vanquish?

[Zaarock]

There is a level select, you get to choose the mission after you select the act.. There are some extra bonuses you get like a 50 point one from killing enemies by shooting a grenade, and I'm pretty sure you get a bonus for meleeing romanovs. The second act boss feels like a pretty old school shmup boss with the scoring system and all :p

What kind of total scores or challenge times do you guys have? I'm doing a scoring run on normal atm, will edit the score in once I'm done. very fun.

edit: the total score didnt save on the leaderboard, dunno why. possibly because I started from mission mode

[CMoon]

The first thing I'm trying to do is finish the game. For all the talk of how short this game is, I've had two major sessions with the game (probably about 2 hours each) and not beaten it. I guess I'm not much of a modern gamer, because this is more than intense enough to limit my play time. I figure I'm getting close to the end, and I'm happy with that.

Once I finish the game can I access all the levels? I know starting a new game resets your progress, but I'm really looking forward to practicing each stage of the game since...well, currently I suck.

[subcons]

Yeah, you can select levels. However, it resets your weapon progress, so it's like starting from the beginning. Not really a big deal seeing as how I finished my first play through today and I mostly just used the Assault Rifle and Heavy Machine Gun all the way through.

By the way... taking my time going through and not rushing at all (I was boosting around upgrading weapons and looking for statues), I clocked a bit over six hours. Its' a perfect length for a game designed to be replayed in order to improve your skill, and in turn, your score. You could probably do four hours, or slightly less, on a focused run through with time bonuses in mind.

Amazing game all the way. I doubt a sequel will come, but I sure hope it does.

[Zaarock]

I've been playing some God Hard mode and am up to Act 3, its much more polished than I expected. It has some more interesting changes compared to normal/hard:

- automatic AR mode only lasts two seconds so you wont be stuck in that
- no upgrades, switching around with weapons becomes necessary (like using sniper on train level, etc.)
- different enemy patterns!
- AR time lowered a bit, boosting remains the same
- Gorgie AI improved (this is a pain on 2-5) and they have faster response, grenades added. Not popcorn enemies anymore
- Orange Gorgies become a threat.. blue ones will probably be really dangerous. (edit: nah, they just do slightly more dmg)
- Romanovs go into berserk easily, you NEED to combo melee with strong weapons when they do because they won't get stunned. They also shoot the piercing beams more often.
- Bosses also seem to be more aggressive and some may have extra attacks?

- and yeah, low health and slow health regen; need to handle cover well and react quickly.

Also, after starting to play the mode I noticed how useful heavy machinegun melee is.. you can go into AR mode from it without hitting an enemy, so its like a jump button. Using it you can use large obstacles as cover.

It seems necessary to raise the control sensitivity to do better at the game, for example with the default settings you'll be using a lot of suit "power" just turning to face your enemy once you've went into slow-mo.

[subcons]

[...]

It seems necessary to raise the control sensitivity to do better at the game, for example with the default settings you'll be using a lot of suit "power" just turning to face your enemy once you've went into slow-mo.

Interesting notes about the changes on God Hard. I'm about to start my Hard run through, but will eventually get to God Hard.

I noticed your point about using up your gauge in AR mode just to line enemies up when I was playing as well. Good idea trying to raise the sensitivity, I may have to give that shot.

[ratlhead]

No weapon upgrades, 2 sec. AR... Interesting changes indeed. I'm gonna try this mode sometime (with tweaked sensitivity as you suggested, I've experienced 'slow turning in AR' that you've mentioned too.)

[Zaarock]

I'm up to the last boss on god hard now.. its crazy. Only one guy on the 360 leaderboard has beat it and apparently it took him over 280 tries. Oh well, its a pretty awesome boss and as such deserves to be ridiculously hard

Edit: cleared it now. last boss isnt as hard as it sounded.. , only took me like 3 hours. there is a lot of strategy involved and good reflexes make survival pretty easy once you get the hang of it.

[Phellan Wolf]

I have played the game and it is a blast. Since I have first heard of Vanquish and saw tha background I thought that It was going to be a sucker though I'd never lost hope because of Mikami. Later on, when more info was released, the interest grew on me, and now that it is finally out and after playing it I keep wondering myself why has it taken so long to bring this game to the people. It is pure non stop action, you can't even breath in all the fights.
I have been really impressed so far by this game, and I don't know why people are so pissed bu its duration. Gamers are becoming more and more casual. Shame on them.

[Daigohji]

What kind of total scores or challenge times do you guys have? I'm doing a scoring run on normal atm, will edit the score in once I'm done. very fun.

edit: the total score didnt save on the leaderboard, dunno why. possibly because I started from mission mode

I've just finished my second playthrough on normal and I had a similar issue. The game wouldn't upload the total score for my second playthrough, even though I started it from new game instead of the mission select. A bug, maybe? Anyway, my first run was about 274,000 at 4:56 play time and the second run was 302,020 with 4:07 play time. I can't tell how well I'm chaining, as the score display for each kill is so far to the right of the screen that I can't see it without taking my eyes off the action.

My overall impression of the game is mostly positive. The gameplay mechanics are tight and haven't worn out their appeal after two playthroughs in a matter of days. There's a lot of visual polish and detail, which is especially evident in AR mode when chunks of enemy robots are flying everywhere in slow motion. I have a fair few gripes though. The demo shows off the most impressive boss in the game, and there aren't many others. I have no problem with Vanquish aping Gears of War's style, but I take issue with it ripping off some of GoW's set pieces so blatantly. The most obvious example is when you're escorting an APC that's lighting your way through a dark tunnel with exploding enemies that are trying to destroy it. The story is trash, and not the enjoyably goofy kind like Bayonetta. It never settles on whether it's being a genre pastiche or trying to tell a straight story, and the case of trilogy-itis it develops at the end is lame.

I'd probably place Vanquish at fifth place out of the games I've bought so far this year.

[Zaarock]

The scoring system doesn't have "chaining" so you don't need to worry about that. It's just kills, bonuses from destroying parts of the enemy (headshot on gorgies), other bonuses and then the max. 5000 time bonus for each mission. Note that time is playtime so using AR mode too much will make you lose the bonus. You also lose 1000 points each death.

I would say at least the last boss is more impressive than the Argus robots, its just that its very easy on normal mode, especially with upgrades. On hard mode you actually have to pay attention to its patterns etc. and its pretty epic on god hard. Buzzard also has a sweet design but just isn't much of a threat on any mode. The argus robots also have a bit different attack patterns at each encounter.

Best score I have on normal so far is 435,000 or so, should be able to raise that a lot. Used HMG/sniper/rockets on that run. It seems like 3-7 (a bit too much here) and 4-1 are the only levels with some optional spawn milking which give more than the time bonus.

The references to a sequel remind me a lot of zone of the enders, so I'm alright with that Superstitious, but yeah.

edit: using HMG/sniper/disc launcher or rockets on my third normal score attack run now. Very fun.. y'all should try playing 1-7 for score attack, its pretty awesome I havent used disc launcher before.. fun to aim at the neck of romanovs for one hit decapitations

[subcons]

Best score I have on normal so far is 435,000 or so, should be able to raise that a lot. Used HMG/sniper/rockets on that run. It seems like 3-7 (a bit too much here) and 4-1 are the only levels with some optional spawn milking which give more than the time bonus.

Jesus man. You're tearing this game a new one. I'm struggling on some parts on the Hard run through I started last night. I don't know if I'd have the skill or patience to complete God Hard.

Enjoying every minute of it though, regardless of how much I suck at it. It just doesn't get old. This may be one of those rare modern games that I end up keeping once I'm satisfied with it just to pull it out later and go through it again.

[Zaarock]

Code: Select all

Normal Mode

Space Score: 12,240
Total Score: 573,840
Mission Time: 3:30:47
Cover Usage: 2.99%
Distance Travelled: 19,579
Munitions Fired: 14,988
Deaths: 0
Confirmed Friendlies K.I.A.: 348
Wounded Friendlies Assisted: 3
Confirmed Kills: 1373
Pangloss Statues Destroyed: 112
Developers Destroyed: 78

What's the highest score for normal mode (total) on the PSN leaderboard? I think the highest possible score is around 590,000. I screwed up on a few levels like 2-4, 2-5 and 4-4 but got some new high scores on others. Also, maxed Disc Launcher is pretty badass, in the last few levels I used its melee to make up for taking more time getting bonuses That was my third playthrough of normal.

[subcons]

That's a pretty beastly score. Have you finished Challenge Mode yet?

If I have time, I'm going to try and play this for score this weekend on Normal. I'm not even going to bother with God Hard for now as some parts of Hard were frustrating enough for me.

[CMoon]

Any sense of what the best weapons are, or is this even a relevant question? I know on the harder difficulties you have to mix it up (and there's no upgrade on the hardest difficulty, right?) but for us normal players, are there some weapons that seem to own the game a little harder than the others?

[subcons]

Any sense of what the best weapons are, or is this even a relevant question? I know on the harder difficulties you have to mix it up (and there's no upgrade on the hardest difficulty, right?) but for us normal players, are there some weapons that seem to own the game a little harder than the others?

I'm curious about this as well, but like you said, could be irrelevant. Some stuff I've noticed about the non-standard weapons though:

LFG: Insta-kill against popcorn enemies (small robots), but does little damage against larger enemies. However, it's good for knocking them back to give you some breathing room so you can switch to another weapon and do some real damage.
Rocket Launcher: Great damage, but slow firing and doesn't hold much ammo. I generally pick one up, use it, then swap back out.
Disk Launcher: The melee is the most useful feature of this one. It can take off limbs as well, but this probably isn't even necessary on Normal... more so on God Hard or something.

I was liking the Sniper Rifle when I first started playing, but it takes you out of the up close action and it's just too slow. Damage isn't that great either unless you're talking about headshotting popcorn enemies. Maybe that's not the case when it's fully leveled? I've hardly used the shotgun at all. Is this thing good to keep on you once you level it up? I generally keep both the Heavy Machine Gun and Assault Rifle on me, but I'm thinking about just keeping one or the other to open up another slot. I'm leaning towards the Assault Rifle as it's far more accurate, especially at distance, and it does decent damage.

All the weapons have a situational use, so it's hard to decide what to stick with most of the time. The HMG and Assault Rifle are just all-around great.

Wish I had those pre-order weapons to play around with. The pistol sounds awesome.

[Zaarock]

Heavy machinegun is maybe the best overall weapon, one headshot kills gorgies and with upgrades it does huge damage to everything and has less recoil. If you're going with HMG its better to use sniper than assault rifle, HMG already has decent range and with sniper you can handle the long range ones quickly and with easy headshots. The sniper has low fire rate until the last level but that hardly matters, just dont try to fire it multiple times in a single AR mode and switch the weapons around. Also, I used HMG melee jump into AR mode sniper all the time when playing for score and god hard mode, looks awesome and you can headshot all the gorgies that are hiding behind cover. One headshot from the sniper kills the orange, green and blue gorgies which aren't "popcorn" anymore, and headshotting them gives you 200 or 300 bonus. Against larger enemies there is hardly any trouble hitting them with the HMG.

I guess shotgun works better with assault rifle. I used that combo on my first playthrough. Shotgun is great from the start... you can kill romanovs with it without AR mode because they'll keep getting pushed back. One hit kills gorgies. If you shoot the core of a romanov or tank it only takes 3 shots to kill.

LFE gun one-hit kills the A2 Sphere enemies and is a great combo with rocket launcher (situational), sucks for score as a general weapon because you wont get bonuses from gorgies.

On my scoring run I purposefully kept my HMG at level 9 for a while as the last upgrade increases firepower which you don't really need. That way I could shoot gorgies a bit safer as one headshot would kill them anyway. Best combo for scoring is probably something like:

1. Heavy machinegun / Assault rifle (situational: 3-5, ?)
2. Sniper rifle / LFE gun (situational: BIAs, jellyfish)
3. Disk Launcher (5 levels. dismembering romanovs, melee on BIAs and some bosses)
/ Rocket launcher (5 levels. BIAs, finishing off tanks, bosses)

[Daigohji]

A fully upgraded shotgun is devestating. I also found it the most fun to use as a primary weapon, as it requires you to get into the thick of all the smoke, bullets and flying robot scrap. My loadouts so far have been assault rifle/HMG/rocket launcher in the first playthrough, and shotgun/HMG/sniper rifle in the second. I'm onto a third run now and I'm mixing up the weapons a bit more this time.

[Daigohji]

What's the highest score for normal mode (total) on the PSN leaderboard?

It's currently about 544,000.

I just completed my third run on normal and finished with 326,890 in 4:00 hours. That was with a lot headshots on popcorn enemies and knocking at least two limbs off most Romanovs. I only got the full 5,000 time bonus on a few levels though and still died a few times.

[ZOM]

Where do you guys get the points from? Does the time bonuses make such a difference? I got barely 300,000 in a 1LC Hard run including wrecking the shit out of romanovs and bosses... do I need to use more grenades against the Gorgies? Does it give that much points?

[Zaarock]

Where do you guys get the points from? Does the time bonuses make such a difference? I got barely 300,000 in a 1LC Hard run including wrecking the shit out of romanovs and bosses... do I need to use more grenades against the Gorgies? Does it give that much points?

Headshot all gorgies, it doubles the points for each kill. For the stronger gorgies it means you'll get 600pts each which is a lot. Destroying a romanovs head also gives the same amount of points as killing it. You can view details on total leaderboard to see which levels have the most points, etc.

[ZOM]

I see... yeah, I noticed the 600 points ones but was never sure where they came from. Thanks! This game shines in hard mode and up, great game!

[Obiwanshinobi]

Eurogamer retrospective (and comments below it) made me think Vanquish shared the S&P2's fate (well received, quickly forgotten). Neither bespoke any cult following it would seem (not on a par with God Hand or Demon's Souls anyway).

[evil_ash_xero]

Serious necro bump!

But yeah, both of those games were two of my favorites this entire generation. SP 2 was a masterpiece, and Vanquish was just flat out kick ass(not as awesome as SP 2 though).

I don't understand why neither of them are remembered as well as God Hand. Hell, people talk about God Hand more than Viewtiful Joe, which is strange.

At least Vanquish sold more than SP 2. I'm not sure what the U.S. numbers were, but the Japanese numbers were god awful. People don't like quality, I guess.

[Obiwanshinobi]

I see modern, generic visual style blamed for poor sales of The Club and Vanquish now and then, but I doubt 1990-s, Sega-like graphics would be more marketable. Games would just look "retro" and people who, say, couldn't get into the demo would have found it condenscending.

Personally I found God Hand immediately appealing, whereas Viewtiful Joe took me three attempts to get into it. The latter is a commonly misunderstood game. I read people on shmupsforum comparing it infavourably to 16-bit action games, as if VJ gameplay was anything alike.

[cj iwakura]

Clearing Challenge Mode in this is one of my greatest achievements. If you can do that, the final boss shouldn't be too rough on Hard.

[Obiwanshinobi]

Just having gotten a hunch it might be its gen PS2 Shinobi of sorts, I found myself playing it rather like that game (i.e. largely neglecting the right stick as I prance about, albeit for different reasons).
I believe the "sub-HD" impression it gives in places is due to the ill-applied depth-of-field effect (Demon's Souls does it just as badly, but not so early on - here, it can be seen as soon as on title screen). Good part is - if you wonder how it feels like to be short-sighted, it may give you some idea of the way we perceive distant objects with our spectacles off (or you can, admittedly, smear some lo-res picture all over even mildly hi-res LCD instead, so there's no need for fancy DX9 shader). Heck, it would look wrong in a feature film (of the very kind Vanquish mocks). See how generation-older (in terms of 3D acceleration tech) Star Wars games (like Rogue Squadron II and Republic Commando) do the distance thing using fog and how much better it looks there (if doesn't make a whole lot of sense in RSII's outer space settings).
Only bothers me on said title screen and in more sedate cutscenes, however; the presentation seen from up close is ace and I find the stylisation very tasty (Japanese - or any other than English - voices* recommended for extra cheese points). Suddenly, I wonder how Halo games newer than Combat Evolved sail on space opera seas in comparison.
Above all, what a silly fun game engine to exploit - most playful console TPP since Metroid: Other M. WET could use a thing this cuddly if I say so (still - go play WET as is if you haven't yet; at this point you can't go wrong with a cheap copy or hand-down).

*) With the German-voiced GameCube Spartan: Total Warrior still resounding in my memory, I think I know what next language to lend an ear to next here.

[Shepardus]

I'm sure someone in this thread has already said this but man I sure wish this game had a PC port. Of all the Platinum games I can't play because I don't have the console for it, this one bites the most. I love it when games combine fast, nimble movement and satisfying, hard-hitting shooting so what I've seen of Vanquish really appeals to me.

[Obiwanshinobi]

It took Sega six years to release Valkyria Chronicles PC port, so there is still hope for a Vanguish one. Although they had better not both up framerates higher than 30 fps this time.
I must say the controls on PS3 (LCD at that) so far feel as tight as I could ask of a 30 fps game. This technical write-up (third page) elaborates on response times among other things.