Before I start raving about how great Vanquish is, here's a bit of background information.

I first learned about Vanquish via one of the ads on this website. I wasn't very interested, since it just looked like another attempt by Japanese developers to make a shooter (which rarely turns out right.) That changed after I did some research on the game, and learned that Shinji Mikami (famous for the RE and DMC series) was behind it. With RE4 being my number one favorite game of all time, it got me kind of interested. I played the demo, and it seemed alright, so I thought "might as well", and went to pre-order the game. In all honesty, after playing the demo, I was expecting an average Gears of War clone with robots instead of the locust. However, to my great pleasure, I was wrong. This game is nothing like Gears, it's even better.

First of all, the graphics are beautiful. Opposed to most shooters' dirty and grainy look, Vanquish is full of color. The screen will constantly be filled up with all kinds of colorful projectiles, the map has a sleek futuristic look to it, and the individual character models look suburb with all the moving parts.

Although the game features a cover-based mechanic that Gears popularized, covering and waiting for your enemy is not a good option in this game. The enemies charge towards you like there is no tomorrow, and you will be jet boosting around the map using bullet time to blow up more and more robots using your numerous weapons, or fast and furious hand-to-hand combat. There is no dull moment of having to wait. You are constantly moving at a very high speed, and the good level design combined with excellent pacing and gigantic bosses makes the game pure fun. It's surprisingly original and intuitive (other than the cliche story of course.)

However, I've found a few minor problems, as well. First off, the crosshair becomes hard to see when you're in bullet time. This can be a problem because at times, I'd think I was hitting something, only to notice it hadn't take any damage at all. However, every enemies have handy health bar above their heads, which will serve as an indicator to whether you are hitting the enemy or not, so it's not a huge problem. Another thing I noticed was the inability to jump over certain objects (such as chest-high fences), making you have to run around them. It was also a slight annoyance that you couldn't melee attack when your energy gauge was empty. Finally, there were instances where I would get a boss's health down to a tiny bit, only to fail the sudden QTE and get killed. The QTEs themselves were well executed, but some of them felt too sudden, and having to spin the analogue stick one way, and then another way threw me off alot. In the end though, that is just nitpicking. The game is great, and you should all get it (unless you are prone to seizures, then it wouldn't be a good idea.)

I've gotten about 1/4 of the way through the game, and if the rest of the game is going to be this much fun, I would think I've found myself the best game on the 360 this year.