Vanquish for Xbox 360 Reviews by Gamers

Just to start off, Vanquish took me 3 hours to beat. I did enjoy that sweet afternoon, but it still took 3 hours. I tried to pay attention to the story, but I found out early on that this game has something in common with Resident Evil 5. It is very entertaining to skip the cut scenes because; A. The story makes no sense (Its a Japanese game), and B. You'll be on a moving train, hit a cut scene, skip it, and BAM! Your now sliding around in zero gravity. It goes from intense action scene to intense action scene, and the cut scenes only slow it down. Some games might take you 20 hours, but how many of those hours were spent walking from point A to point B? (Don't get me wrong. I love open world games). Vanquish is a solid 3 hours of non-stop adrenaline, and as long as your okay with it when going into it, you'll enjoy every second.

I rented this game after seeing it played at a friend's house and I am glad he let me check it out. Simply put, the game is very fun. I decided to write a review because I feel that the Gamefly user rating is far too low. I would give this game a 9/10, but I am marking it as 10/10 to try and influence the score and get it to the point that it deserves to be.

It is a 3rd person action shooter. The hooks are the boost ability that allows you to speed through the level on rocket propelled knees, the "AR" ability which is essentially bullet time, and interesting and engaging level design. The pace kept driving me forward. The combat was really fun because you would need to keep moving and combining the suit's abilities to succeed. Boss battles are usally "shoot the glowing thing" affairs, but very fun and challenging at times. The cut scenes looked cool and the overall presentation was impressive.

The story didn't matter in terms of dialouge, but I appreciated the feeling of infliltrating the station with a squad of soldiers. Burns may be stereotypical and over the top, but I liked him. The control station girl was also stereotypical, but the camera was almost always positioned behind and below her looking up...obvioulsy the story wasn't meant to be taken all that seriously.

The game also includes an easy to use weapons upgrade system that I found rewarding, adding an rpg element. You can hold three weapons at a time (they actually all transform from whatever gun you are holding in a cool animation). If you pick up an upgrade cube, or the same weapon you have equipped when at full ammo, you go up a rank. At certain ranks you get some boost to the abilities of each gun. In this way you can power up you favorite guns very easily. Other than standard assault rifle, shotgun, sniper etc. there are some cool new guns like the LFE gun that launches a slow moving orb at you enemies like a huge bowling ball.

Short and sweet. A perfect rent.