Vanquish

[Gunrise]

This game, despite being a Sega shooter, is actually really fun and engaging. It's like Devil May Cry's over-the-top shooting meets Gears of War's cover system. It's not a must-buy but it's definitely something worth a look. I was pretty skeptical about it, but I got bored enough with my games to actually try it out. I got sucked into it for hours and still never finished the game, but I kind of wish I had. For anyone really interested in the plot and not just the game mechanics, I copied and pasted from Wikipedia below:

Vanquish takes place in the near future where planet Earth's human population has grown so rapidly that nations of people around the globe are fighting for the scarce available resources. The United States of America has attempted to alleviate its own energy problems by launching an O'Neill Cylinder space station harboring a solar energy-driven generator to provide them with an alternative source of fuel from the sun. However, the government of the Russian Federation on Earth has been overthrown in a coup d'état by ultra-nationalist forces calling themselves the Order of the Russian Star.

Russian forces capture this space station and divert its harvested solar energy into a blast wave that devastates San Francisco, aiming to force the U.S. into a total and unconditional surrender. The main antagonist, known as Victor Zaitsev, demands that the American government surrender or he will choose New York City as his next target.

The President of the United States of America, Elizabeth Winters, refuses to back down in the face of such a threat. Instead, she takes Lieutenant-Colonel Robert Burns, a decorated war veteran, and puts him in charge of a newly-commissioned task force called Bravo Company. This team consists of several space-faring special forces, veteran Marines, and the remnants of the defending U.S. forces on board the space station. On top of that, she also gives them the game's protagonist and playable character, Sam Gideon (voiced by Gideon Emery in the English version.)

Sam is a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) researcher equipped with an Augmented Reaction Suit (ARS), a cutting-edge mechanical suit outfitted with a vast array of functions, including jet boosters attached to both arms and legs. He is armed with an experimental Battlefield Logic ADaptable Electronic Weapons System (BLADE), which is capable of scanning any existing weapon and then transforming into a perfect replica of that weapon. Its ability to store three scans at a time means that at any given time the BLADE can shapeshift between three completely different guns.

On the surface, this mission gives DARPA the perfect chance to test out the new ARS on the Russians. But both the President and the Secretary of Defense give Sam classified orders to rescue a scientist named Dr. Francois Candide, who was working on-site when the station was attacked. The Doctor has decided to take matters into his own hands and is trying to disable the array himself before it can be used to attack another city.