After 14 years, one of the devs behind the "fourth-best shooter" of 2010 says it was perfectly positioned to be a cult classic
Feb. 14, 2024Personally, I’d rank Vanquish a little higher than that
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PlatinumGames' powerslide shooter opus Vanquish launched to good reviews and some dedicated fans, but in a year dominated by some of thebest FPS gamesof all time, it never got much appreciation in its day. Now, one of the devs is reminiscing about how it was basically perfectly positioned to be a cult classic.
In fairness, those games were the original Call of Duty: Black Ops, Battlefield: Bad Company 2, and Halo: Reach, all of which have proven to be among the most beloved entries in their respective series. But Vanquish was unlike any of them, and not just because of its third-person perspective. It was a fast-paced cover shooter that was as much about moving efficiently as it was about popping off headshots, and one that ended up feeling more like Bayonetta than Gears of War.
We don’t need Kellams' comments to recognize that Vanquish has become a cult classic, but I’m taking this as an opportunity to wax a little nostalgic - and to remind you that the game got a re-release on modern platforms, which eliminated the frame rate issues that plagued the original version.
At the time, Vanquish just seemed like another in a line of weird-ass Japanese games of not much consequence. But hey, we’re in a world where Dragon’s Dogma is now a beloved classic with ahotly-anticipated sequelon the way, and FromSoftware - the niche studio that brought you King’s Field and Echo Night - is one of the industry’s biggest powerhouses. In a way, I guess Vanquish was just far ahead of its time, and on the upside you can still play for an experience that’s still unlike anything out there today.
There’s a reason we’vewritten multiple times over the past decadeaboutwhy Vanquish is under-appreciated.
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