Vanquish

Vanquish is a fast, stylized third-person shooter from PlatinumGames that arrived on PS4 in remastered form, reaffirming its reputation as one of the best-designed action titles of its generation. Players control agent Sam Gideon in an ARS suit equipped with a rocket-powered ground slide that enables lightning-fast moves between cover during intense firefights against a robotic army of Russian separatists aboard a space station.

The game is built on a perfectly tuned rhythm of action. Slow-motion sliding, explosive battles against giant robots, and clever weapon combinations create a sense of ballet amid chaos, typical of director Shinji Mikami's work. The campaign is deliberately short and intense, without unnecessary padding, which sets it apart from most modern shooters, and emphasizes replaying individual sections on higher difficulties for a better score. The remastered PS4 version offered higher resolution and a more stable frame rate, which let the precise controls the entire gameplay is built on truly shine.

Battles against giant robots require spotting weak points and quickly switching between cover, sliding, and precise long-range shooting, with the game constantly pushing players to stay on the move, since standing still is practically a death sentence. A slow-motion module triggered by a near-fatal hit gives players a last-second chance to dodge incoming fire and land a precise shot on the enemy, which became one of the game's most defining features.

At its original release, Vanquish was praised by critics as mechanically brilliant, though commercially less successful, and the remastered edition let it find an audience that had missed it at launch. Today it is regarded as a cult classic of the action shooter genre and is often cited as an example of perfect pacing and movement design that inspired a number of later action games.

Why play it: For fans of action shooters with perfect pacing and movement design, Vanquish is a cult classic that the remaster brought to an audience who had missed it at launch.