How do you think Platinum could expand on the combat system of Vanquish to make it even greater for a sequel?
That’s hard.
Add a jump of some kind. Flesh out the melee attack system a little more and don’t have all the melee attacks cost the entire suit meter. More differentiated weapons, perhaps focused on moving enemies closer/further or crowd control a bit. More differentiated cannon fodder foot soldiers (they did a good job with the bigger mechs and romanovs, but those are more mini-boss-ish and I think making the cannon fodder have different types mixed in would be cool).
Maybe a more predictable bullet pattern from enemies that’s less RNG, dunno how they’d finagle that. Probably by making it work in a fair way on the inside that has an outward effect that looks similar to random bulletspray, but which communicates enough information to reliably allow players to avoid bullets. Like for example, showing where enemies are currently locked on and having the lock-on indicator work like a projectile that follows you with certain patterns, so you’re essentially dodging the lock-on indicator, only visually it looks like you’re dodging bullets. Close to identical representationally, but way more fair and potentially fun/deep.
More cool advanced gun tricks, like maybe gun combos a la Quake, UT, or Desync (though that’s not out yet). Some type of limited use shot cancel, so that you can cancel burst fire shots sometimes but not always, like the existing weapon switch reload cancel. So you could cancel a weapon at a critical moment to double shot with it, or perhaps you’re forced to switch to another weapon/weapon function so you gotta pick a combo of 2 shots that work well together. You could straight up stick in a new bar for this, but it doesn’t mesh well with the existing system, so I don’t really know how to make it fit in with what’s there. Maybe cost half your suit meter?
Oh, and visually show in a bar somewhere how much health you have. I hate the red flashing. Also let you cancel the forced slowdown when you’re at low health manually in some way. Even if it blows all your suit meter, it’s better than having to sit through the forced slowdown.
Skip on the QTEs, aim for scripted sequences or lite minigames like blade mode in metal gear rising if necessary.
Beyond that, the obvious, more of what they got right the first time.
What separates vanquish from other shooters?
The rocket knees, the melee attacks, the reload cancel, ability to slow time and shoot your grenades (though that’s in FEAR too), the cigarette, and the sheer variety of enemies with different aggressive attack patterns, not to mention how reactive they are to sam, like if you take cover on their cover, they’ll jump up on top of it to attack you. It’s a really ballsy cover shooter that takes advantage of being on a controller by actually having deep third person movement, unbounded from mouselook. It might be better on keyboard and mouse, we’ll find out with the PC release allegedly coming out soon, but it still solidly utilized its assets to do things that console controllers are uniquely better at doing than PC controllers, which is really nice, don’t see that from games like mass effect and gears of war, or any console FPS by comparison.
Celia Alexis Wagar's CritPoints 