Vanquish surprised me in lots of ways. It's not a Gears of War clone at all!
In the beginning of the tutorial I was faced with a guy, nothing like Markus or his companions at all. This man wore a cyborg-kinda suit, that looked really nice. In this tutorial I learned some very cool moves, like sliding on my knees on the ground and this for a pretty long distance.
The game itself, wich I haven't played very long, had mixed elements of the Gears-series with more Japanese elements. Like in Gears of War you could get cover behind quite some structures, like walls or boxes and you could jumpover those boxes or other smaller structures. Also the wapon inventory was shown as a hotkey, just like in the Gears-series; I prefer that above the other shooter methods. The shooting parts in the game (wich was like 95%) worked perfectly.
What about Japanese influences, I thought the graphics looked kinda Japanees and especially the way (as in the tutorial) that your bosses are giving you hints, tips and missions in the game.
The enemies were weak and could not stand against my awesomme Cyborg-guy. At the end of my gameplay I met a big boss. I really mean BIG! Whiles the A.I. of my buddies that followed me was very weak (they didn't search for cover at all so I had to revieve them (on the same way as in the Gears-series)), I confronted the big robot boss. That guy was so big that it took me a long long time till he was almost dead but then... I died... CRAP!
If Vanquish wil have more of these cool bosses and if it will continue this path of coolness, I'm sure this can become a geat franchise.