Hey guys, your favorite "hard" game is for slack-jawed garter-wearing mama's boys who couldn't fight their ways out of a damn paper bag! Yeah that's right, I'm talking to you, Mr. "Oh man, Chaos Mode in God of War III is so tough!" or Ms. "Playing as a Vanguard on Insanity in Mass Effect 2 is an appropriate level of challenge for the class!" Put that shit away! This topic is for real gamers who play real games that kick them square in the reproductive bits.

Vanquish is that game.

CONSOLE SHOOTER FANS! Tired of PC players always lording over you the fact that console shooters require auto-aim in order to function properly? Not this one, you sons of bitches! Whoever made Vanquish can't even spell "assisted aiming", except that one guy responsible for programming Casual Auto, which is for SNIFFLING BABY GEESE-MICE.

PC SHOOTER FANS! What did I just say? There's no targeting assist in this game! Do you know why? It doesn't need it. Controls here are absolutely perfectly suited to the third person shooters, and this is the most responsive shooter that consoles have ever produced. Get out of your chair! Get on the couch! Play this son of a bitch and gain some ephemeral modicum of respect for the potential of shooters in the console space.

"Oh but Khuutra why does it matter if it controls well? I'm satisfied with the action games I already play!"

Shut up! Real action game fans are all about skill, and kicking things in th face when nobody else would be able to do it! About slamming themselves up against challenges that they can barely surpass after many concentrated hours of effort!

Jesus Christ just keep shooting it!

Vanquish is full of shit like that! It has the highest possible number of "holy shit" scenarios per minute! It's science. Every single sequence in this game is new and exciting. Even the pseudo-stealth section has you sniping things as fast as you can, always on the edge of being shot with GIANT MISSILES. Just talking about it makes me want to chug an entire beer keg and crush it against my skull! YEEEEAH

Some people play this game like a cover shooter, but those people are stupid. If you're not flying across the battlefield at mach eight, shooting enemies as you fly by them faster than their targeting computers can track you before kicking a giant robot right in his giant titanium shins, you're doing it wrong! If you spend more than 2% of your time in cover (and the game keeps track of this) then you're a helpless baby who needs to play the game better!

You know what else? This game is made by Shinji Mikami! Yeah, remember him? You better! He's responsible for Resident Evil, Resident Evil 4, God Hand, P.N.03, and a bunch of shit I can't remember because they aren't Vanquish! This guy eats kung fu movies and craps plastic explosives! If you're an action fan and you don't like his games then you don't exist.

And you know what? That's the perfect way to refer to this game.

This game is God Hand! With guns! It also has fists. Fists that EXPLODE.

WAA-TAAA

And that's not the most important part. The most important part is that Vanquish is completely insane. Now I don't mean it's insane in that it's a high-paced action game whose frenetic combat is unmatched in its own genre, built on setpieces which are lashed together with the best shooter gameplay in the business and full of such explosive action (all of which you do yourself) that my wife watched me play the game for ten minutes and had to stop because she was fatigued!

Wait actually yeah I do mean all of that. But I also mean this game is hard. This game will punch you in the face.

Vanquish has five difficulty settings:

Casual Auto: This setting is for stupid babies.

Casual: This setting is for regular babies.

Normal: This setting is for babies who can already grow mustaches (even the girls).

Hard: This setting is for robot babies.

God Hard: This setting has never been completed by babies.

In that spectrum you can find a setting that fits you. Casual Auto can be completed by almost anyone! Normal is a brisk and challenging experience in line with "hard" on most action games, and Hard is where things get absolutely bananas. God Hard? I'll tell you about God Hard in a minute.

These bad guys hate babies.

Remember the Konami code? It would give you thirty lives! Yeah, Vanquish has a Konami code too, and it will fucking kill you!

To use the super ultra Vanquish code, go to the title screen and rotate the right analog stick clockwise 20 times! If you hear a special sound, you just unlocked God Hard mode without having to beat the game. Lucky you.

How hard is God Hard? I'm glad you asked.

It makes Non-Stop Infinite Climax look like a joke.

Titan Mode is a walk in the park in comparison.

Master Ninja Mode doesn't even begin to compare.

Dante Must Die would kill itself if it played God Hard.

XXX Adult Mode in Viewtiful Joe suddenly looks like Softcore Adult Mode!

You'd be better off trying to get all the Platinum Medals in Blast Corps. Yeah. I went there.

God Hard is the ball-bustingest, face-slappingest challenge you can get in a game this generation. And what's more, it's completely fair, and if you die it's your own damn fault so try again you crying milksop.

Oh yeah, and Vanquish has a challenge mode. How many challenges does it have? Six. This isn't much compared to Ninja Gaiden Black's FIFTY, but it will easily last you just as long.

You want to prove how tough a gamer you are? Beat Challenge 6. I've been trying for two days after taking a break of weeks, and I can't do it yet. Can you?

Seriously though, guys, let's talk about Vanquish. We can swap strategies and stuff.

Good review... probably why I'm still afraid to play the game.

It's not really a review so much as a new OP for a new discussion topic.

You can totally get through the game, I promise; it's only as hard as you want it to be.

Bravo! Very nice read, and I only played the demo! So sorry that I can't really contribute, but I'll leave you with this because that's what reading all that was like!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRuNxHqwazs

I'm curious: did you play it like a cover shooter?

Fuck yeaaah! It's also the winner of the only Game of the Year award that matters!

I didn't play it like Gears of War if that's what you mean. I can't really remember exactly how I played it, but I tried to move around. And I love the melee attack, so it bums me out that I have to be so careful with timing when to use it, but I used it none the less. Not that I didn't use cover, but still.

I'm still definitely looking out for it if I see the game for cheap.

Another CGR fan on VGC YAY :D

@topic: you just made me 10 times more excited for the game - I actually ordered it 2 days ago!

I have already cleared challenge 6, the first time I tried it was after completing the game on normal and clearing all other 5 challenges... I had some problems with challenge 4 and had to retry like 10 times... challenge 1,2,3 and 5 were kind of easy as they took me around 3-5 retries each (except for challenge 5 which I cleared in my first try xD).

Challenge 6 was the hardest, the first few tries I tried it I couldn't even get past the second wave until I learned that an EMP emmitter would kill the flying robots instantly. After that, I kept dying on the third wave... I tried for like 3 hours until I got tired and turned my PS3 off.

The next day I tried again for like 1:30/2 hours. During that time I learned that the disk launcher could behead the Romanovs and that they would die after a while. I also managed to get to the last wave with the 2 bogeys but I couldn't beat them. Turned my PS3 off and decided that next time I played the game I would clear hard mode.

After a few days I cleared hard mode, got the trophy for clearing the game on hard and went back to challenge 6. It was kind of late and dinner was almost ready but I played for a while anyways. I couldn't clear it before dinner, so I went to have dinner (left the game paused) and went back to it. After a few more tries I finally cleared the challenge. You can see in my trophy card that there's a 2 hours gap between the Tactical Challenger trophy and the ARS Operator one, that's the time it took me to have dinner and clear the challenge after beating the game on hard :P but if you sum up all 3 times I tried challenge 6 before beating it I would say it took me around 7/8 hours total xD

I tried God Hard mode, but I still haven't cleared it. I played it for a whole evening until I got Act 2 Chapter 2. I haven't played the game since then because I wanted to get the platinum in Castlevania: Lords of Shadow... and now that I also have Resonance of Fate, I'll probably play it after I'm done with Castlevania and return to Vanquish after RoF.

Man, I really need to get this game :(

How does it compare in difficulty to Super Meat Boy?