E3 2010 Showfloor Preview: Vanquish
June 16th, 2010 | Written by Anthony Perez | Topic: PlayStation 3, Previews, Xbox 360
One liner: Gears of War on crack, which isn’t a bad thing.
It’s been a trend in the past couple of E3′s that we’ve seen third-person shooters that feel like Gears of War with different window dressing. On the surface, Sega’s Vanquish seems like it falls in the category. After extended play time, it still feels like that. That sounds disappointing, but believe us, it’s not.
You play Sam, a US government agent who’s been sent to fight off some Russians who are trying to acquire some crazy science fictiony energy source that has world ending power. It’s a generic story for a generically named character, but it does its job in setting up the premise for the game from which the action can start.
Sam is decked out in a full body suit that lets him do crazy things, the most important of which is the power slide, a super-fast rodeo run where he uses his suit to propel him forward at breakneck speeds.
Aside from that, there’s very little to distinguish Vanquish from other titles of its ilk. What sets it apart and what makes it so damn fun, is how simple and intuitive the experience is. Developed by PlatinumGames, the dudes behind MadWorld, Vanquish is polished as hell. The action fast and frenetic, and everything makes sense after just a few minutes.
You use the directional pad to quickly flip through four types of guns and grenades, hit the powerslide to zip from cover to cover and evade fire, and occassionally maul someone in close range with a melee attack. You’re part of a team of roughly 6 squad members and when they go down then you have to pick them back up.
We found ourselves heavily rely upon the power slide to get around, which does deplete an energy bar after extended use, but we were able to slide around for quite a while without running out of energy. There’s is ammo and other equipment found in boxes spread throughout the level, too, in case you run low.
Between gorgeous graphics and incredibly intuitive and familiar gameplay, Vanquish successfully takes the Gears formula and shifts into overdrive. Most importantly, it’s a hell of a lot of fun to play.
Vanquish hits stores in October 2010 for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.
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