Vanquish GUEST REVIEW

Hola people! Kyle here with another guest review, this time from blog reader ZIG. (He chose to remain anonymous) ZIG has made a rather nice review with a good sense of humour, and as he hopes to make more reviews, this review proves that he is more than welcome.

Hawke: So long as he brushes his teeth before coming into the office.

Kyle: Shut up Hawke.

And without further complaining, *shoots a glare at Hawke*, we shall let him shine!

Hawke: Like a grenade about to blow up-

Kyle: Stop it!

***

Vanquish is a 2010 third-person-shooter for the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3, developed by Platinum Games, and published by Sega.

Intro:

You play as "Sam Gideon" DARPA opererative who does battle with Russian Robots, wearing a fancy robotic suit that augments his reactions, slows down time, and allows him to speed along the ground via suit-embedded thrusters.

REVIEWING STYLE:

--Green is for mild content.

--Blue is for moderate or very brief intense content, provided that it isn't too graphic.

--Orange is for intense content.

--Red is for very graphic or prolonged intense content.

BITE-SIZED REVIEW:

Moderate bloody Violence: A lot of people get burned to a crisp by a giant laser in the game's intro, it's not that graphic, but still gruesome.

Robots of various shapes and sizes are the main enemies and explode (a lot) when shot. 

Human-on-human violence features minimally, as your adversaries are robots until right near the game's end, but your human allies can be shot throughout the game by enemy robots. None of this is particularly gory.

Strong Language: Frequent f**k, s**t, d**n, p**s, p***y, h**l, son of a b**ch, a**, and variants. God and Jesus’ name are used in vain a few times.

Moderate Suggestive Content: In several cutscenes a female character wears a fairly short skirt that is often seen via low camera angles - not upskirt shots or anything like that, but fairly close.

Spiritual Content:  One character says, “Thank God I’m an atheist”, and a few symbols are seen.

Heavy Tobacco Usage: The main character is a chain smoker who smokes throughout cutscenes from start to finish, and can throw a cigarette to distract enemies.

Good Morality: The central character risks his life to stop Russian Space Terrorists (I prefer the term "Space Russians" myself.) from destroying a populated city on earth. He does this by fighting many robots (At lease he's not shooting aliens, or humans - for the most part).

At a certain point in the game, our hero questions the ethics of the "end justifies the means", and disagrees with his superior, who believes soldiers are expendable.

However, because of this he is forced to take a few less-than-moral actions later on in the game.

Overall: Moderately graphic

Areas of Concern:

Violence:


Throughout 90% of the game, robots are shot until they explode. The most common type is a bipedal gun-toting red drone. Others robot types range from exploding octopus-like bombs, to axe-wielding transforming scorpion monstrosities. Countless robots and a few space-ships explode throughout.

--Violence against robots that are obviously robots. They explode and emit sparks when you shoot them with various weapons and/or throw grenades.

--Throughout the game ally soldiers are shot by enemies, signified by blood sprays or your allies falling over, either to be revived by the player or left to die.

--A giant laser shoots at ally tanks making them explode.

--The same laser fires at buildings that explode and/or fall over (no inhabitants are mentioned - it is assumed that the space station the game takes place on has been evacuated - as you never see any inhabitants or evidence of them).

--At one point you have to cross a bridge that is guarded by automated lasers that target soldiers (and you) if you try and cross it (and you have to). For some reason soldiers attempt to run over the bridge in droves, all getting vapourized, leaving blood stains behind. 

--You have to shoot human enemies late in the game, and blood sprays from them.

--When you are shot the edges of the screen become increasingly red, and when you die you fall over backwards as your power-suit explodes. Sometimes an explosion will destroy you entirely, leaving a burn mark behind.

Storyline Violence:

--In the game's intro, people are seen burning up and their skin boiling (as well as some blood splatter) caused by a giant space-based energy weapon fired into a populated city. Before this happens, people are shown going about their daily business, men, women, children, etc.

--Early on, ally soldiers get sucked out into space in front of you, screaming.

--There is a part where soldiers are imprisoned by electrical energy, and they appear to be in pain, although when you free them they comment that it felt great.

--One man is crushed by debris, leaving his bloody arm visible beneath a block of concrete.

--Some people burst from the heat (partially offscreen). 

--We see one man’s point of view as he looks at the veins in his arms becoming red and his skin starting to burn.

--A portion of the city explodes.

--One character swings a large knife at another, narrowly missing him.

--A character is shot in the leg, and we see it in close-up.

--Buildings collapse and explode.

--Tanks explode.

--Robots explode.

--Ships explode.
 

--More robots explode (Yes, I'll stop now).

--A soldier is shot in the head, collapsing.

--The lead rogue Space Russian™ is a cyborg with what appears to be small plug holes in his head. He puts his fingers slightly into these plugs during a cutscene.

--Soldiers are trapped in a room without an air supply and suffocate, choking and gasping before collapsing.

--A large presumably uninhabited space station is destroyed.

--A character, having being mortally wounded, coughs up blood, and then sets a bomb to explode, which he happens to be holding. We only see the explosion itself.

--A person commits suicide by gunshot-to-the head. The camera lingers a bit after the fact.

Sex/Nudity:

--Your female teammate wears a tight fitting skirt, which the camera lingers on. The camera angles objectify her somewhat.

Language:

Fairly frequent strong language: f**k, s**t, d*mn, p*ss, p***y, h*ll, son of a b**ch, a**, and variants.

God and Jesus’ name are used in vain on occasion.

Spiritual content:

--At one point your journey takes you through an area with a semi-destroyed theater, and a sign displaying the text “Eye of providence”. 

“The eye of providence” is another name for the masonic "All-seeing-eye":

This symbol itself does not feature in the game, however, but only its namesake in text.

The enemy Space Russians™ have a symbol for their order (The Order of the Russian star), a masonic symbol that is a variation of this, but with a five pointed star on its chest:
 

Drugs/Alcohol/Smoking: 

--The character you play as is a chain smoker, pretty much. He smokes throughout the game. At one point towards the end, our hero hangs on the edge of platform with one hand, having narrowly escaped death, and about to face an tough enemy, he elects to have a cigarette before returning to battle.

--A character sometimes mentions his "good friend Jack", referring to a flask of whiskey.

Positive content:

--You shoot machines for the majority of the game and stand up for the value human life.

Morality:

--Your character shows good morality, wanting to stop the evil Space Russions™ from destroying more cities and to rescue the scientist who developed his suit.

--Sam disagrees with the colonel of the army of space marines he accompanies, because the colonol believes the end justifies the means, soldiers are expendable etc. 

Thoughts and Impressions:

Gameplay-wise, Vanquish shines. It's a super-fast paced Third-Person-Shooter in which you play as Sam Gideon, who has what other characters refer to as an "ARS suit" (Augmented Reaction Suit) which has jets inside it that propel you like an F1 car around the battle field, in short bursts.

You can also hit L1/LT after jumping, during rocketing around, or while in mid air (!) to enter bullet-time, essentially slowing time to a crawl for short periods, complete with rippling air trails behind bullets. 

This becomes essential later in the game for getting the maximum amount of fire into a robot’s glowing orange weak spot while its momentarily exposed (why are weak spots always orange?).

You need to be strategic because using these features overheats your suit, which takes some time to recover and recharge, stripping you of bullet time and rapid movement temporarily, which in this frantic game can be a death sentence, as some enemies can kill you with one hit (!). Be warned.

It’s quite challenging, more so than a lot of modern games, and it has the right amount of difficulty. It isn’t the longest game around, but I attribute this to how quickly you move, and how little padding there is. It doesn't waste your time in other words.

I’d say this game has super replay-ability, in spite of its relative shortness (My very first playthrough, a couple years ago, I think was almost 8 hours, but with subsequent playthoughs you can get it down to 5 or so probably – depending on the difficulty.

For this review I played on “casual” and did it in under 4 hours, but I know the game very well, having finished it many times - and on max difficulty, and this difficulty it almost plays itself, so stick to normal or hard - how it's meant to be played).

Don’t let the brevity put you off though, it’s a very polished package, and ridiculously addictive, with the best (and responsive) third-person-cover-shooter mechanics of this generation, in my opinion. Your aiming is perfect, unlike other games. (Uncharted 3 I’m looking at you… it’s jarring if you go between the two in a short space of time).

It is somewhat linear (isn’t every shooter these days?), and towards the end of the campaign you will face several large boss enemies several times over, and won’t encounter new ones after a certain point. This is not a huge problem, as fighting giant transforming robots never gets old…(in my opinion)
 
Did I mention you go up against a space-ship that also transforms into a walking city sized cannon? Well you do, and its awesome. You have to dodge its Death-Star-like beams and its house sized “feet”, that will crush you, in order to get inside it.

Even sometimes dreaded button-mashing quick-time events are fun, making you feel totally powerful and unstoppable.

In short, it’s a spectacular game, helped by having far less gore and human-on-human violence than most games out there. Most of the game’s enemies are robots, so it’s a welcome change.
Story-wise, most reviewers will tell you that Vanquish is rubbish, this is definitely not the case. 

It has some surprising humour (and Space Russians™) and some subtlety in places, that borders on satire of its subject matter (For example, you encounter a group of disco-dancing robots at one point - really...).

Even though I’d call the overall story mostly good, the dialogue is full of “bro-tacular” military cliches and gruff almost Batman-esque voice acting, but it almost becomes satire, as I said. Obviously the atheist line mentioned earlier is particularly silly.

The story deals a little bit with not taking one’s government at face value and that things are not completely as they seem, it appears to argue that you should never be a mindless follower of earthly governments, for me that is a good message. Render unto Caesar, but don't let them force you to do what isn't right. 

As we know, and is currently very evident, no man can adequately rule our planet…Only God can do that…

Visually and aurally its a great looking game, although I suspect it runs at a slightly sub-HD resolution to accommodate all the mayhem, debris and giant robots flying about.

What stands out though is the awesome design work of the robots, your suit, the environments (even though they can be a bit grey, but they shake this up with a forest, an on water segment, a spectacular monorail section, zero gravity bits etc.)

Audio is satisfying, the sound design is great and bombastic as expected. Everything is as it should be, and your suit sounds like lightweight metal, which sells it further. The music is good mostly electronic and techno based, which suits the rapid nature of the game, and some orchestral elements to add to the epic feel.

CONCLUSION:

The game is a serious adrenalin rush, solid, and great fun, although slightly short compared to some other games. Also it has Space Russians™! Underneath what at first appears standard space-marine fare, full of military cliches, is some surprising commentary on governments and a few nice twists.

The content is also fairly passable, way less gory than most - besides the worst case of gore being one character shooting themselves in the head, and people bursting and burning up in the intro, the game is mostly blood free.

VERDICT: 16+

Vanquish is rated Moderate Caution for frequent Strong Language and Moderate Bloody Violence.

Outro:

Okay, so there we go, great game, some violence and pity about the profanity/blasphemy and the game could have been a bit longer. Other than that I’d say it’s a modern classic, gameplay-wise.

This is ZIG, hope this review was useful, it's my first, till next time.

Peace out y'all!