Review: Wet

There’s a certain sub genre of the third person shooter that only a few games belong to. Stranglehold is one of them and so is Total Overdose and both are members of the genre that is the ‘Third Person Stunt Shooter’.  Yes, I just made that name up.  This genre has recently added a new member to its stable and it’s called Wet, a title released into the wild from developers Artificial Mind and Movement. 

Like both Stranglehold and Total Overdose, Wet borrows much from over the top action movies such as Die Hard and Hard Boiled.  With Stranglehold it was John Woo‘s own material, and for Total Overdose it was movies like Desperado and El Mariachi, Wet mainly pulls it’s inspiration from Grindhouse movies with no fear of showing all the gory details possible to show in high definition.

The lead role for Wet is filled by a lady called Rubi Malone, a no nonsense gun for hire who doesn’t mind laying hundreds of guys in order to fulfil her objective.  There’s not a lot of back story to Rubi or any of the other characters for that matter and the game left me with a lot of questions with regards to the story so pardon me for not filling in any blanks like why Rubi owns a giant scrapyard full of planes, cranes and automobiles.

The gameplay consists of killing as many bad guys as possible whilst flying through the air, sliding on your knees, running along walls and swinging from poles.  Each kill grants you points and if you chain a lot of stunts and kills together your multiplier goes up and you get even more points; fairly simple stuff really.  At the end of each showdown you get a chance to upgrade Rubi’s skills thus giving her new moves and weapon upgrades.

Compared to the spoilt for choice Borderlands, there’s only a tiny arsenal of weapons available to use, five to be exact.  Rubi has access to a handgun, shotgun, machine gun, crossbow with explosive rounds and a katana.  But all that doesn’t matter since you’ll be sticking to your handguns most of the time as they are the only guns with unlimited ammo, and ammo is very hard to find sometimes.

There’s the occasional scene where you get to operate a chain gun the only problem about these scenes is that it’s always hard to see your enemies, not to mention that these scenes are very short and feel extremely out of place with the exception of the first one.  But again that goes for most of the story, the characters and even the levels.  Most of it just doesn’t make sense and feels unfinished adding confusion to why this game was released so soon.

The story, although almost non-existent, goes as follows.  Rubi is hired to oversee a deal to get some rich gangster’s donor heart from some other gangsters. Then some Chinese gangsters show up and steal the heart which she then has to get back eventually tracking down and killing the thief.  Skip to one year later and the gangster who’s donor heart she was retrieving asks her to find her son in China.  The story then gets a bit fuzzy from there on out but but who cares about story with a game like this anyway? Also did I mention that Rubi goes on a rampage whenever she gets her face covered in blood?  I tell you these details in the exact deadpan manner in which you’ll regard them should you come to the end and want to reflect on your achievements.

The game looks pretty decent in that it has it’s own unique look and style, even though the graphics are a bit outdated sometimes.  The soundtrack is full of psychobilly music and just really feels like the right fit for the game.  The fast pace of the songs that play during one of Rubi’s blood tantrums and showdowns makes the crazy jumps and explosions a lot of fun. Next to that, the overall game has a film grain over it so it looks like it’s being shown through a crappy projector and it even has old drive-in ads that pop in between scenes.

During Rage mode the look of the game drastically by using only three colours, red, white and black. And although these rage events start off with the same annoying cutscene every time, they are really where the game becomes alot of fun.  The game’s pacing doubles and you deal one shot kills. But you also get a lot more enemies thrown at you so don’t be surprised when you get mobbed by up to twenty thugs at the same time, but this is nothing a few slices with the katana won’t solve.

Next to the main campaign there are a few challenges you can complete in Rubi’s scrapyard, none of which are at all interesting especially because these challenges don’t involve shooting enemies, instead trading them for stationary target cards.  Apart from unlocking the complete soundtrack there are a bunch of boring unlockables you unlock throughout the game, like character cards, and honestly this is somewhere Wet could have taken a page from the book of games like Batman Arkham Asylum.

Pluses:

+ Shooting bad guys is fun.

+ Rage mode.

+ High speed car chase.

+ Fitting and very enjoyable soundtrack.

+ Grindhouse look.

Minuses:

- The story just doesn’t make any sense.

- Not enough levels or extra content.

- Could use a few more acrobatic stunts.

- The drive-in ads as well as the cut-scene before the rage mode levels get old very fast.

- The ending didn’t really feel like a worthy sequence.

- The soundtrack probably isn’t for everyone.

- No multiplayer

Final Verdict: Wet is a fun game for those who love its style, as well as fans of games like Stranglehold and Total Overdose.  The game itself is flawed in its content and storytelling but that doesn’t take away from the fun you can have if you pick it up for rental, or at slightly lower than full price.  It’s obvious from the unclear story and abrupt ending that changing  hands from Activision-Blizzard to Bethesda Softworks meant Artificial Mind and Movement was pushed for a release and thus didn’t get to finish the title in a desired fashion.  At least that’s what I hope because if they release another game which lacks of content to a degree similar to this then I’m putting Artificial Mind and Movement on my ‘don’t bother’ list. Hopefully there will be extra missions available through DLC in the near future to bolster any desire I may have to play this game again.

Played on: Xbox 360

Also available for: PS3

ESRB/PEGI: Mature/18+

Game was purchased by the reviewer.