Fresh off the release of BAYONETTA, Platinum Games released another SEGA published 3rd person stylistic action game called VANQUISH. While it doesn’t feat. a sexy witch who turns her clothes into monsters to help you dominate your enemies, it does have Sam who can blast around with propulsion devices attached to his experimental suit.
This would be the first and last game internet fav Shinji Mikami would direct for Platinum Games. If you don’t know Shinji, he is responsible for RESIDENT EVIL and RESIDENT EVIL 4 (pretty good portfolio!). But I love him most for DINO CRISIS even if CAPCOM took that franchise in the backyard and shot it.
VANQUISH is about Sam Gideon who works for DARPA and has been given an experimental suit which can boost around, punch harder, and facilitate weaponry. He is asked to test this suit out after Russian evil-man-theater kid wants to nuke New York City. From there, you fight Russian robots for about 4 hours until you find out this was all a big scheme from OUR OWN GOVERNMENT. Imagine our government being held accountable? Video games really do provide the fantasy.
Mikami wanted this game to be open-world but due to crunch and resources, the games was scaled back. He was also smart enough to build the game off the PS3 architecture so that it would run well on PS3 and Xbox 360. If you were not aware, the PS3 was difficult to develop on and even hard to port over Xbox 360 titles so he started with the problem child.
Much of the game’s design was borrowed from the 70s-80s anime CASSHERN.
Mitch and I also discuss MARATHON and RESIDENT EVIL: REQUIEM amongst other things.
I hope you enjoy!
