Now all of that doesn’t make Vanquish a bad game, but it certainly doesn’t help it any. It’s like they took every played out level in every sci-fi FPS ever made and recycled it. It does make you groan a lot and pulls you out of the immersion every three minutes, or at least that’s what it feels like. Really, some levels are 5 minutes long and there’s a cut scene at the beginning and the end.

At times the game is frustratingly difficult while at others it’s amazingly easy. It’s like every level is a patchwork of difficulties that culminate in you fighting some massive boss robot. There’s no standard sort of progression that I can see as the same enemies show up on every level.

The graphics on the game are quite good really in all respects. The cut scenes are well done and action-packed. However, they are intrusive, as there are times where you fight for two minutes only to then watch two minutes of cut scene. Again, fight for two minutes and then another cut scene. It’s utterly ridiculous and I think they could have done a much better game if they had had a far smaller budget so that they didn’t constantly stick in these stupid little bullshit story pieces.

The sound, well, it’s on the flat side. That’s not including the ridiculous overacting in the voices  nor the utter lack of any cohesive script really. The guns are all sort of muffled and the "wump" of the rocket launcher is unconvincing. It’s as if all of your weapons have a sort of mute on them and really, the sound just get muddled in the combat scenes, which is pretty much all there is to this game, you against hundreds of enemies.

The camera will get stuck in the worst possible places at the worst possible times. No less than five times did I get killed because I could not move the camera from its strategically-terrible placement into a position where I could actually shoot the enemy threatening me. There were even times when all I could see of myself was the muzzle blast from my assault rifle, which was aiming in the direction of the enemy but which I could not move to properly target them.

Also, the game resembles G.I. Joe cartoons - dozens of people shooting at each other, almost no one ever getting hit. Why give you a squad of NPC’s if they’re utterly useless in combat? Well not totally useless, they make for good cannon fodder actually.

You might as well just be alone, then you wouldn’t have to listen to their stupid idle chatter, completely played out one-liners and random usage of swearing for no apparent reason. Or their insanely repetitive "Good shot," compliments on the monorail in Act 3.