Vanquish and Bullet Hell Shooters

Video games have revolved around avoiding attacks since its inception. Dodge the missiles of the other player in Spacewar!, shoot back at them. Avoid the ghosts in Pacman, collect the dots. Don't run into the Goombas in Super Mario Bros., jump on top of them. It's a natural, instinctual reaction when combat is the primary mode of interaction. For every chance you get to hit something, there's an equal chance you're going to get hit in the process. This dichotomy is best represented in shooters and shoot 'em ups, as combat is so heavily involved in these games, and it's in these genres where deviations and experimentations of this formula have flourished. First-person shooters have gone from circle strafing to deal out and avoid damage to implementing a constantly recharging shield for your character in combat, thereby changing tactical consideration from “using the most powerful weapon to dispatch the enemy as quickly as possible in order to preserve health” to “experimenting with the systems and mechanics of the game and enjoying the reactions of your choices”. Third-person shooters, a genre that was slow to find its voice in the market originally, have taken huge strides with the implementation of a cover system. Here, the player is not only paying attention to how and where their character is positioned, but also how long they need to stay our of cover in order to take out an opponent, and finding openings to move forward in the battle and flank their targets. Shoot 'em ups stuck on a relatively linear progression of change where dodging attacks and shooting back at enemies was the modus operandi right up until the bullet hell evolution. Where previous shoot 'em ups only had you avoid simple enemy fire, bullet hell shooters had you avoid a maze of bullets that covered the screen, darting around the slow moving projectiles as you nervously shot back. It was a fascinating twist on the genre that was promptly subverted by the fine folk at Treasure with Ikaruga, a shooter that made the player deliberately crash into bullets and absorb them – provided their ship was the right colour. Projectiles were divided into two categories, black and white, and by switching your ship's polarity to match the attacks, the player could fly through the bullets unharmed. This simple switch up altered the way a player approached the battlefield – instead of moving in between the spaces of gunfire, you were confined to following the path of your enemy's attacks. It was brilliant and inventive design that could never be replicated in the same genre without severely impugning on some form of copyright, or facing the wrath of a thousand fanboys.

Vanquish, despite being a third-person shooter, has very prominent bullet hell shooter elements. Normally, the developments inside of the shoot 'em up genre are divorced from the developments of first and third-person shooters. Shoot 'em ups are difficult, high score focused relics of a period when video games were only about that – the very definition of a niche genre. But, the decision to meld the mechanics of a third-person shooter with the underpinnings of a bullet hell shooter made Vanquish a much more approachable, and entirely unique, shooter in the swirling sea of Gears of War knock offs.

The most noticeable aspect of Vanquish's beating bullet hell shooter heart is that there's gunfire everywhere. Enemies hound you on foot with excessive bullet fire, and bunches of missiles rocket straight up into the air, twisting and curling about, before spiralling down to hit you. Foot soldiers are mixed with giant, hulking robots and powerful vehicles and quickly spread out in all directions. The traditional Gears of War controls couldn't hope to adequately cover the sheer amount of action happening on screen in Vanquish. The slow, hulking, weighty movement of Marcus Fenix and Dom Santiago work best when confined to a tunnel. Enemies come towards you in Gears of War and you press through them, always going forward. There's no reason to backtrack in Gears of War because the game isn't designed with that in mind. Even the controls reflect this attitude by placing the ability to turn around on the right analogue stick. Moving left and right on the left analogue stick simply makes Marcus strafe left and right, always facing forward. Vanquish, with its enemies coming from all directions, doesn't have the luxury for these type of controls and in recognising this, the developers have freed up the right analogue stick for camera and aiming only and designated movement entirely to the left one. Sam Gideon doesn't strafe, he runs in every direction at the same pace regardless. This diverse range of movement means that combat is as much about dealing damage as it is about avoiding it; the fundamental core of the bullet hell shooter.

This freedom of movement also extends to the use of cover. Cover is your lifeline in Gears of War but is mostly temporary in Vanquish. I actually died more by bunkering behind cover than I did from simply being out in the open. The main reason is because cover is destructible and enemies are all too eager to destroy it as soon as possible. There's also never really a point in the levels where you can dive behind cover and hope to be reasonably covered from every angle. Chances are that while you may be covered from gunfire in one direction, the soaring, curling missiles will rain down on you at any moment and force you out of safety, or a group of enemies will flank you from another point. It means that Vanquish has a great sense of pace – you're always on the run and trying to find the best position to attack your opponents from, no matter how short lived it is. Cover is a charade in Vanquish, a left over fragment of the third-person shooter genre in order to ease the player into a sense of familiarity.

The biggest giveaway of Vanquish's bullet hell shooter aspirations comes from the inclusion of a score bar, that most archaic system of video game design. Not only do you get points from killing enemies but they're also deducted when you die, or when you stay behind cover for too long (another reason to avoid cover at all times). It's a system in place that rewards skill and knowledge of enemy placement, of knowing what's about to come up and how to defeat it, to abuse all the combat options available to you in order to rank up the highest score. To ignore it in favour of simply completing the list of levels in Vanquish is to ignore what is so compelling about the game. Other inclusions, like the game's risk/reward melee attack that completely drains your shield and leaves you open to damage at the price of dealing massive attack damage, tie into the respective power ups of shoot 'em ups. Even the simple idea of weapon data being stored inside of Sam's suit and transforming the gun in his hands into various different shapes is analogous to the weapon switching in shoot 'em ups where little weapons and doodads hover around your ship, waiting to be used in the battle.

This is all relatively meaningless to the experience in Vanquish, but I couldn't help but see a curious connection between a genre I typically don't enjoy and the otherwise traditional elements of a third-person shooter. I wouldn't say Vanquish is an exact rendition of the mechanics of a bullet hell shooter inside of a shooter but the influence is definitely there, and it adds a much needed burst of speed to an otherwise slow moving genre. In an industry where there isn't an awful lot of permutation and differences between titles, Vanquish sounds out as unique experience. I don't want a sequel for it, I just want to see that same driving enthusiasm in other games to reinvent the simple act of avoiding attacks.

Zoooooooom! Animation in Vanquish

Animation never fails to grab my attention. Whether it be in a film or video game, smooth, clean animation is a thing of beauty that never fails to impress me. Detailed animation made Prince of Persia (2008) one of the most enjoyable games I ever played, it gave us the most vibrant and endearing Link in The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, and it made Mario's leaps and bounds in Super Mario 64 endlessly entertaining in and of themselves. As you could gather from the comparisons provided, quality animation is part and parcel of an avatar with a huge range of actions and ways in which to traverse an environment. The lovelier a character moves in a game will more often than not indicate a larger assortment of moves and abilities in which to exploit. Animation leads to expression, and expression benefits movement, and when it's fun to simply move around in a game world you know you're playing a great video game. Mario in Super Mario 64 has always struck me as one of the most perfect renditions of a video game hero. Platforms can, more often than not, be approached in numerous different ways. One player may choose Mario's triple jump and give themselves a huge run up to the platform in order to land it, another may side-flip onto a wall and wall jump the remaining distance, and others may be inclined towards bouncing off an enemy in order to prolong their leap. Mario's yelps and cries match his athletic bounces and the animation lends a tactile sensation to all of his actions. It feels real because it looks real... or at least as real as it could be if someone with Mario's agility did exist.

Playing Sam Gideon in Vanquish is much like the sheer, exuberant joy felt when controlling Mario in Super Mario 64. Nestled inside of an advanced robotic suit, Sam moves at a blistering pace and quivers with detailed animations. His combat roll is complemented by a subtle motion blur and is sped up just a little in order to give a solid, punchy feel. He has numerous different idle animations bunkered behind cover depending on how big the wall is, with my favourite being when he practically lies down on the floor behind a small step. Braced against cover also gives the player the opportunity to embrace Vanquish's most excessive, and charming, animated flourish. A light tap of the left shoulder button makes Sam take a quick drag on a cigarette before lightly tossing it over his back. It sometimes distracts enemies but, let's not kid ourselves, it's primarily there to look cool. Outside of the manic, lightning fast gameplay is a very “Hoo-RAH” military shooter and Sam's cigarette toss adds immeasurable, cocky attitude.



And then there's the slide mechanic. Dropping down to his knees, Sam can boost across the environment at an incredible clip, avoiding gunfire and engaging in combat wherever the situation demands it. The slide is the central mechanic in which all other aspects of Sam's movement feed off of. In defence, it's used to quickly and easily switch cover points should you find yourself overrun by enemies, and lets you effortlessly avoid a swarm of missile fire. Offensively, the slide can be used to loop around your opponents while maintaining a clear line of sight on them at all times, unloading clip after clip as they hopelessly turn around to face you. A confident player can use the technique to deliver the final bursts of gunfire on a robot before barreling towards them and send them flying off with a sharp, powerful kick. All of these actions feel great and chunky, but the detailed animation really sells the motion. Sam exits out of the slide by flipping onto his back, spinning about, and hopping back up onto his feet much like a breakdancer. The thumping power of physical attacks is conveyed as much from animation as it is the enemy's reaction. Sam's kick is emphasised by the delay of the attack, the momentary shockwave that bursts from the hit, the scant frames of slow down, and the eventual pay off of seeing an enemy rocketing off into the distance from a massive explosion. Even the game's use of grenades emphasises excessive, character-building animation – Sam leaps into the air and tosses the thing like a quarterback, and shooting the grenade as it reaches a specific trajectory is much more effective than simply waiting for it to land and eventually detonate.

In Vanquish, Shinji Mikami captures the beats and flow of Japanese animation - the delayed reaction, the dramatic poses, and the bursts of fluid movement are all there and instantly noticeable. So much time and effort was poured into an expressive, fluid character that simply moving Sam about is satisfying in and of itself. I don't get that feeling often from a game. Animation is all about conveying weight, response, delay, and heightened reactions and yet so many developers feel content depicting “realistic” animation and avoiding its inherent strength. Sam Gideon tells so much about his character through the way he moves and I can't help but think it's an avenue of expression that ideally suits the video game medium.

The Deep Blue and Video Games

When I was younger, I was terrified of the ocean. Going to the beach and watching the waves crash against my feet, feeling the tide pull against my calves as my toes sunk into the sand, and watching the little fish dart about in the water below both terrified and enthralled me. It wasn’t so much the fear of being attacked while in the ocean that got to me but rather that I was walking into someone else's home. I was an unexpected guest. Getting into the water was the tricky bit, the biting cold was another major hurdle for me, but the point where I struggled the most was when I could no longer see the ground beneath my feet. A sickening dread rose up in my chest as I realised that something, anything, could be directly below me and I could do nothing about it. I didn’t feel this way swimming in an enclosed space, like a swimming pool, but whenever murky, impenetrable water was involved, I grew anxious. Growing up in Australia only encouraged my fear of the deep blue as our local collection of marine life, despite the irregularity one could encounter them, are almost all dangerous. Don’t even get me started on dams. I was paralysed simply seeing the murky brown colouration of their water, and the tickling sensation on one’s feet when a yabby brushed underneath them might as well have been a Great White for all I cared.

As sappy, highly emotional beings, we’re reasonably inclined towards taking our fears and joys with us into our various hobbies and day to day activities, so it was only natural that my fears of the Deep Blue travelled with me into video games. For this reason, the earliest games of my childhood are remembered more so in how they presented water in a three dimensional space than anything else, as they were always the most vivid sections of the game for me. A reoccurring element reveals itself when I evaluated just why I found them unpleasant and that is the use of “The Big Drop”. Designers weren’t simply content with constructing a gentle slope that gradually dipped lower and lower as you swam across the water, like a beach. No, they seemed to revel in turning that gentle slope into a gaping ravine at the drop of the hat and previously shallow pools of water would transform into giant, 180 degrees, tumbling cliffside. Imagine a tall glass blown up to an unfathomable size, and then imagine being asked to swim to the very bottom of it, and then you’ll have an idea of what I found so uncomfortable. My first encounter with the murky depths in video games though had nothing to do with “The Big Drop”.



Clanker’s Cavern in Banjo-Kazooie was terrifying for a lot of reasons but chief among them was Clanker itself: a giant, mechanical shark tied down by lock and key in a pool of dirty water. Visually, Clanker has an awful lot of things going for it that can easily make someone feel queasy. It’s described in game as a living garbage compacter and its appearance initially fits that description. Draped in rusty metal sheets and creaking bolts, with big goggly eyes and metal teeth, Clanker is an imposing creature the very first moment you encounter it. Then you notice the mysterious open wounds on the sides of his body, a familiar red colour, and you’re not altogether sure if he’s entirely mechanical.



Once you’re inside of him (I couldn’t do this for weeks) your suspicions are all but confirmed. Clanker is, despite what it is stated otherwise, definitely organic and the presence of irradiated, mutated crabs sharing the shark’s living space leads to unwanted conclusions my childhood never wanted to think about. I thought sharks were big enough as is and the suggestion that Clanker could of mutated in the polluted water was enough to make me skip the level entirely until the very end.



“The Big Drop” first revealed its ugly self when I played Super Mario 64. Jolly Roger Bay is anything but jolly and that giant eel gave me nightmares as a child. Here, the quintessential level designer’s trick of teasing the player with shallow waters before plunging them into dizzying depths is in full force. The player can see the drop too, the sharp curve of the cliffside just before the shallows lead into the main body of water. And then, of course, the eel. The eel lies in wait at the very bottom of the course inside his little hidey-hole and needs to be coaxed out in order to get into the caverns behind him. The creature’s elongated body twists and writhes about in the water, circling above the sunken ship at the bottom of the lake, guarding something.



You can’t feel the slimy skin of the creature but its very presence and movement around the bottom of the lake adds an increased awareness of your surroundings. The eel is much better at moving through the water than the tiny plumber you’re controlling and it’s certainly big enough to swallow Mario whole. It was never capable of eating Mario, of course, but my imagination worked its best to ensure me it could. All the while you’re exploring The Bay, there’s a never ending series of bubbly, floaty chords playing in the background that manage to sound endlessly comforting and terrifying all at the same time. When it works, it reminds you of being in an aquarium watching schools of fish effortlessly swim above you through thick glass. When it doesn't work, you feel like you’re at the bottom of the ocean and your body is being crushed by the compression.



If Jolly Roger Bay was the introduction to “The Big Drop”, Dire Dire Docks is the concept at its logical, raging extreme. Whereas Jolly Roger Bay at least had the comfort of solid land to retreat to if your nerves betrayed you, Dire Dire Docks has no such thing. The tall glass level design returns but this time you’re dropped straight into the water at the beginning of the stage and the only way to get anywhere is to dive straight down. More sea creatures were tossed into the mix, a shark and an oversized sting ray, and a small whirlpool awaits you at the bottom. There’s a submarine somewhere too but I was a bit too concerned about the animals in the water and the tall, unclimbable walls to really notice. Here, we are inching towards my perfect panic attack in which there are not only horrible creatures in a pool of water around me but also no discernible way of getting out of the water, meaning that I would inevitably be stuck swimming around, hopelessly looking for a solution, until I was weak from exhaustion and then drown… and then a thing would eat me. Or I’d be sucked into the whirlpool.



But all of these are merely pleasantries on the path towards Super Mario 64’s truly horrifying underwater stage. The Secret Aquarium is a box shaped room filled with water and no way to get in or out of it. Windows line the sides of the walls and show a lovely blue sky, so even if Mario was capable of escaping this aquatic hell, he would simply meet an equally horrible death by fall. Out of the frying pan and into the fryer, as they say. Within this space, the little version of me struggled with facing the biggest fear of aquatic exploration: drowning. The plentiful coins around Mario easily cover your air supply needs but the physical sensation of actually controlling a figure in a boxed-in pool of water was difficult to handle. I shouldn’t even have to mention Mario’s horrifying drowning animation to hammer home the traumatising nature of The Secret Aquarium.



Outside of Mario and friends, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time also worked its hardest to convince me that the sea was a terrible place that no one should swim in. Lord Jabu-Jabu was a horrible challenge to overcome when I was younger and was borne from a very different fear buried deep inside my bones. This fear, let’s call it “The Gollum Effect”, first sprung into my mind during my teacher’s reading of The Hobbit in class. The specific line in the book, which escapes me now, created an image of a fish swimming up stream into hidden waterways and getting stuck there, growing larger and changing its shape as it aged. Playing OoT, I couldn’t help but notice there wasn’t anywhere Jabu-Jabu could have come from, no river or creek to swim up from, and that he was more than likely placed in this small pool of water a long time ago by the Zoras and had grown to an unnaturally large size. “The Big Drop” plays a minor role in this specific instance too as Jabu-Jabu is suspended in a very deep, small lake.



Establishing that I find everything around and about Jabu-Jabu creepy hopefully illustrates my emotional mindset when I first went inside the beast. I freaked out. For some reason, even after two dungeons of design reinforcement, I thought that Jabu-Jabu’s Belly operated differently to other dungeons. I couldn’t simply turn around and exit the area; Jabu-Jabu’s teeth were in the way and teeth bite down on things. Similarly the very first door into the dungeon, in my mind, couldn’t simply be opened with the press of the A button. In my panic, I attacked the pinkish doorway and cringed as blue blood burst forth from my assault and a loud wail echoed throughout the room, a painful cry. I was inside the mouth of a living, breathing whale and I hated every moment of it. My dad finished the dungeon for me.



A year later, The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask tackled the widest held fear that grips our minds whenever we swim in the ocean, lake, or river - the unseen attacker lying in wait. Deep inside The Great Bay Temple lies Gyorg, the guardian of the dungeon, and one of the most difficult boss fights in the game. Link is placed on a small island surrounded by water as the great fish below swims and darts about, periodically leaping out of the water to snatch and bite at us, the unwanted guest. When you finally land a successful hit on the monster, it goes limp, stunned, and sinks to the bottom of the pool. Try as you might, the beast is just out of reach of Zora Link’s detachable boomerang fins and, if you don’t act quickly, it’ll soon awake and start its attack in earnest once more. You already know the solution in this situation, unfortunately. You’ve just been trying to avoid the inevitable by cycling through Link’s collection of various doodads. Nothing, try as you might, can replace the Zora’s ability to sink to the bottom of the water and karate chop Gyorg in the face. But then you’re not quick enough, the fish awakens, and suddenly you’re swimming away as fast as you can, desperately trying to leap out of the water back onto the safe island lest Gyorg eat you. Three hearts is an awfully large amount to pay for such a simple mistake.



The last, and most memorable, instance of facing my fears in video games was in Tomb Raider 2. After Lara does her usual adventuring through various ancient tombs and constructs, she’s plunged to the bottom of the sea to look for a mysterious sunken ship. Far below the surface there is very little light, despite what the speckled sun beams might suggest, and Lara’s immediate surroundings are drenched in darkness. A bread crumb trail of broken equipment on the seafloor catches your eye and you direct Lara towards it, ever aware of your dwindling oxygen bar as you swim along. Then, a shape materialises from the inky blackness. It’s a fucking shark and now you’re panicking. You keep swimming, keenly aware of the jagged teeth behind you and slip inside of a wrecked ship. The walls close in on you, the previously open space becomes narrow and claustrophobic, and the crashed ship is labyrinth-like in its destruction. The ever present worry of the shark behind you does nothing to still your nerves as you hurriedly navigate through the sunken maze. In this one tiny, focused moment, almost all of my fears about the ocean were captured and instilled - the murky deep water, the unknown attacker, and the sensation of being at the very bottom of the earth, with all the crushing compression that it implies.



Even if I felt that the video games I loved exploring were conspiring against my play time as a child, I can’t help but think that through playing them I learned to be not so terrified of the sea. Nowadays, I have an unhealthy obsession with the ocean including the unusual and fascinating creatures at the bottom of it. I actively seek out video games that have underwater sections in them and relish the opportunity to explore them. I enjoy the more limited controls of my protagonist and the keen sense of exploration and adventure that the sea abundantly provides. When people ask me what video games have ever helped me with in my personal life, I always mention that I wouldn’t be able to swim without them. In a country where warm weather is (usually) just around the bend and beaches are easily accessible, I can’t help but think that’s valuable.