Boosting, the ability that makes Sam rapidly slide towards or away from laser shooting robots, is one mechanic that makes Vanquish stand out from third person shooters. PlatinumGames added this because moving through the space station wasn’t fun.
“During production, it was said that moving across the stage wasn’t fun, and that we needed something both visually appealing, and relevant as a special gameplay element to spice things up. That’s when we came up with the idea,” Takeo Kido, Effects Designer, wrote on the PlatinumGames blog.
“Why don’t we modify the big protrusions around the hips like this, then shove some jets out of the back and have him go flying around! That’d be cool,” Kido continued. “And if we made it so that jets could fly out of multiple directions, it would be a great excuse to have Sam do some really unbelievable actions that would look visually stunning, don’t you think?”
Kido was right. Boosting looks cool, but more importantly it makes Vanquish feel faster since it takes less time to move from point A to B. During firefights, boosting plays an important role too. You can slide towards an enemy, thwack it, and slide to the next one.
