Vanquish

This game is brilliant and it's a suprise that so few have actually played it. I turned to this after being bored to tears by Gears, MoH, CoD etc. This is colourful, fast, clever, stylish, and rock hard - even on 'normal'. It's a game where you are expected to die a thousand deaths before figuring out how to get around any particular boss. That said, no matter how hard it is it remains highly addictive and great fun throughout. This is a game that should feature in anybody's top ten.

This game is like an old school 2D shooter brought into the 3D world. The action just doesn't stop and really gets the pulse racing. Admittedly it is a short one player game but the replay value is great; especially when you get more confident with the moves and start sliding under bosses instead of shooting at them from a distance! Good weapon system, loads and loads of action and some of the most hilarious cheesy dialogue in years (deliberate I hope). Games like this don't come along often and its a shame.

Fast, frenetic and fun.

I've really enjoyed this game and have to defend it against the negative review from a senior (40+) gamer. I'm one of them too and have played pretty much every shooter going prior to this, starting with Space Invaders. Yes this game is derivative but when you take the best bits from a bunch of great games and blend them together with style, you end up with something special. Elements of Halo, Gears, Lost Planet, Killzone and older shooters like Area 51, Project Snowblind, Red Faction, Max Payne and Mace Griffin are all mixed together with a large splash of Japanese style squeezed from old Capcom classics. The balancing of the action is superb. Just when you've wiped out a couple of super sized bosses and giant robots, you get a reminder of your fraility when you take on half a dozen robot grunts - four go with head shots, a fifth is kicked acrobatically, only for the last to take you out with a well place blow to the reactor on the back of your suit. I also love the weapons. As you pick up ammo, fill any weapon and the next ammo collected for that weapon type rewards with a stats boost. Certain weapons fare better on certain enemies. It took me a while to realise the benefits of weapons like the disc launcher. The old favourite, the sniper rifle if very effective with a great zoom but ammo limitations to stop things getting boring. Face off against the big boss and hear him say "aim carefully" when you pull up the scope. Rocket launchers can do some serious damage but the collision detection is fantastic. You'll see in super slo-mo your rockets getting dodged and deflected last second just as much as you will shoot enemy rockets out of the air. The sliding on your knees gimmick works so well, it becomes fundamental to your gameplay and totally justifies its presence. There's also plenty of variety to enemy types. Just when you think you've seen all the game has to offer up pops something reminiscent of the Silver Surfer, or my personal fave, The Unknown, who magnetically pulls together robot debris to make a super enemy but when worn down, reveals himself to be a little bit like the tiny evil Transformer that wanted to do the dirty to Megan Fox's leg. Slow-mo, sniping, acrobatic hand-to-hand, fully automatic mayhem, grenades galore, cannons to commandeer, EMP action, robot walkers to master, space ships to crash land, space stations to save, fags to smoke and a gal with a great voice to meet up with at the final cut scene - what's not to like?

Multiplayer? Hmm. Nearly perfect then.