Leave it to Platinum Games, they of the former Clover people who have made uniformly excellent, over-the-top action games (well, with the notable exception of MadWorld), to finally understand how to make a good game with space marines. Avoiding the "grittiness" that pervades too many Western sci-fi shooters, Vanquish is a ludicrously enjoyable romp that makes one thing really clear: if you're making an action game, don't take yourself too seriously.
It's the spirit of the game that really sells you on it – it's probably the best interpolation of 80s cold-war influenced action gaming out there. Besides the squad-based third-person combat that is borrowed from more modern sources, the overall feeling of the game is closer to Gunstar Heroes than Gears of War. The setup is even Cold War influenced – Russians are trying to steal a weaponized satellite from the Americans, using helpfully-red-coloured robots to do their bidding. As Sam Gideon, cigarette-smoking badass in a robot suit, you have to gun down wave after wave of these robots, as well as the occasional hulking super-robot, all while cracking wise and shooting the hell out of stuff.
On paper, it sounds incredibly dull, but in action, the game is likely the most glorious execution of the third-person shooter I've seen. Ever. To some degree, this has to be the influence of Shinji Mikami, who, now freed from the chains of Capcom and Resident Evil, seems content to churn out games that are just outrageous – see the fact that he and Suda 51 are co-directing Shadows of the Damned, for instance. And Vanquish is nothing if not outrageous, in all of the right ways. In the first, oh, five seconds of this game, I knew that my fears of this being another misguided attempt to kowtow to "Western" tastes by a Japanese developer were completely unfounded. Despite a passing aesthetic resemblance to Halo, Vanquish is certainly its own beast, if only because it makes absolutely no bones about dialing its action up to 11, all of the time.
The skies take on the hue of the storm of bullets flying in all directions; hulking behemoths glow ominously red before launching solar-powered lasers; and most entertainingly of all, Sam is able to use boosters to slide around levels like something out of the Wipeout series, fantastically blurring reality as he spins around the battlefield. Most games would be content to throw in these elements sporadically as a set-piece, but Vanquish is all set-piece, all the time, and it's positively glorious. The game understands that making a "serious" game out of these outlandish elements is fundamentally wrong-headed, so Platinum simply pushes everything to the maximum.
Subtlety, then, is obviously not Vanquish's strong point, but who the fuck wants subtlety out of a third-person action game? This would be different if Vanquish were another dudebro game or swathed in "contemporary brown," but it's not – it's colourful and knowing and at times, hilarious. All of the characters are shallow and cliched – you know it and the game knows it. The situation is thoroughly ridiculous. And the action matches. It's so refreshing to see someone take their big-budget game and infuse it with so much verve – this clearly was designed as a labour of love.
And also refreshingly, Vanquish has the gameplay and the vision to back it all up. This is also one of the most gorgeous games I've ever seen, bringing with it a distinctly anime (I'm thinking Mobile Suit Gundam-style) influence that doesn't really overtake the look of the game into something overly plasticky. And integral to the gameplay is the fact that despite all of the stuff going on all of the time, the game never, ever slows down. I don't talk about stuff like framerates very often because it's usually not all that interesting, but here, it's integral to the enjoyment of the game.
Unlike most third-person shooters, which too often try to make you feel like you're in a movie (and are just as linear, so that you never feel lost or whatever), Vanquish is unapologetically a video game. I'm quite glad that Sega published this game, because Vanquish has more in common with the Sega Genesis than it does with any action film. Part of this is due to the overwhelming light show on display, but more of it has to do with the fact that the game actually demands something of the player – it's actually really hard, and you will die a fair amount, even on the Easy setting. The game actually requires skill, which shouldn't be incredible in and of itself, but so few shooting games actually have this that it seems quite remarkable.
The controls are spot-on, another rare feat for the HD consoles – never too over-complicated, and with the ability to pull off stuff that is difficult to master but so fun to try to perfect. Mostly, I'm thinking of the dodging-AR sensing combination (which has a flashy, kind-of slo-mo effect on it) and the aforementioned boosting powers, a real requirement to stay alive on the battlefield. All of these things serve one purpose: to make you feel awesome while doing them, but thankfully not in a "God-like" sort of way. Despite the fact that Sam's suit can regenerate health (and this is even explained in the tutorial, a real rarity), your life hangs in the balance at all times, requiring – GASP – actual video game acumen.
Basically, that's the best part of Vanquish – how unapologetically videogame-y it is. Not just as in "you're playing a video game," but the game itself doesn't feel like it's trying to be anything more than what it is, and despite its short length, it's clearly a callback to the kinds of games from the 80s and early 90s where "content" doesn't equal value – quality of gameplay, and the feeling of wanting to master said gameplay, does. Vanquish, then, is a video game in its traditional sense – gaining new skills and perfecting them for the sake of play. If all third-person shooters realized this, and were also as good as this game, I might not have such a problem with the genre. As it stands, Vanquish is at the top of the heap, and Sam Gideon is probably smoking right there at the apex.