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Vanquish’s over-the-top action is back in completely remastered glory

There is a lot to unpack here.

Vanquish gameplay
Image: PlatinumGames

Imagine a pitch meeting. You’ve got a few folks pitching an idea, but there’s a competition between them: Who can make this pitch more ridiculous? They keep improvising new ideas about a sci-fi action movie.

“Okay so Russia’s entire government has been taken over by a terrorist sect,” says one of them. “Yeah! And these terrorists hijack a space laser and use it to microwave San Francisco!” says the other. This goes on for a while, with each of them one-upping the other. A giant robot, but when it explodes it becomes a bigger robot! A machine gun, but it transforms from a tiny handle into a giant gun! Rocket-propelled knee-sliding!

“Okay, let’s do it. Let’s make that game,” says the studio exec, to their absolute and utter surprise. Now they have to take all of their absolutely ludicrous ideas about science fiction and American action B-movies and actually turn them into a game.

That game is VanquishOh, and all of that stuff I just described? It happens in just the first hour.

Here, see Vanquish for yourself (complete with me getting my ass beat repeatedly)

It’s even more fun to watch when the person playing it is actually good at it.

When it originally came out, Vanquish sold less than a million copies worldwide and that’s a crime as grievous as the Wachowski Speed Racer movie being widely overlooked. GameSpot even went as far as giving it an award for “Best Game No One Played.”

Now, it’s out on PS4 and Xbox One in the form of a full HD remaster. Furthermore, you can get it by itself or as a split with the also remastered cult classic, Bayonetta.

Let me put it you this way:

– Do you want a huge arsenal of unique weapons, each with a vastly different feel to them, and an interesting upgrade system that has you constantly changing guns on the fly, making heavy strategic decisions in the middle of a fight?

– Do you prefer your dodging to be in the form of no-handed cartwheels and backflips, stylishly taking aim at an army of robots while you do so?

– When you dash from place to place, do you want to do it like a glam rock star sliding on your knees with rockets on your back?

– Do you want to pose in slow motion while you blast your enemies during bullet time? What about shooting hundreds of rockets out of the sky before they can reach you?

– Do you want a whole button dedicated to brooding and smoking a cigarette in the heat of combat before your space-age Iron Man-like helmet re-forms around your face?

If you answered “yes” to any of those questionsplay Vanquish.

If you answered “yes” to all of those questions, god what are you doing, play Vanquish.

Vanquish (Remaster) is available now for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. You can buy it alone for $24.99 (according to the press release, but not currently seeing a link for this) or together with Bayonetta (Remaster) for $39.99.

What do you think? Did you play Vanquish when it first released? Plan on playing it now? Let us know down below in the comments or carry the discussion over to our Twitter or Facebook.

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Just a heads up, if you buy something through our links, we may get a small share of the sale. Click here for more. This article and footage were made possible with a code from the developers.  

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Jake is a writer and game designer in the suburbs of Philadelphia. He loves action, exploration, building, filling bars, and turning numbers into bigger numbers. Someday he'll release a video game.

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