Pure]

I have this installed and it looks to be my the next game I concentrate on. More details and opinions to follow! (no spoilers though)

[Fairweather Pure]

Fun game, but it got a little repetitive by the end. They used some of the major/large units several times throughout the game, but changed the encounters up a bit each time so I didn't really mind. It's a damn fine looking game though!

I would also agree that there's no way in hell this is a 5 hour game. I just don't see how that would be possible. I was probably right around the 8 hour mark playing on regular difficulty. There is a 50pt achievement for never dieing during a playthrough and I have no idea how that would be possible. There is some element of luck to some of the harder boss encounters. I died plenty of times just trying to figure out what I was supposed to be doing in certain situations. I guess if you just played Vanquish for a month or tow it would be possible, but that's a lot of work for 50 points!

Much like Singularity, this was a great sleeper hit that I am really glad I took a chance on!

[Fairweather Pure]

Oh yeah, best ending credits EVER. However, you have to play the game and watch all the slow as fuck scrolling credits (unskippable) in order to get the 30pt acheivement for beating all chapters. That part is lame as hell.