Written by: Ian

 

 

 

My preview of "WET" showed that I had some pretty serious concerns about the game- have they been addressed for the final retail version? There’s now no multiplayer, but will the game benefit from a stronger single player as a result? Has there been made any more improvements over the somewhat lacklustre demo?

 

 

Certainly, with the story unfolding, the game makes more sense than the demo did. It’s basically a rip-off of Quentin Tarantino films, although surprisingly, it’s more a mix of Kill Bill: Vol 1 and Grindhouse than his more appreciated films.

 

Having said that, the 70’s style setting, comedy villains, and Rubi, the female lead, all come together really well. Rubi, herself, is the most impressive. She’s mostly silent, but her expressions throughout are excellent, and she doesn’t need to say much else. When she does speak, it’s normally short, succinct, and perfectly timed.

 

Whilst the ‘twist’ is pretty predictable, it’s still a solid effort, and also, whilst providing closure, also gives Rubi the opportunity to make a company.

 

 

To be honest, as I said in my preview, if you’ve played 'Stranglehold', you’ve pretty much played "WET". Sure, the story may be a little different, and you play as a chick, but even many of the levels are set in the Far East.

 

 

Sure, there’s some light platforming, you get unlimited slo-mo, and you get a sword, but otherwise it’s incredibly similar. You go through some linear levels, shoot in slo-mo, and get to larger areas with spawn doors. Shut them down, then keep progressing. The sword is a pretty good upgrade, and so is the fact that the game aims your other weapon for you as you dive or jump in slo mo.

 

Additionally, you also get to upgrade Rubi and her guns and moves as you progress, and some of these are pretty neat. You are also going to have to pull off a lot of combos and stylish kills to get all the points you need in order to get a full suite of upgrades too. It is a more fun system than Stranglehold, and to be honest, I was surprised that by the end of the game’s 6-7 hour length I still wasn’t bored of the basic run-and-gun in slow motion gameplay style.

 

There is, however, less variation than you might think. Across the game’s 12 chapters, only 2 are quick-time based, and both of them involve you being on top of cars, trying to dodge some bullets, and then leaping from car to car. It’s a little lame that both of these levels are essentially the same thing. Then you get the sections where you go into a red haze and chop dudes up. It barely changes the gameplay to be honest, just the visuals, and like with the quick time levels, it’s kinda cool the first time, but gets progressively more annoying, so by the last time, it’s become pretty lame.

 

However, the further you progress throughout the game, the more bad design decisions you see. Late in the game, you come across dudes who are totally immune to bullets, and need loads of sword slashes to kill. It’s just absolutely retarded. There’s loads of more subtle ways of upping the ante without adding in these guys.

 

 

There’s also several sections that require ridiculous timing. The quicktime events are pretty easy, but when you get a cinematic section without button presses, it’s just horrible. The level when you are chasing a parachute after being blown out of a plane could be awesome, but because you need to memorise an entire five minute section, it took me about 50 attempts. I was more than frustrated by the time I finished it- I was on the verge of smashing controllers and giving up on the game entirely. It’s just dumb that there’s not a checkpoint here when the entire rest of the game has such generous checkpoint spacing. Worse is that collision detection seems a little off, and just one hit is an instant death.