The demo for Sega’s upcoming Vanquish recently appeared online, offering us gamers a glimpse into the absurdly fast, over-the-top cover shooter from the mind of Shinji Mikami. Mikami is best known as the creator of Resident Evil and Devil May Cry. He also did another game that did not enjoy nearly the same level of success as the previously mentioned titles. That game was called PN 03. It was an Gamecube exclusive third-person shooter, and it seems that Vanquish may be the game that Mikami had originally hoped PN 03 would be.
First of all, the menu screen is brilliant, and will challenge your perception. You will just have to see it. Hitting start offers a gruff voice presenting the name of the game. Think of that voisce that says, "Resident Evil," except he is saying, "Vanquish."
The tutorial offered in the demo is standard fare. It places you in a room and shows you some of your moves. There is nothing particularly interesting, initially. You can lean up against walls, pull the left trigger to get a more accurate reticule and you can roll to dodge. The first indication that Vanquish is going to be different from most cover shooters is the absurdly fast rock-n-roll knee slide. Pressing the left bumper on the Xbox 360 controller literally launches the player character, knees-first, across the ground at a ridiculous speed. You can’t do it for too long though, as your suit will overheat, and you will have to wait for a cool-down.
Once you finish the training and get into the actual game, you will find yourself ripping across the playing field popping off what appears to be violent alien robots as dozens of soldiers help you out.
I cannot emphasize enough how fast this game moves. A Gears of War comparison is appropriate, but the sheer speed of the game makes it feel very different. You are constantly zipping from protective ledge to protective ledge, covering huge amounts of ground in the process.
In compensation for the ridiculous speed, the enemies keep up pretty well, and there is ton going on all the time. It’s almost too chaotic. Deaths often appear out of nowhere, and it’s hard to manage all the explosions, additional soldiers and enemies filling up the space around you. There is a bullet time mode that you can drop into, which is helpful, and it functions under the same suit temperature premise. You can use it freely, but you have to wait for your suit to cool down between uses.
Vanquish won’t be tearing down the house that Marcus Pheonix built, but it can certainly sit comfortably on the couch inside, and freely pop its feet up on the coffee table.
Vanquish is set to release on October 19th for the Playstation 3 and the Xbox 360.
