The West Haven’t Won Yet (Second Helping)
Think Japanese games are pish this generation? You’re sadly mistaken, my friend. Japanese games are alive and well, pushing boundaries and showing us cocky westerners how to do it properly. Last month I wrote about arcade racing, a genre we Brits like to claim as ours, despite the brilliance of the beautiful Initial D Extreme Stage. This month I’ve got an even harder proposition for you: shooters.
A lot of words have been written about how Gears of War defined the look and feel of this generation of shooting games, and a lot of money has been spent by punters, essentially backing up those words. Fewer words have been written about the genesis of the ideas that Gears of War ran with. The ‘sticky’ cover shooting, seen in a million games since, was the hook in Operation Winback, a Japanese N64 and PS2 game with one of the most addictive multiplayers ever. And the whole 3rd person shooter revolution began with Resident Evil 4, not Gears of War. The crown that rightly belongs to these two games was stolen by a game that, stylistically, just can’t compare to them.
You can probably guess that I’m not a fan of Gears of War. It’s not the way it plays; I can appreciate that it’s well made and works just fine. It’s the tone of the game, and the tone of the games it inspired. Giant hunks of meat brandishing rifle/chainsaw hybrids, in a world of grey and brown, in a game that takes itself far too seriously, just doesn’t interest me. Nah, if you’re intent of injecting testosterone into your third person shooter, do it with some irony. Give it some colour. Fill it with moments that take me by surprise. Make it a celebration. Make it Vanquish.
Vanquish’s story is a tragedy: A dream team, responsible for the revolutionary Resident Evil 4, on a mission to take back the crown that they deserved by making a game so tight, inventive, and fun; and the world raising an eyelid, shrugging and going back to playing Horde for the millionth time, leaving Vanquish, in it’s brilliant lenticular sleeve, to languish in bargain bins for the rest of it’s life. The media would continue it’s mantra that Japanese games have lost it, while the greatest example of what a third person shooting game can be passed them by.
Vanquish’s story is also, as it should be, nonsense: A Hillary Clinton look-a-like sends an ex-football player into space wearing rockets on his knees to meet a guy with a beard called Robert Burns, and together they go on a mission to shoot down Russian robots in a space station capable of destroying San Francisco. It’s the perfect cure for the apathy caused by yet another plot where man has to stand together and take up arms against an invading force, whether they be history-changing aliens, Unreal Engine-rendered locusts, or a sanctimonious extra-terrestrial force that can only be taken down by the most boring man to wear space armour and be called ‘chief’ in existence.
Every moment of Vanquish is a surprise. That suit, with the knee rockets, is the heart of the experience. Despite the move list never expanding beyond a few key abilities, the game tasks the player with switching up their game to match what’s happening. The core third-person shooter mechanic, complete with sticky cover shooting, is brought to a whole new, ever-changing world of gameplay. Shape-shifting bosses, zero-gravity firefights and rocket fuelled races through particle accelerators challenge the expectation of what can be done within the confines of a third-person shooting game.
The game revels in ridiculousness. While Halo and Gears of War keep their faces resolutely straight, despite having space armour and chainsaw guns, Vanquish takes the idea of wearing a super-powered time-bending suit and rolls with it magnificently. Sam, the main character, is the Jock we all hate to love; punching robots in the face, drilling through them with his rocket powered feet, and refusing to ever use a ladder, occasionally taking time out to have a crafty fag and flick it towards the next metal behemoth with missile launchers for hands. I remember the first trailer for the game, a live action spot, and being disappointed, thinking that Platinum games were going to make a Halo clone, with all the boring connotations that entails. I’m so glad I was wrong.
You had an excuse to ignore my last champion for Japanese games. Initial D was never released here, and so could only be enjoyed by the import-savvy crowd, a club that I don’t blame you for not being part of. But with Vanquish, there is no excuse. One of the greatest experiences this generation has to offer stood proudly on the shelves of HMV, begging to be picked up and loved, but was ignored and the myth continued.
Saying that Japanese games are no good anymore, without playing Vanquish, is like going out without a jacket and complaining that rain is wet: you’ve only got yourself to blame.
