Platinum Games Announce Fourth & Final Sega-Produced Project: Vanquish

Tying off a four-game joint-venture with Sega that includes Bayonetta, MadWorld and Infinite Space, Platinum Games released a debut trailer on their blog for Vanquish, their kept-behind-closed-doors game. Vanquish looks set to try and finish the partnership with Sega on a high-note, as the one and a half minute trailer packs a lot of punch.

Anyone who looks at things with a “glass half-empty” perspective will note that the trailer features pretty much no gameplay footage and has a very striking similarity to Halo. But as Wonderwall Web interestingly noted, the Quantum Theory trailer released a little while back is another shooter-based Japanese IP that bares a striking similarity to Gears of War. Maybe Japanese developers are looking to pay tribute to the games that us western gamers love so much, or maybe it’s to cash in on the success they’ve seen?

The premise seems to be that at some point in the future, aliens attack earth and it’s up to the humans to stop them. Platinum Games lose brownie points for a generic plot structure here, but they get some points back by showcasing some highly impressive computer animated visuals.

With Resident Evil creator Shinji Mikami taking the helm of the project, hopefully Vanquish won’t turn into a second-rate, overly ambitious futuristic shooter. I’m optimistic it won’t simply have lots of stuff to see at the cost of interesting gameplay and poor characterisations (I’m looking at you Fracture).

I’m going to reserve full judgement until I see actual game play footage but at the moment I’m drinking from a half-empty glass. Nonetheless, salivate over the shiny and explosive debut trailer for Vanquish and try to … ahem … vanquish the thoughts that tell you not to get too hyped-up about it. After all it looks like it’s been done before and has a trailer with pretty much no discernible gameplay footage.

Sorry, I’m reserving judgement aren’t I? My bad.