2013.4: Vanquish

Completed on Hard
(guessing in about 6 hours)

This was so much freakin' fun I literally couldn't stop playing it. The gameplay is fast and frantic if you let it, but also allows you to play tactical. And they both work equally well thanks to the moves and weapons at your disposal. I simply loved this and this is one of the games the developer can honestly and proudly say "we let the players chose how to approach situations" (sorry Otacon, no stealth except one mission). At least it was one of the few where I felt like I wasn't 'cornered' into playing a certain way. It never hints you towards one style of play and I was amazed in my marathon, however I felt like playing, the game just molded itself into that.

Only things I didn't like were the tired story which is a political hoo-rah with a Japanese presentation and also the 'filler' enemies you fight to get to a boss are pretty much all the same. Yeah there are snipers and RPG enemies but even on Hard I couldn't care less what they were holding, they were taken down in similar ways and with similar (almost 'same') tactics. This goes for, I guess, the 'mini bosses' also. Surprising and fresh at first, but then a bit overused by the end.

The gameplay, oh lord that sweet gameplay. If such a stupid claim like "it is 30FPS but it feels like 60FPS" can ever make sense, it makes sense here. I have never for a moment fought with the controls. You are jetting around 100s MPH, shooting shit knows how many enemies, dodging about bazillion bullets and rockets and this can all be done swiftly. I guess I did have an issue couple of times when switching covers and all that but in this game your cover can easily just be evade using the boost.

Speaking of boost, it is one of your suit's abilities and it uses power. And let me say the meta game of managing that adds a superb layer to the game. Sure you can boost through enemies, but then once you run out, you'll be dead smack in the middle of them with no power to do anything spectacular. You can go into slow-mo and pound on the boss's weak spot, but don't get carried away, he is about to launch 100s of rockets at you and you need that power to dodge those!

Just design decisions like that speaks volumes throughout. Other than maybe the sticky cover which is a problem in 99% of cover shooters, there wasn't one thing here that annoyed me (and even that didn't happen often). That might be a weird thing to judge a game by "oh it didn't annoy me" but I say it like that because this is a fast paced game with lots going on, and to always feel in control and to always feel every death was your mistake, not the game's shows what a fantastic job Platinum did.

You can tell these guys know what they are doing and in return it is an absolute joy to play their games.

Less repetition and a story that is even as 1% as inspired as the gameplay (rather than copy+paste same old crap) would have made this game shoot way up high in to the 'fantastic' (9) rankings, but as it is, keeping in mind I played it almost in one sitting and to me gameplay is king, I think it does enough to get a 'great';

8/10.