Third person cover based shooters were all the rage in the late 2000s. Unveiled in 2003 in Killswitch and later popularised with Gears of War, they became an essential part of most third person action games. Coming in 2010, Vanquish sought to revolutionise this paradigm by giving the player an omnidirectional slide boost to move around the battlefield in an attempt to energise its plodding pacing.

And, broadly speaking, it was a resounding success. People loved the faster pace, the bullet time, the enemy design and the more action orientated dodging of enemies. And even though it didn’t sell as well as many other similar games, it developed a huge cult following of people who are still wildly holding on for a sequel to this day.

But is Vanquish still as refreshing and innovative as it was back in 2010? Are bullet time and moving around quickly really all that impressive. Can this fast and furious take on third person shooters truly break out of the straitjacket that the genre insists upon?

On this episode, we discuss:

Weapons

• Vanquish provides you a wide range of weapons to murder robots, from the more conventional shotguns and sniper rifles to grav cannons and lock on lasers. How fun are these to use, and how well does the weapon upgrade system work in balancing your arsenal?

Enemy Design

• Vanquish enemies are mostly robots of different varieties. Do these serve as compelling foes, from the lowliest grunt to the huge mech-like Argus? Or are they boring to fight against, an endless wave of repetitive drones?

Cover

• Vanquish is, at its heart, a third person shooter. Does it do enough to incentivise you to play into the throbbing heart of intense action and brinkmanship, or do you end up ducking behind cover and taking potshots at enemies as you slowly whittle them away?

We answer these questions and many more on the 130th episode of the Retro Spectives Podcast!

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Intro Music: KieLoBot - Tanzen K

Outro Music: Rockit Maxx - One point to another

Vanquish OST: Erina Niwa, Masafumi Takada

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How aggressively did you play Vanquish? What is god hard mode, and does it drastically change the experience? How would you rank Vanquish compared to other Platinum Games titles? Come let us know what you think on our community discord server!

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