Any given Vanquish level might be considered a high-energy set-piece sequence in another game. However, these brief glimpses at repetition are momentary hitches in a game that constantly pushes you ever onward. Vanquish's reliance on its two primary mechanics leads to the faintest sense of staleness here and there.

All of these facets keep you always in battle, and always on the move. When you get close to death, the game automatically triggers AR mode, giving you more than a fighting chance to stay alive by temporarily slowing things down. There's a weapon upgrade system, but enhancements are applied on the battlefield instantly, not in menus. Enemies flank you, bots sporting hoverjets loom above you, and jumbo cyborgs fire rockets that turn cover objects into dust. You're meant to stay on the move rather than to rely on cover to provide unerring protection, and many of the game's facets contribute to the scurrying pace. Sliding and slo-mo can be used in tandem to create awesome moments of your own making in which (for example) you leap over cover, boost toward a group of enemies, and activate AR mode, gunning down a raft of robots while bullets whiz past your head. The other is AR mode, which allows you to slow time down to a crawl. The first is the ability to use the boosters on your fancy armored suit to slide about the battlefield at a high velocity. Vanquish is all about speed and flow, and to that end, it uses two features that turn the predictable rhythms of other shooters upside down. But any comparisons made with games like Gears of War and Army of Two are superficial ones. In Vanquish, like in so many third-person shooters, you can take cover behind various objects and peek out to take potshots at your enemies.

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Machine gun beta frame powerful enemies