Developed by the team behind the critically acclaimed games MadWorld, Infinite Space, and Bayonetta, and directed by the creator of the Resident Evil series, Vanquish is a fast-paced 3D shooter set in a space station orbiting near-future Earth. With the world's resources dwindling rapidly, the United States sought to solve its energy woes by building a space station to harness solar power. But a nationalistic military group stages a successful coup in Russia, and subsequently attacks and captures the U.S. space station. The group, known as the Order of the Russia Star, then diverts the station's stored solar energy into a blast wave that demolishes San Francisco. With New York next to be destroyed, the United States springs into action, sending a team of space-based special operations forces and Marines to assist the few remaining soldiers aboard the station. Players join the rescue effort as Sam Gideon, a young researcher from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), who is officially on the team to test out the Agency's new Augmented Reaction Suit (ARS), but is also secretly tasked with tracking down the designer of the space station, Dr. Francis Candide.The ARS turns Gideon into something of a hybrid of Iron Man and RoboCop, with powerful armor, tremendous mobility due to jet thrusters on each of his arms and legs, massive firepower thanks to a system that can replicate any weapon he finds, and a special "AR" mode that allows for slow-motion attacks and evasion during periods of extreme duress. Players can store three weapons at a time, and the ARS also enhances Gideon's strength, allowing him to unleash deadly melee attacks at close range. He is not invincible, however, as the ARS can only boost for a short duration before it requires a cooling down period, so gamers are best advised to make use of Vanquish's sticky cover system during vulnerable moments. The game's environments were designed to be massive and interactive, with destructible elements, fights between background characters, and enough space for Gideon to comfortably boost, and Vanquish features a scoring mechanic engineered to dissuade over reliance on any one style of play by awarding multipliers for stringing together boosts, melee attacks, and slow-motion "AR" mode combat.