Vanquish (PS3)

With the Earths dwindling resources the nations of the world are in a desperate struggle to keep their countries running. The U.S. have launched their solar powered habitat to help provide an alternate source of fuel for their population. The newly elected Russian president Victor Zaitsev has captured the space station and has converted the collected energy in a beam that has devastated the whole of San Francisco. Unless the U.S. government give their unconditional surrender he says that he’ll turn his new weapon on New York.

Enter the military, Lieutenant Colonel Burns heading the attack on the space habitat turned heat ray. A typical grizzled army type, built like the hulk on steroids and with a gun so huge freud would have a few things to say about it. The American military however cannot do this alone, allow me to introduce Sam Gideon a scientist at DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) and the playable character in Vanquish, who has developed the ARS (I laughed too) The Augmented Response Suit with built in jet boosters and lightweight armour that doesn’t limit mobility. Sam’s weapon of choice is the BLADE (Battlefield Logic Adaptable Electronic weapon system) which scans a weapon and morphs into an exact replica of the weapon scratches and all, due to limited memory you can only store 3 weapons in the BLADE at any time. With the help of the U.S Military will Sam be able to save America and the world from the looming Russian threat?

Well, of course he can, you wouldn’t expect to get to the end of the game and the world to be destroyed and you defeated would you. I’ve tried to set the scene for you and I don’t believe the story really gets any more complex. The jock doesn’t get along with the geek but they work through their differences for the greater good. The voice acting is standard in a modern game, it isn’t disappointing as I say just average. The graphics are good as well with a good array of environments and enemies so you aren’t left staring at the same dull grey scenery and same red robots.

The game play is the most interesting factor for me, it reminded me of Skate when I played the demo and as I started playing the game I found it a little clunky to control and with only a basic tutorial leaves you feeling like your driving a formula 1 car on a go-kart track where you know you can do cool things, but you can never really unleash it properly. However as I got about half way through the game and I became more familiar with enemies weak spots I found myself really getting to grips with how the game works. Every ability the suit has, you have access to at the start there are no unlockable abilities you just get better and this is why it reminds me of Skate.

The aforementioned ARS system built into the suit allows you to slow down time or rather sharpen your reactions and pinpoint enemy weak spots as you leap out of your cover then power slide with your boosters into the next cover spot. This allows epic moments of taking out several enemies in moments or landing that headshot on a fast moving target.

The game has a few downsides the main one for me being it’s lack of replayability, you're given challenges which are a series of rounds increasing in difficulty that’ll keep you busy for a couple more hours and the unlockable God Hard mode once you’ve completed the initial story I completed the main story in 5 hours so I’d guess maybe 8 hours of decent gameplay it depends how much of a trophy, achievement person you are. Enemy wise, there are a good range of enemies in varying size but sometimes it’s just about developing a method for each enemy, they aren’t massively intelligent. The game story can be very cliché and leave you wondering how much they paid their writer to create this generic sci-fi script.

Bad points aside, it’s a game that has very solid game play and the controls are mapped where they should be, there is no fiddling about when it comes to the suit, aim, shoot and dodge roll are your friends here. You’re not going to get days and days of enjoyment, but with the price drop, and it will keep decreasing, you can pick this up for about £15 in most game retailers and even less if you shop around online. It’s certainly worth a play especially if you don’t have the money to be spending on £40 games especially after Christmas and in our current climate.