About the game
Vanquish is a 2010 third-person shooter developed by PlatinumGames and published by Sega for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. It was directed by Shinji Mikami, began development in 2007 and was released worldwide in October 2010. A Windows port followed in 2017, and a remaster came to PS4 and Xbox One in the Bayonetta and Vanquish 10th Anniversary Bundle in 2020.
You play Sam Gideon, a DARPA agent in a prototype Augmented Reaction Suit. When Sam takes too much damage the suit enters AR mode, which slows time so he can dodge and aim at weak spots. You can also trigger it by hand. Boosters let him slide quickly across the map, but using AR mode or boosters too much overheats the suit and leaves him slower until it cools.
Sam carries the BLADE system, which can scan and store three weapons at a time out of eight standard types. Weapons and grenades are upgraded by picking up chips. On Normal and Hard the active weapon drops a level when you die, and God Hard turns upgrades off completely. The cover system is built for bullet-hell style fights, with destructible cover and a slide-boost that lets you move in and out of cover at speed.
The story is set in a near-future where the United States launches a solar-power space colony, SC-01 Providence, and a Russian faction called the Order of the Russian Star takes it over and uses it to destroy San Francisco. Sam joins Bravo Company to board the station and rescue a scientist, and the mission turns out to involve a bigger betrayal at home.
Mikami has said the look and feel came partly from the 1970s anime Casshern, and the slide-boost was added to keep that sense of speed. The game uses the Havok physics engine. PS3 was the lead platform, and the PS3 port was handled by Nex Entertainment; it is Mikami's only game under the PlatinumGames name.
Reviews were favourable. Critics praised the pace, the visuals, the boss fights and the original ideas, and criticised the writing, the voice acting and the short campaign. Famitsu scored it 37 out of 40. It debuted at number four in Japan on PS3 with 48,318 copies, and sales passed 830,000 on PS3 and Xbox 360 by March 2011.
The text above is adapted from Wikipedia and licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.
What critics said
Metacritic 84 out of 100 (PS3). Individual reviews: IGN 8.5/10, GameSpot 9/10, Edge 8/10, Eurogamer 9/10, Game Informer 7.8/10, GameTrailers 9/10, GameZone 7/10, Famitsu 37/40.
Extra content
One DLC pack was released, the Tri-Weapon pack, which began as a North American pre-order bonus and went on sale in November 2012.
- Tri-Weapon Pack: Three extra weapons for the BLADE system.
Good to know
- The PS3 version was the lead platform, which Mikami said was meant to avoid a weak PS3 port. The Xbox 360 version was still reported to run better.
- It is the only game Shinji Mikami made under the PlatinumGames name.
- The Tri-Weapon pack was a North American pre-order bonus first and was sold on PSN in November 2012. Those three weapons are included in the later ports.
- The end credits are a rail shooter where the staff faces appear on asteroids.
- The US PS3 disc has one patch, 01.01, a 25.8 MB download listed as content data, and it needs system software 3.10.
- Several European retailers gave a free copy of Bayonetta with Vanquish pre-orders.
- The Living Legend trophy asks for a full run without dying, on any difficulty.
Made by
Director Shinji Mikami, Producer Atsushi Inaba, Producer Jun Yoshino, Designer Masaaki Yamada, Designer Shigenori Nishikawa, Designer Junichi Oka, Designer Hiroki Kato, Writer Hiroki Kato, Writer Jean Pierre Kellams, Programmer Kiyohiko Sakata.
