Vanquish Remaster (10th Anniversary) review: A pleasant surprise

The Vanquish Remaster,  one-half of the Bayonetta & Vanquish 10th Anniversary Bundle, brings a ton of arcade fun back into the third-person shooter world.

Title: Vanquish Remaster (Bayonetta & Vanquish 10th Anniversary Bundle)
Developer: PlatinumGames Inc.
Publisher: SEGA
Platforms: PlayStation 4 (version reviewed), Xbox One
Release date: February 18, 2020

Recently, I reviewed the Bayonetta remaster that is part of the Bayonetta/Vanquish HD Remaster coming out on February 18 of this year. It didn’t go so well and, despite being a fan of Bayonetta (mostly the second one), I had no idea how poorly the game was going to hold up. So when I went on to play Vanquish, the second part of the bundle, I didn’t go in with a lot of expectations.

Boy, was I surprised. While the first Bayonetta, a game I originally loved, aged like an untreated wound, Vanquish, a game I was “meh” about a decade ago, is a surprisingly fun one. And it has been really cleaned up.

First off, it looks nice, like really nice. It doesn’t hurt that the game used a ton of visual tricks originally to create a sense of scale you normally couldn’t achieve on previous-gen software. But the level of detail for everything in the game is astounding.

Your protagonist’s armor has a ton of parts that are constantly bending, opening and transforming. Each animation is a weirdly satisfying thing to watch. I found myself switching weapons during slower moments just to watch my gun transform.

The remaster has a ton of features we love from the original that even modern shooters still haven’t worked in. For example, when you reach the end of a stage after fighting through the futuristic Russian forces, the game will pause for a moment and show you your stats. Hit X to state you finished reading it and the game picks right up from there.

The game is just always moving. You’ll fight through a long corridor of robots only to then have a giant one bust through the ground, only to end up on a flatbed train chased by flying robots, only to crash that train and deal with different threats. The game is constantly upping itself and it’s just nonstop fun.

It’s an arcade shooter in the best sense. The characters are goofy overblown archetypes. The dialogue is hilariously over-the-top (like a commander yelling “WHO WANTS TO LIVE FOREVER!” to the soldiers he’s leading). The action just never stops.

Also, the sliding mechanic is still just as fun now as it was 10 years ago. I couldn’t believe how satisfying it was to just slide across the stage to get to cover. It gave me a sense of mobility that other shooters (even Titanfall) still haven’t allowed me to feel.

It’s not perfect — especially if you’re looking for a gratifying story. You’ll turn the game off and immediately forget every single character’s name. But it’s perfect for those looking for some nice, rainy day, single-player action. Playing this actually baffles me that a sequel never happened.

A copy of this game was provided to App Trigger for the purpose of this review. All scores are ranked out of 10, with .5 increments. Click here to learn more about our Review Policy.