Vanquish is one of those games that has to be seen to be believed. A hyperkinetic third-person shooter that makes its contemporaries feel like molasses, the game sprints out of the gate and rarely slows down for its relatively brief runtime. Despite coming out to critical acclaim a decade ago, Vanquish never spawned many imitators. This remaster for modern platforms demonstrates why many were not foolish enough to try.
Vanquish follows Sam Gideon, a DARPA agent armed with a high-tech suit who’s tasked with infiltrating a space colony under siege by the Russians for . . . reasons. Honestly, the plot in Vanquish is a mishmash of simplistic, static characters and absurd plot developments that make no sense and are never adequately explained. The cheesy dialogue is occasionally quite funny, but most of the game’s cast and story are forgettable, and trying to make heads or tails of character motivation is an exercise in confusion.
None of that matters, though, because Vanquish plays like a dream. The aforementioned high-tech suit comes equipped with boosters that let the player slide across the battlefield at high speeds, a sensation that never grows old. The ability to slow down time is also available, allowing players to line up the perfect shot or even shoot approaching missiles and grenades out of the air. These two abilities, when used in tandem, present the player with unparalleled options for navigation and flanking. Gameplay in Vanquish is stylish and intense, and it only falters in rare instances where the player is expected to slow down. Most of the game’s larger encounters thankfully keep the sense of speed intact, though, such as a race across a collapsing bridge and directly into enemy forces.
While not a major overhaul, this remaster does improve on the original release in a few ways. The game finally runs at a smooth 60 frames per second on consoles, with 4K support available on the PS4 Pro and Xbox One X. A small weapon DLC from the original release is bundled in, adding some fun (if overpowered) offensive options. Really though, the greatest achievement of this remaster is just making the game available to owners of modern consoles for a reasonable price. PC players have had a comparable version of the game available for some time, so this enhanced release is mainly for people who do not use a PC for gaming and missed out the first time around.
Vanquish is technically not a perfect game. The story is nonsense, the voice acting can be quite bad at times, and a few bosses rely too much on instant kill moves. But these are minor gripes in the grand scheme of things. Vanquish is a shot of pure adrenaline, an antidote to the stop-and-pop gameplay that stagnated the shooter genre at the turn of the decade. There is still no game like it, and if you have never played Vanquish, then you now have no excuse. Rocket-slide over to your console of choice and download it.
