Vanquish

Japanese shooters often don’t resonate well with Westerners, but Vanquish is different. It suffers the sort one-dimensional personalities and wooden dialogue found in its brethren, but still manages to be riveting thanks to some spectacular movie sequences, clever off-world settings, and extraordinarily quick pacing.

More importantly, the combat is highly gratifying. Players take on enemies ranging from small crawling robots to multi-storey behemoths using a healthy selection of satisfying weapons. The controls are tight, and the epic battles are rarely short of heart-pounding. Unfortunately, the frenetic action sometimes translates into bosses and missions that are more difficult than they should be. That quibble aside, this could be the most successful example yet of a game that marries Eastern and Western shooter philosophies. Good fun for grown-ups.