Vanquish review

I remember about reading a review about Vanquish some time after I first learned of its existence; eventually the reviewer ended up describing it what would happen if Vanquish's older sister Bayonetta had a child with Halo, and the child grew up with Gears of War. That's probably the best way to describe Vanquish, Platinum's underrated and undersold action shooter where you play as a sarcastic douche clone of a Master Chief, voiced by a David Hayter imitator.

Story and Setting
You play as Snake Gideon, I mean Raiden, I mean Sam Gideon. Yes, Sam Gideon; a DARPA employee armed with an "Augmented Reaction Suit," basically this game's version of your typical "MJOLNIR" Halo armor. As Gideon you must help the U.S. Marines to stop an evil Russian faction aiming to fuck up the world after taking over their motherland and assuming control over an American space colony.

Needless to say, from my half-assed description, you can tell that there's not much to the story of Vanquish; it's the same "terrorists take over some place, and as the brave American, you must liberate it and put an end to the terrorists." The characters are downright forgettable, lacking any meaningful dialogues or development beyond your typical Call of Duty plot.

There's nothing really interesting here; you have the everyman protagonist, the brute badass grandpa, the Russian villain, a woman President, the wise mentor-like doctor and that hot Russian-American chick who serves as your mission assigner and wears an incredibly short skirt TOTALLY not meant for gamers to fap.

That said, I do appreciate the fact that the game is aware of how remarkably cliched and poorly-written the plot is, and plays along with it.