April 25, 2010

Bang Bang Dive Dive Be Moisturized!

Yeah, that’s right. I’m milking two whole posts out of WET. Deal with it.

If you’ve played Stranglehold, you know it had some great ideas, but they just completely didn’t work. The game got boring as all get out very fast, and the objectives meant to vary the game up just kept you from doing what was cool about the game.
WET is kind of what Stranglehold wanted to be. It’s got hectic, cinematic gunplay with dives and slides all over the place. But what it does is put it into a more entertaining context that keeps you at least somewhat interested.

WET isn’t great, not by a long shot, but it was a fairly entertaining rental, and I enjoyed it as I played through it.

Basically, you’re a chick with guns and access to bullet time who can jump around and shoot people. You also have sword to cut things. Your only defining characteristic is that you don’t take shit from anybody. You heal yourself by drinking whiskey. You flip and dive and slide all around and kill countless numbers of dudes. Sometimes you get on a turmulent. Sometimes, the screen gets all red and stylized for some reason. You shoot some more dudes. This is the whole game.

You get guns that aren’t pistols, but you won’t use them because the pistols are better and the other guns have limited ammo. The pistols just feel right, honestly. I tried using the other guns, I really did, but there was just much more visceral feel to using the pistols.
The game has a weird system where it lets you shoot two guys at once by auto-aiming your off-hand. You can then aim your on-hand at another guy, or at the same guy to kill him faster. This has the comical side-effect of making you way, way more accurate with your off-hand, at least if you’re me. Often, my main hand would fire into space while my off-hand would murder guys alone. Still, it works, and when you’re sliding past two dudes, one on either side, and shooting both of them, the system pays off.

The main thing I liked about the game were the arenas. These were the key elements of the game, where you’d walk into a room, Rubi would look mean, and then you’d have to dash out, block off all the exits, and slaughter everyone in the room. These sequences were what the game was obviously designed around, and they really are a lot of fun. There are always lots of environmental things to jump off of and do tricks from, and you really benefit from planning your strategy before you dash out into the room to keep yourself from getting killed. These set pieces are really where the game shines. It does less so in other sequences, though.

The main reason I loved the game, though, was the music. Take a listen to a sample. This isn’t the same kind of music you hear in every action game. It’s different, but it’s still completely energetic and exciting. I loved it, and I loved moving into new set pieces, because almost every single one of them had their own unique song. This game got the music RIGHT. it really enhanced the experience, and was probably the only reason I finished the game.

If you have a weekend to waste and want to rent a game you can finish quick and have a bit of fun with, WET will do that. It’s alright. It’s much better than I expected. I’d never buy it, but thanks to Gamefly, I got to try it, and it was totally worth my time.

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