Shinji Mikami on Vanquish

Andriasang has an interview with Vanquish’s director, Shinji Mikami that elucidates on some interesting new details about the game. As per usual, we bring these details to you!

The game, unsurprisingly, has its own take on bullet time/witch time/pig tiems. It’s called AR time, and using it will heat up your suit. We have no idea what AR stands for, but since mullet time is almost always cheating–I mean, cmon, people can’t keep up with you!–we’re going to call it “Action Replay.” You can equip up to three weapons, and these weapons can be ranked up. One such way, one weird way, might I add, is that once your ammo is at full capacity, any extra ammo that you pick up will go toward the increase of the weapon’s rank.

The game will be largely inorganic, Shinji stating that the closest thing to a more natural setting is something that “resembles” a forest.  Actually, it’s probably the Amazon forest in the future. Someone owes me something if I’m right. Other more natural elements will be visible during play, though, it just doesn’t sound as if they will be a setting for you to explore.

Shinji warned that people who look for getting a high score on “medium” enemies should note that they will probably not come out of those encounters alive. “You won’t have time to look at score while you play,” he said. That sounds a bit…lame, then, because why make it take up precious HUD space if it’s not something we’ll have time to look at? Shinji also tells us that there is no aim-assist on normal–that’s something only available on easy. He says that “We felt that this game would be more suited to a more difficult setting rather than something that can be played easily.” Hey, sounds fine to me. The game is made for people who play a lot of games, and while this approach is exclusive to “normal” folks, with such a huge focus toward casual gamers in the industry as of late, I’ll take anything I can get.

In a more “cooler” note, and I say cooler because we all know that people who smoke are cool, one of the game’s…features? Let’s say features. One of the game’s features is that you can smoke during combat. It doesn’t sound as if smoking will damage your health, ala MGS, but it still has an effect. When you toss a cigarette, enemy robots will react to it for some strange reason and try to attack you. So really, it’s like an aggro stick or something for the more douchey among us. You can smoke up to three times per stage, though Shinji says that “”When actually playing the game, I don’t think you’ll have time to smoke a cigarette.” Well, fuck that. I’m smoking my damn cigarettes because I’m a smooth motherfucker. Persona 3 said so.

Stay tuned as we bring you more details on Vanquish!