WET [PS3 Review]

Guns, swords, action, violence (lots of it), awesome tunes and a hot woman; throw that in with something heavily inspired by Quentin Tarentino and you should have something that I will jump on straight away, right?

When I played the demo on the PlayStation 3 I loved the style of it and the feel of the game play; but with these things you worry that maybe there is a slight issue afoot that may or may not ruin the whole game.

What The Bleeding Hell Is This?

So you are a hot woman and have to kick ass because you are paid to do it… seems simple enough! But that’s not a good way to sell a game, so lets do this properly.

You are Rubi Malone, a hot tempered assassin who does Wet Work for various underground syndicates that pay a heafty price for the service. You start off having to to steal a transplant organ while assassinating various gang memebers to save a rival gang member’s dying father who heads the gang. A year later, said father comes back to you to return the favour to save his son’s life due to the fact he’s running a undesireable gang in Tokyo that daddy isn’t too proud of.

Cue twist-after-twist of story!

As lame as it comes across, it entertaining enough especially when you consider the game is passing it self off as a highly interactive movie of sorts. That in mind, it’s a very short story with the game lasting a long single sitting. But this doesn’t degrade the quailty of the game in any way, but rather if you want to play a story so short or you see past it and look deeper into game play.

Jumping Around Like A Wounded Duck Are We?

This is the first time I’ve been confused if the game play actually works or not. I’ll say straight off the bat that the game play isn’t terrible or bad, but rather needs some attention. But first, the impressive part.

Those who played Max Payne [and if you haven't... shame - ed.] will be clued up on the whole slow-mo (aka “bullet-time”) affect of diving and the game going all slow allowing you to take out a number of enemies with ease. In WET the slow-mo system works really well creating a feeling that makes you feel as if it’s all down to you being awesome rather than the game itself.  There are times where you are put up against a large number of enemies in one area and to have this slow-mo ability is great as the game would be impossible without it.

So as well as diving and shooting in slow-mo, you can also knee slide, swing, wall run as well as others and still be able to shoot mobsters. Some of the abilities are only avaliable once you have unlocked them using points that are acumulated killing enemies in combos and stylish ways. You can also unlock gun and sword upgrades to better your equipment.

The interesting addition on all this is as well as slow-mo looking good and adding to your point to be a more stylish wet worker, it provides something pivotal to killing off mulitple enemies, using two guns on two different enemies! So you go in to slow-mo and you gun will lock on one target while you are then given free control of the other to shot where-ever you wish; so you can shoot other targets or concentrate on the one for a quicker kill. Up to you.

But with all this emphasis on the shooting mechanism, I feel the issue that I mentioned at the beginning of this review rear it’s ugly head. As good as the controls while shooting are, the devs seemed to have forgotten the exportation and the controls that go with the game to progress forward and slapped it in at the end by rehashing the slow-mo controls.

In slow-mo you are given a lot of control of movement and also the ability to do it quickly without over shooting this, a very fine balance. So if you take this control scheme and removed the slow down, you’d find that you’ll probably be overshooting the controls and missing your target as the movement is too quick, and this is what happens when you run around the level. I often found myself miss-judging a jump and falling to my death or running too far falling to my death again due to the controls being a little over sensitive. Game play in a lot of games has often been called “too stiff”, but in WET, its a little too loose.

Don’t let this get you totally down that the game is a loss as there isn’t too much in the need of precise movement but just running and shooting, just when you come to certain parts of the game where you want the controls to be stiff then your TV and controller are both at risk of making forbidden love!

Is She A Tasty Crumpet Then Charlie?

The graphics aren’t really anything special, they aren’t bad, but it’s not pushing the PlayStation 3  (or Xbox 360) to any new boundaries. It’s not out to do that though.

The character models are realistic enough and there is no major issues in bad textures or tearing, but during the cut scenes there is an issue with lip-syncing about 0.4 seconds out and this may bug people. Though I try and suss out if this is intentional due to reference within the games cut sequence to drive-thru movie ads that appear, and from what I gather from drive-thrus they don’t have the best sound-to-motion syncing. It does add a little charm but I think it can annoy gamers at the end of the day.

What often saves cut-scenes is the regular use of quick-time event; this is where you watch a cut-scene and a button will pop-up on screen and you have to hit it before it’s too late otherwise you loose and die. Its nice to see a game use it in a way that doesn’t make what is happening next so predictable but rather keep you on your toes! The downside of these quick-time events is that you can screw up the last button and have to go through the sequence again and as it’s the same sequence of buttons there isn’t must to keep you keen really so it can get annoying.

One thing I liked about the looks in WET is the film grain effect. Rather than just having nice smooth graphics in ultra high resolution, there is a filter on top that produces a film grain look to degrade the graphics. This may seem stupid to a lot of readers but let it be known that you can turn this off if it annoys you, but you loose charm in the game and the overall drive-thru experience WET tries to pull off. It’s not the first time a game has done this, Silent Hill has used it on all there titles (not sure on the very first one, but since 2 for sure) to add ambiance. WET isn’t a horror game, but it’s a 70’s stylized action game so it wouldn’t be right it the film quality was perfect now would it?

Bunch of Sloppy Hair Gits Barely Playing Their Instruments!

The music in this game is, in my opinion, excellent! I’m passionate about music and especially rock and it seems the devs behind WET understand music in games. WET has this down to a fine T with southern inspired heavy rock sounds that work so well with the game. Parts where you are in rage mode, the music represents it perfectly along side the lock-in battles where you have to lock the enemies out of a given area.

Each track is around 3-4 minute mark, and so when you are in a given area a special track is playing if you hear the song again, you know you are kind of sucking at that area. Also, where most games will re-use pieces of music, WET tries to make each area have a unique track in the background to accompany the scene.

To be honest, I fancy buying the soundtrack to WET if they release one, it’s quite cool!

Back To Bloody Square One Are We?

Aside from the story mode, WET offers up a challeng mode that you can run through to earn the highest points running through the training level with a certain gun. There is also the “Point Count” mode that is the story but emphasis on scoring points, so high score junkies will be entertained for hours.

So All Comes Down To This Then, Cupcake?

It’s not the most complex game nor the longest game, but it does offer some great gameplay in shooting even if this is hindered by the game play’s flow. There is enough here to keep you entertained for a few run throughs and could even keep casual gamers entertained as well as hardcore gamers; you can choose to dip-in and dip-out or sit down and play through solidly. The story entertains enough and the graphics have their appeal.

It’s a good game and a lot of fun to play with even if not polished as much as it should, but at the end of the day, that is what matters is that you enjoy a game and I really enjoyed this for a mindless romp! I’d say, pickup the demo and if you enjoy it then go get this great fun little stylized shooter!

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