When director Shinji Mikami claimed that Vanquish looks like a shooter but feels like an action game, he wasn't wrong. Watching Sam slither past man-sized bullets with a swivel of the analogue stick and rip the limbs from an enormous boss brings back pleasant memories of Bayonetta.
Comparisons feel slightly redundant, though; Vanquish looks as entirely idiosyncratic as any of Platinum's other games. Suspicions that it's a re-skinned, Japanese Gears of War fade to nothing as soon as you slide-kick a barrier into a crowd of robots before chucking a cigarette onto the debris.