Vanquish - Screens HD!! (NSFW Ad's when clicking images)

[NiGHTS]

Info

In a near-future world where Russia and the United States vie for ownership of the world’s fast-depleting energy resources, the US has constructed a space station in order to harness energy from the sun. Russian forces capture this space station and divert its harvested solar energy into a blast wave that destroys San Francisco, aiming to force the US into a total and unconditional surrender. In response, the US tasks its armed forces with recapturing the space station before the Russians can annihilate their next target – New York.

• Directed by Shinji Mikami, the creator of the Resident Evil series, VANQUISH™ is a sci-fi shooter that sees players take the role of Sam, a government agent kitted out with a futuristic battle suit. A versatile fighter with a huge arsenal of weaponry at his disposal, Sam also has an array of martial arts skills that he can use to take down his robot enemies.

• Fast, fluid and frenetic – this is gaming at its most explosive and exciting, as you storm into battle.

• Experience a game character like no other – Sam is the ultimate weapon, donning a futuristic battle suit of destructive firepower and superhuman speed and agility.

• Fight your way through the enormous, open environments of the space station. The most advanced, futuristic city in the skies becomes home to the action.

[MadeManG74]

I was discussing this with Aki-at earlier. If we are fighting robots, does that mean that the Russians are deploying robots to fight it's wars while the US still sends out humans to fight on the frontlines?

[Happy Cat]

If you are at work don't click these images lol, penor ad's.

[George]

Well, I posted those images on the front page, no need for dick ads .

[Pao]

Thats a lot of particle effects!
I bet its one of those games that looks ten times better in motion, like Bayonetta.

I still need a gameplay trailer to judge, but it looks very promising so far.

[Sharky]

Game looks great! I'm very interested!

Sega have been in real need of a good 3rd person shooter for a long time now... hopefully this is it!

Honestly it's quite impressive how competitive Sega have been with other big publishers with so few shooters.

[Barry the Nomad]

HA! Sam. Like Uncle Sam. I love it. Can we start the nickname Uncle Sam right now so we can give the names Master Chief and Big Daddy a run for their money?

[Waffle]

Well I thought the images were a little small. I could barely see any of the vaginas and some of the women looked a bit fat.

All that robot stuff was gross, though. My boss would have been enraged if he saw me looking at robots during work.

[Pao]

Translation of the 4player.de Eyes on preview by one of the PlatinumGames Faction members:

Originally posted by Saleman there is a new preview on 4players.de - i tried to translate it:

- the name of the protagonist is Sam Gideon
- he smokes and curses a lot
- although sam looks young, he is still an old war veteran
- besides the look of his suit this game has nothing in common with Halo
- two years in development
- right now no plans for multiplayer
- the story is about humans in a war against machines

they decribe an ingame scene:
Sam is in cover, smokin a cigarette while there is chaos around him and a giant spaceship is crashin down in front of him (it is a script-sequence) making the whole scene into a debris field


- in boost-mode he can run fast from one coverpoint to another or directly to the enemy
- you can control Sam while he is in boost-mode: at first it looks a bit chaotic but it is worth it. Sam runs, jumps over obstacles to get in front of his enemy killing him with a bullet-time attack
- in this mode even the music and sound effects slow down and get much deeper
- there are a lot ingame story sequences
- sam has a contact woman called Elena
- her design is choosed to appeal to the average japenese gamer *lol
- vanquish is an non stop action orgasm - VERY big and large battlefields
- you can see mechas, enviroments collapsing, thick ash clouds, glowing shower of sparks everywhere
- if you kill one of the mechas the whole screen fills up with big colorful explosions
- you don't get new weapons - instead it transforms to other weapons with cool animations (you need to find special items to unlock them)
- f.ex. a mg is morphing into an rocket-launcher
- you can even control a mecha - just shoot down the owner and you can use it
- you are not alone on the battlefield - you fight with comrades
- your AI-comrades act completly alone, you can't control them but you shouldn't ignore their help calls
- if you help one of your comrades he gets more motivated and gives you a special item
- there are bosses - and they are MASSIVE! really really MASSVIE!
- f.ex. there is a giant spider called Argus - it took several instances to beat him
- there are even QTEs: Sam either dodges the rockets or catches them and throws them back


sounds really awesome so far but again - there are QTEs. :/
there is still more to uncover.

And Eurogamer had a 4 pages preview too, here is a summary I did:

Hello, this is Shinji Mikami here.

I'm just barely keeping my head on my shoulders these days. But how about all of you? Firmly attached?

^ LOL

but first it's time for Shinji Mikami to take the stage. He's a rock star developer all right, complete with baseball cap, hoodie, designer jeans and controversial opener. After welcoming us to the event he says, via a translator, "There's one thing I want to tell you before we actually get into the gameplay: this is not P.N. 03." Tackling the criticism head-on, then.

Shinji Mikami: "This is actually the first game I've made in four years. I wanted to make a shooter but I didn't to make a standard shooter. I wanted to make something that was smoother and more acrobatic than the shooters you see on the market today."

At this point the gameplay demo video kicks off. The screen displays the giant space colony shown in the trailer. It's ten kilometers in radius and 27 kilometres long, says Mikami ("We wanted to make a very large scale war"). Humans and robots wrapped in millions of tons of spinning metal, all alone in the night.

And if you think any such similarity to Babylon 5 is coincidental, consider the blonde woman who pops up in the cut-scene. She's mucking about with some holograms, Minority Report-style, while talking to our hero via a headset. The nametag on her shirt reads Ivanova.

But she's not the star of this show. That would be Sam Gideon, former research scientist and now military operative. As Mikami points out, Gideon has a much more athletic frame than your typical Gears of War-style hero - all the better for fitting into the ARS suit he helped design. It's lightweight but strong and provides plenty of protection, and provides the wearer with unique skills. These include the ability to boost along the ground on his knees while leaning backwards, like some kind of intergalactic rock guitarist, leaving a trail of blue sparks in his wake.

The suit is accessorised with a selection of weapons. In fact Gideon carries just the one firearm, but at the press of a button its casing retracts, then folds out again in the shape of a different gun, Transformers-style. Over the course of the demo we see him using a shotgun, assault rifle and heavy machine gun, and we're told further upgrades are available. Gideon also comes equipped with a few grenades.

It's clear all of this is going to come in handy. Right from the start the air in the hangar is thick with gunfire and explosions. Waves of robot enemies appear from all directions as Gideon's squad-mates race around covering his back. Huge ships loom overhead, firing at the squad before landing and depositing yet more enemy troops on the battlefield.

The robots know about cover too and create their own, carrying large sheets of metal onto the battlefield and setting them up like windbreaks on a space-age beach. Gideon teaches them who's boss by leaping out from cover and boosting right up to the barriers on his knees. Before the robots have time to react he's popped up to a standing position and shot the lot of them in the face, point blank. In another example of how the boost is useful in combat, Gideon keeps it going and slams right into a barrier, knocking the troops behind it clean into the air.

Our hero's tactics also include turning the enemy's technology against it. At one point he manages to get around the back of one of the AT-AT-style walkers and take out the robot in the driving seat. After flinging its remains out of the way and tapping something into the keypad, Gideon is able to take control, blasting away at enemies on the ground and using the extra firepower to cut a path through the debris blocking his way.

Then he's back on the ground and back in the thick of the action. One of Gideon's squad-mates takes a direct shot and blood spatters on the HUD. A green cross appears above him and Gideon pulls out a syringe, slamming it into the victim's shoulder to get him back on his feet and make the cross disappear.

After all that, it appears our hero needs a break. Crouching with his back to a barrier, Gideon pulls out a cigarette, lights it, takes one drag and chucks it away. Turns out this is a signature move of Gideon's, one he likes to repeat whenever there's the slightest break in the action. It also perhaps explains the visor - it's there not so he can see, but so he doesn't have to take his whole helmet off when he fancies a fag.

Breaktime comes to an abrupt end as something bursts out of the ground up ahead. As the dust clears it's revealed to be a giant spider-like robot, complete with numerous guns blazing. At its centre is a flashing red sphere, which as anyone who has ever played a videogame will guess is its weak spot.

Gideon prepares for battle by kicking open a crate to collect a shotgun upgrade, then aiming squarely at the red sphere. The spiderbot releases hundreds of tiny white projectiles which explode all around, then rears up and starts smashing everything in the surrounding area with its forelegs. Just to finish things off, it fires a giant laser beam directly at our hero.

But Gideon has speed and agility on his side, not to mention the power of quick-time events. He runs underneath the spiderbot and grabs onto its body. A left stick icon appears on the screen, suggesting the player must twiddle it clockwise, then counter-clockwise to dodge incoming projectiles. Having managed this, Gideon gets up close and personal with the weak spot and unleashes a volley of fire. There's a giant explosion and it's all over.

Eurogamer: Vanquish may not be P.N. 03, but what about all the other games it's already been compared to, such as Halo? Can Mikami really say this is a totally original title?

Shinji Mikami: "In truth, yes, I do take references from other games," he says. "Particularly for Vanquish, the reference points are taken from games such as Gears of War and Call of Duty. We didn't really consider Halo that much. When I heard that maybe the main character is similar to Master Chief - I didn't expect that, because I didn't consider that from the beginning at all."

It makes a change to hear a developer admit that yes, they have played one or two of the games in the genre their title belongs to, and that yes, maybe they have taken inspiration from them. But all the same, we've seen special suits, weapon crates, bosses with big red weak spots and so on before... So what sets Vanquish apart?

"In terms of what you can gather from just looking at the game - I mean, Vanquish might not be too unique compared to whatever else is out there," says Mikami.

"But I feel the uniqueness lies in the intuitivity of the controls and how it feels when you actually get to play the game... It's a shooter, but it also feels a lot like playing an action game. That's the main difference between Vanquish and the other games out there already. Once you get to play the game, you can experience that for yourself."

As there's no hands-on time today, however, all we have to go on is how the game looks. And it looks much more like a Western-style game than the likes of Bayonetta and MadWorld. Has Mikami been forced to abandon any of his more out-there ideas in the face of commercial considerations?

"There is a balancing act going on there," he says, referencing God Hand - clearly a project close to his heart. "That was a title I made very freely, but it didn't sell as well. Resident Evil was based more towards the commercial side of things; God Hand was at the other end of the scale.

"With Vanquish, I'm drawing up the ideas, then they get put on the table, and it's considered whether they will be successful in the market or not. There are a lot of points where I kind of have to bear that as a reality. So I feel that it's kind of between God Hand and Resident Evil - that's where Vanquish is."

What we've seen so far is impressive from a technical point of view, but in terms of artistic style and gameplay concepts, Vanquish looks a little familiar. It doesn't have the instant visual impact of a game like MadWorld or the bizarro factor of a Bayonetta. But it's early days, and this is still a Platinum Games title, and this is still Shinji Mikami. Perhaps he should have the last word:

"We are working very hard on this, so please look forward to this title." Will do.

[Barry the Nomad]

he fancies a fag

Oh you Brits! lol

[east of eastside]

"There is a balancing act going on there," he says, referencing God Hand - clearly a project close to his heart. "That was a title I made very freely, but it didn't sell as well. Resident Evil was based more towards the commercial side of things; God Hand was at the other end of the scale.

I'm deemed mendacious or a lunatic when I try to make these distinctions on this boards...

"What? What? I don't get why you say space marines and other commercial staples of western gaming are bad?  PS2 didn't kill DC?  I love Wii!"

 :roll:

[jonboy101]

Cigarettes eh? Count me in.

[Suzuki Yu]

wow ! pretty good impressions

i liked his comment when he referred to God Hand & RE .

[Sharky]

That sounds brilliant.

[MadeManG74]

Sounds pretty cool.

Also, Cigarettes.