drawing pixels

After playing through the demo of Vanquish a few times I felt quite ready to start the game proper on Hard mode. I was quite wrong. The first boss, the boss from the demo, readily demolished me time after time. Over twenty times, in fact. This was in the first quarter of an hour of game time. Shamefully, but with a strong desire to actually see the rest of the game I had just bought, I quit to the title menu and lowered the difficulty to Normal, vowing to return to Hard mode (not to mention God Hard mode) later, after I had learned how the game worked. 7 hours later the credits were rolling, the grin had not left my face.

Last night I began Vanquish again, notching it up to Hard mode. This time on the first boss, while still no walk-over, I didn't lose a life. Its laser did not touch me. Now I was at the opposite side of the arena slow-motion firing at its limb joints while its heat-beam was directed at a position I had been at mere milliseconds before. He fell much quicker this time. It is a satisfying feeling, that of actually becoming better at a game, not merely using power-ups or leveling to overcome its trials. The higher difficulties are about using the games' minimal skill-set to navigate the level more elegantly, to punish the enemies more swiftly and with infinitely more style. Level design is elegantly post-Gears. It has a satisfying tightness to it which means that each bite-size stage, once dispensed with, feels like a scoring a Tetris. The assault up the face of the monstrous concrete elevation feels like Gears' Mansion staircase exploded in just about every direction.

Vanquish is about moments: being sat in cover as an army of enemy robots fire upon you from across a makeshift battlefield, and plotting your boost trajectory from one enemy to the next, flipping behind cover to launch a slow motion rocket at a lumbering mini-boss, switching weapons without missing a beat to pummel it while it is weak. Watching hundreds of explosives and their smoke-arcs crossing the screen reminded me of Bangai-O. And that's it: Vanquish is a game I imagine Treasure might have made, which happens to be the highest compliment I can give any game. Vanquish is sharp. It is modern cover-shooter and old-fashioned score attack. It is one moment. The moment you decide to do what needs to be done. It feels almost breathless, and is a moment that happens over and over again.