Third-person shooters might have been thoroughly dwarfed by their first-person brethren - especially across the last year or so - but back in 2010 thanks to Gears of War's success, Bayonetta-developer Platinum Games managed to deliver a perfectly over-the-top sci-fi epic that had just the right amount of personality underneath. Featuring a button literally only for the sake of lighting up a cigarette mid-firefight, the levels of straight-up-dumb coolness were off the charts, and it's only when you then tossed said cigarette to the side and realised enemies would be distracted by it - allowing you to blast their faces off with all manner of new-age weaponry - that Vanquish excelled far above its peers. Add to that mix a exoskeletal suit that had a plethora of boosters, allowing you to zip around the battlefield at light-speed (whilst slowing things down yourself and watching metal get torn apart in slow-motion) and just on gameplay alone there's enough going on here to make it worth anyone's time.
