YMMV / Vanquish

• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment
  • During the Battleship Raid against the "Kreon", right before blowing it up, players will find a bunch of "Gorgies" dancing to a boombox that's actually one of the mobile cover robots. Before there's enough time to process what just happened after destroying the Gorgies, the "Unknown" boss shows up; following that, players finally take down the Kreon. Recall that Vanquish is supposed to be a Third-Person Shooter with heavy science-fiction elements, but Russian-manufactured robots dancing to the Robot via American music? COME ON.
  • Even the Unknown is this: the most unusual boss in the game, this visually-menacing technological Eldritch Abomination is armed to the teeth with machine guns and Frickin' Laser Beams and has an obvious glowing red core where, upon taking enough damage, it loses its scrap metal and junk that composes its body. All of a sudden, the core instantly sprouts little hind legs and runs away from players like a Hanna-Barbera/Looney Tunes character.
• Cargo Ship: Sam sure likes his cigarettes.
• Cliché Storm: While the general techno aesthetics, visual eye candy and fast gameplay are known as the selling points of Vanquish, a lot have not-so-great receptions to the plot - that it is boring and predictable. Most tropes are done straight without any flexibility and chances are, if you've already played several shooters before, you'll see some plot points coming from miles away. Oh, and the antagonists are Russian, having obtained a powerful weapon of mass destruction, while you play as the Americans who would save the day. These are usually parts of an overused story recipe for military-based shooters released in the early 2010's. It also doesn't help that you are shooting robots for 99% of the time, which throws away any other human soldiers' personalities and squad interactions out to the window.
• Complete Monster: Victor Zaitsev, a key member of the Order of the Russian Star, begins the game by hijacking an American Kill Sat and destroying San Francisco, its population agonizingly boiling and exploding from the microwave radiation. He then threatens to do the same to New York in ten hours if the USA does not unconditionally surrender. Revealing to Sam Gideon that President Elizabeth Winters backed their coup, he tries to justify his actions by saying that she wanted war with Russia to stimulate the USA's flagging economy and that the Order was her pretext. The fact that the Order was already a military dictatorship and the fact that he targeted civilian cities rather than the military make this a weak excuse and show he's just trying to play the victim. After his apparent defeat, he triggers a nuke to destroy the satellite. Evading capture and crippling America, Zaitsev proudly proclaims his mission was accomplished. Calm, smug, condescending and with a constant satisfied smile even as he commits hideous mass murder, Victor Zaitsev stood out in the game's sci-fi world.
• Cult Classic: Vanquish didn't sell even a million copies within the same pace as Bayonetta (830,000 versus 1.35 million within five months) and it didn't manage to spawn a franchise because of the poor sales. Yet it remained as one of the well-acclaimed titles of Platinum Games to the point that it got the same Polished Port treatment on Steam months after Bayonetta had one on 2017. Even now, almost all versions of Vanquish between its original releases in 2010 and its updated compilation with Bayonetta score well above a 9.0 for user reviews on Metacritic, making it one of the most well-reviewed titles on the website.
• Demonic Spider: Every variant of the "Romanov" - PlatinumGames made damn sure players will hate them sooner or later, with four different versions of these bastards.
  • The "Romanov N" is the standard version that enjoys spamming missiles.
  • The "Romanov F" features a flamethrower that, if hit, instantly overheats the "AR Gauge" (the gauge that fuels "AR Mode" and the rocket-sliding manuveurs players can pull off). Get within range fo the F and it proceeds to take out its club for a melee attack. Most players might be thinking, "Oh, I'll just go into critical mode and regenerate health back" and won't stay wary of the latter. Too bad the Romanov F overheated the AR Gauge, rendering the club strike a One-Hit Kill, even at normal difficulty.
  • The "Romanov G" tends to stay at a distance, tossing missiles left and right like the Romanov N, but every once in a while, it uses the biggest one mounted on its back. This missile is a guaranteed One-Hit Kill that tracks the player. Fortunately, the missile can be destroyed, with a warning siren telling players the ordinance is closing in on their position, but it's likely most players are too distracted by other enemies and their attacks; by the time they hear it, trying to dodge the missile is out of the question, particularly if they emptied their AR Gauge and can't go into AR Mode. Finally, don't bother closing in on the Romanov G: it's armed with a pair of Gatling Good, forcing players to play a long-ranged battle with this Romanov variant.
  • The "Romanov D" is likely the worst of the bunch: fast and strong, with the largest amount of Hit Points that almost certainly disqualifies it from being considered a normal enemy. One hit from its dual drill arms instantly triggers critical mode (with a lovely death animation via getting drilled through the torso if hit a second time). Not only that, Romanov D's can also drill through the entire area, getting rid of any discernable cover. Just to make sure players have no where to hide (especially in "Challenge Mode"), they can also drill underground to attack.
  • There is a certain part in the game where players most fight all of them at once.
  • Finally, all variants are armed with a One-Hit Kill attack in the form of a wide Chest Blaster; it's very possible for players to die from the attack, despite being behind them.
  • On higher difficulties, even the regular Gordies turn into this, especially the golden and green variants, the latter of which put Jackal Snipers to shame
• Fan Nickname:
  • Vanquish is called "Gears of War on steroids" because of how much it's seen as a Spiritual Licensee to that game.
  • Fans have drawn similarities from the Crystal Vipers' appearance to various comic book characters, and label it as such, like "Silver Surfer" and "Dr. Manhattan".
• Genius Bonus: Those little "Pangloss" statues you can find and shoot hidden around the levels? A reference to an eighteenth century satire Candide, by French philosopher Voltaire.
• Good Bad Bugs: The PC version features unlocked frame-rates allowing Vanquish to run much higher than the 30 frames-per-second cap of the original console versions. However, higher frame-rates result in an unintended side-effect of increasing damage dealt by enemies! The already difficult "God Hard" mode turns almost impossible due to this.
• He Panned It, Now He Sucks!: Jim Sterling from Destructoid caught quite a bit of flak for reviewing Vanquish poorly. When he went on to give Fist of the North Star: Ken's Rage an 8/10, you could hear people the world over call "Bullshit!"
• Inferred Holocaust: There are no civilians seen anywhere aboard the Providence colony. Even if there were survivors following the Russian assault, there likely aren't many left after the breach in the colony's hull. Finally, if anyone somehow survived an atmospheric breach, the nuclear destruction of the entire colony made sure no one made it out.
  • Given President Winters was behind the takeover of the colony, one could imagine she prepared a quick evacuation beforehand to reduce casualties.
  • Not to mention Providence was also providing the world with almost limitless energy: now that it's destroyed, how will the rest of the world fare?
• It's Short, So It Sucks!: The average player can complete Vanquish in roughly 4-6 hours from the story campaign on normal difficulty, but this complaint comes primarily from people who overlooked the multiple difficulty modes, a scoring and timing system that allows for scoring runs and speedruns, as well as multiple maps to tackle in Challenge Mode.
• Memetic Mutation: San Francisco is gone now!
• Moral Event Horizon: The Russians go screaming across it in the game's opening scene when they fire the microwave weapon on San Fransisco.
• Nightmare Fuel
  • When the microwave weapon is fired on San Fransisco, the audience gets a graphic view of its effects, complete with full-body burns with black veins rapidly appearing on every limb, boiling ''sea'', citizens getting crushed flat by rubble, and exploding bodies.
  • Some of Sam's death animations, especially when killed by the Romanovs, are quite gory and Squick-worthy.
    • The drill-equipped Romanov D, for example, grabs Sam and crushes him, then slamming his body to the ground and drills through his chest and stomach...
    • The Unknown, if it kills Sam via its Grapple Move, will cut off his head and attach his body to the rest of its parts.
• Play the Game, Skip the Story: Vanquish had a Russian plot to take over a space station and destroy the USA. Of course, you can follow the generic plotline, or you could focus on sliding around on rockets while you destroy a variety of massive robots. The fact that you're rated on speed shows that they knew players would do the latter.
• Polished Port: Damage increasing due to higher frame-rates and no frame limit aside, the PC version has very lightweight system requirement (by virtue of the game being originally released in late 2010), support for ultra High Definition resolutions, special commands that properly scales for said resolutions, as well as increases to the field of view, and all the various accoutrements needed to be the definitive version, otherwise. Hell, the Good Bad Bug didn't become a Game-Breaking Bug when it was eventually alleviated with a fan-created fix before official patches addressed it.
• Rated M for Money: Considering every Mook in the game are Russian-manufactured robots, it's safe to assume the cursing and bloody Non-Player Character deaths (including The Many Deaths of You) were thrown in to increase the ESRB rating to "mature".
• Scrappy Mechanic: The Weapon Upgrade system and its requirements. First, your equipped weapon must have full ammo and you'll have to find copies of it in the battlefield to increase its rank. Otherwise, it will simply replenish the ammo. This forces you to use weapons that you are not regularly using so that you could upgrade the weapon of your choice. Second, you'll have to find multiple copies of it just to increase a chevron ranking, so it's not a one-to-one upgrade path. Third, your weapons get downgraded when you die and reload a checkpoint (although there's a method to bypass this) in Normal and Hard difficulties. Lastly, the Weapon Upgrade system is absent in God Hard difficulty.
• Spiritual Adaptation: According to Director Shinji Mikami, he wanted to do a Neo Human Casshern game, but since he already did a brawler game, he decided to put more emphasis on shooting. Hence, Vanquish is the closest we will ever get to a Casshern-based video game adaptation.
• Spiritual Successor:
  • Thanks to its familiar Third-Person Shooter mechanics with a light emphasis on Take Cover!, expect plenty of players to refer to Vanquish as "Gears of War on steroids".
  • The game can also be considered a spiritual successor to Assault Suits Valken. Both games feature a global resource war fought with space weapons and power suits/mecha, between the player's North American faction against the enemy's European faction. Both games also feature an antagonist political leader committing suicide when confronted. It's also with noting that Valken is one of Platinum founder Hideki Kamiya's favorite games.
• That One Achievement:
  • "Tactical Challenger" requires you to complete all the Tactical Challenges. 1-5 are doable, however 6 amps up the difficulty with multiple waves of enemies, a Crystal Viper, two scorpion robots, and three Bogeys, with two being fought at the same time. Cover is minimal, there's only a limited number of ammo you can pick up, and every enemy in the game trying to kill you.
  • "A Heartbreaker and a Lifetaker" requires you to defeat 100 robots with melee attacks. Sure enough, melee attacks are powerful in this game that they can One-Hit Kill most lightweight robots such as Gorgies. However, with the mechanic that Overheats your suit everytime you connect a melee attack, you can not easily spam melee attacks over and over in the same area. You must wait until the ARS cools down before attempting to destroy another robot with a melee. In other words, this achievement is more of a grind in itself, not including the fact that it is very difficult to get up close to a target in the middle of a Bullet Hell firefight. The Disk Launcher's melee attack however solves the first problem, as it does not overheat the suit, eliminating the cooldown time, and essentially allowing you to saw through multiple targets repeatedly.
  • "The Hand of God" requires you to defeat two Romanovs in a row using only melee attacks. Combine the aforementioned Overheating and cooldown mechanics as explained in the similar achievement above, plus having to use them exclusively on two Damage Sponge elite mooks makes it more challenging. Also, any accidental damage caused by your other weapons will invalidate this melee-only achievement immediately for the fight, unless you could do some Save Scumming by reloading the checkpoint.
• That One Attack:
  • Even the lesser mooks have this, par for a Nintendo Hard game. Should the Gorgies get close to Sam, they will initiate a melee combo. In Normal or higher difficulties, a single melee hit is enough to send Sam on a "critical" state. But for a combo, expect your recovery chances to be very slim as they can dish melee attacks fast.
  • The One-Hit Kill attacks of many robots, even those that only send you to "critical" status. The Crystal Viper's sword slash can also count, thanks to its invisibility which can provide it a sneak attack. While you can parry it in a Quick Time Event, the opportunity window is small, and you're better off dodging instead of parrying in the first place.
• That One Boss:
  • The boss fight against Burns is quite long, given that the fight takes over several areas and that he is a Damage-Sponge Boss also capable of blocking your shots. He also has several units fighting alongside him, some having the ability to fly and spot you over cover. These mooks can be annoying enough that players aim at them first before the boss. If you do stay too long from one cover position, he'll move sideways until he can flank you with a melee attack, which also damages you a lot.
  • On God Hard difficulty, Bogey Alpha and Bogey Bravo are nightmarishly difficult thanks to their frequency of dodging attacks, high damage and flanking manuveurs to catch players off guard. Expect plenty of players to induce a Rage Quit in all, but the most insanely determined of gamers. According to the Xbox 360 leaderboards, less than 100 players in the world have beaten them on that difficulty setting.
• That One Level: God Hard turns the entire game into a red nightmare, but a few particular missions will boil your blood
  • 1-3 GIANT, whilst technically only the second level of the game, is brutal. A limited arsenal, dozens and dozens of Gordies that just don't stop coming, and those goddamn snipers. The fight with the Argus at the end of the mission is actually the easy part.
  • 2-5 ASSAULT. For a mission that can be beaten in under two minutes, it is blood-curdlingly tough. Constantly reinforcing Gordies that rush past you, very poor cover, and grenades literally everywhere. It is next to impossible to beat with abusing the cigarettes.
• Vindicated by History: While the game was considered a commercial failure at release with its poor sales, it would become quite popular several years later when it's ported to the Playstation Network and Steam.

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