Vanquish and Rock Band 3 for 360 are 9 shades of AWESOME

As mentioned in my last post, I picked up a copy of Rock Band 3 for 360. I also got my hands on what could be the sleeper hit of the year, Vanquish. I picked up Vanquish completely sight unseen.

Now, in previous attempts at getting well rated titles completely sight unseen I've had some questionable experiences. IE: Darkstalkers. Some hailed this title as the next coming of Christ it seemed, with amazing puzzles and fantastic graphics. To me, it was a pretty Zelda/God of War cop-off, with boring and pointless puzzles and repetitive action. Rather... annoying. Now Vanquish, on the other hand, has me feeling like I should buy a lottery ticket. What a find!

Vanquish is a game set in the future, and you play a guy in a fantastical battle suit who is running through a war torn zone littered with evil robots that need to be destroyed because, well, they do. The villians in the future seemingly have lost their creativity, as they are from where else? Russia. Didn't the cold war end already? Ahem... anyway, there are no merits for story in this game. It's servicable enough, but hey, who gets an action game for a good story? It's all about the gameplay. This title is fast and furious, with excellent mechanics and easy control. There is a dash that is absolutely fantastic. Use it too long and your suit overheats, but it's not an annoyingly short time period or anything. When you take too many hits and your life is short, you go into AR mode, where your suit goes into repair mode and you get auto shot on the baddies, and everything goes into slow-mo. As cheesy as it seems, for the pace of the game, it's a fantastic addition.

Back to the story, there is a little bit of Mass Effect, a little bit of Gears of War, and some Robotech in there as well. The robots you kill are so reminiscent of the Geth in Mass Effect that one might even consider this game a prequel to Mass Effect itself. The world is wartorn and very similar to Jacento in Gears of War, with plenty of destroyed buildings, ramps to run around on, and lots of chest high walls to hide behind. The big difference is that this world is very bright, where as Jacinto in GoW is very dirty and brown looking, almost to the point of depression. Your squad mates are also very similar to the COGS in gears, shooting lots of bullets, but not hitting very much. The Robotic suit you wear is very similar to that of the Bike suits in 3rd generation Robotech (the one, if you recall the same as I do, that seemingly only had like 6 episodes to it).

The boss fights of this game, similar to many boss fights of recent games, are nothing short of EPIC. Gigantic, gargantuan creatures, not capable of fitting on the largest of big screen tv's. They present a challenge, but are nicely able to be defeated.

All in all, anyone who liked Gears of War should REALLY check this title out. It has Mass Effect shoe-horned into it, but that's not a bad thing. It controls well and looks fantastic. The audio is right on par with the best titles released in the past year, and all in all, I do hope that this gets a sequel.

C