If ‘shiny’ is among your favourite colours, you should know that Vanquish, for all its violence and brutality, has been polished to a brilliant sheen. The game opens with an orbital space station firing its weapons on San Francisco, essentially melting a good portion of the city and its inhabitants. A threat from the station’s Russian captors gives America just 10 hours to surrender before New York suffers the same fate. This sets the scene for a manic assault on the station.

You’ll play the role of Sam Gideon, an elite government agent entrusted with a military prototype known as the Augmented Reaction Suit. A brief tutorial introduces you to your armour’s signature boost function, which allows you to jet around levels, zip past enemies and take them out from behind. Get used to using this ability a lot. Not only is it a heap of fun, but you’ll die a lot without it. Platinum Games clearly recognises that slow motion is cool, because they’ve followed Bayonetta with another title that makes extensive use of it. You can activate ‘Witch Time’… err… ‘Augmented Reality Mode’ manually while boosting, and it will often kick in just before an enemy delivers a fatal blow, granting you a new lease on life.

A lot of familiar third person shooter elements are present in Vanquish, but somehow they just seem more interesting. For instance, you have access to the now standard assault rifle, shotgun, sniper rifle, heavy machine gun, etc, but in this case, they’re actually all one and the same. You don’t have to pick up and juggle separate weapons, as your gun simply reconfigures itself (Transformers style) into the different weapon types. The disc launcher, which lops off your opponents limbs, is incredibly satisfying to use. Vanquish also features a slick and intuitive cover mechanic. You’ll find yourself gliding up to cover, ducking behind it, jumping over it, scrambling to another vantage point, and then rocketing away again as your cover is obliterated by enemy fire.

For the most part, your foes are robots. The basic grunts look a little like the battle droids from the Star Wars prequels, but these guys are meaner and more organised. The first few waves are armed with assault rifles, but you eventually encounter more heavily armed versions. You also face a variety of larger and/or tougher enemies, including robots that deploy shields to thwart your attacks and robotic octopi that creep up on you and explode. The boss fights are nothing short of epic. Taking down these massive metal monsters is a lot of fun, but don’t expect much in the way of innovation. (Shoot the glowing yellow bits to stun the boss, and then shoot the red bits to kill it.)

While shredding robots forms the mainstay of the Vanquish experience, you can also look forward to a little gameplay variety. You’ll have to perform the odd rescue, take down a massive gun, escort and protect people and vehicles and negotiate some kind of reactor without getting vaporized. One of the more interesting diversions involves riding a monorail while attempting to snipe search lights.

While the action is peppered with short cut-scenes, Vanquish moves along at breakneck speed. You’ll just clear an area before reinforcements show up and it’s crunch time again, all before you have a chance to catch your breath. The game looks stunning and you’ll enjoy a wonderful sense of speed as you boost. Not long after you’ve boarded the massive complex, you’ll find yourself deep in its bowels and approaching the end of your mission. If you’re anything like me, you’ll find yourself watching the credits, controller in hand, just wanting more.

If anything is noticeably absent from Vanquish, it’s a multiplayer component. The inclusion of co-operative and versus modes would really give this title some longevity. For now, we’ll just have to make do with its excellent single player campaign.