The story continues on from just after the film with assassin-extraordinaire, Wesley Gibson, trying to find out the truth about the death of his mother. This includes hunting down the Immortal, an unfortunate looking chap who has something to do with mummy-dear’s death. In various levels you’ll also take control of Wesley’s father, Cross, as the story of Wesley's family is slowly unravelled by meeting people who knew them. It’s a decent story for a game based on a movie; the narration is sharp and funny, it never takes itself too seriously, and it doesn’t over-complicate things. The only real issue is that the action stops every few minutes for more story elements, and it comes across as a jarring attempt to lengthen the gaming experience.
In terms of gameplay, Wanted is basically a game where you’ll find cover, shoot enemies, move to the next cover, and shoot more enemies that look suspiciously like the last ones. Fortunately, the cover system is spot-on and keeps the game barrelling along at a rapid pace, not allowing you to dwell for long on the game’s other shortcomings. You can ‘link’ cover together throughout each level; that is, you can quickly move from cover to cover by pressing the control stick towards the next cover you want to go to, and then pressing the X button when the on-screen prompt is displayed. Your character will then clamber, slide and run to the next cover automatically, avoiding most gunfire. Out of cover, your character isn't anywhere near as nimble. Both Wesley and Cross plod along, there is no quick turn option, and they can’t jump or manually duck. Basically, if you’re not using the cover system if feels like you're controlling Hurley from Lost.
No matter how hard you try, you'll never be this awesome.
Built around the cover system are two special moves which can be used by killing enemies and building up an “adrenaline” gauge. The first and most useful is the ability to ‘curve’ bullets, as seen in the film. To use this ability, it’s simply a case of aiming near where the enemy is hiding, pressing a button to lock onto them, and twiddling the control stick until the aiming laser turns from red to white. This will curve the bullet around any obstacles that the enemy is hiding behind. At times, the game will go into slow-motion and track the bullet towards the enemy and makes bullet-curving a very satisfying experience, at least for the first dozen times you see it. However, the ability is a bit too good, and you find yourself using it most of the time, making most gunfights a walk in the park (assuming that park was full of people trying to kill you).
The game tries to combat the over-effectiveness of curving bullets in the latter stages of the game by introducing some enemies who require 10 to 20 bullets to defeat. However, all that really does is to make the game feel a bit lazy and the enemies a bit cheap. The game also doesn’t do anything interesting with the ability to curve bullets. It’s a bit of a waste really, as it could have been used for all sorts of environment interaction and could have offered cool ways to dispatch your enemies. But not to be.
The second special move is, naturally, a ‘bullet time’ type move. By pressing the triangle button instead of the X button when moving from cover-to-cover, you’ll slow down time and be able to shoot bullets at a rapid rate. While this can be good for clearing away two or three pesky enemies, it costs twice as much adrenaline to use and requires you to line up your adversaries on the fly. It’s generally only useful during boss battles and most of the time it’s more effective to to bend 'em like Beckham.
Derek, a flight attendant for 14 years, finally snapped when a passenger wouldn't buckle up during take-off.
Another major ability the game teaches you early on is the use of blind fire to suppress enemies. After they are suppressed, which is indicated by a white glaze and blurring around the edges of the screen, you can move from cover to cover to flank them. This is touted as being useful against enemies with shields, but the ability to curve bullets can also penetrate these enemies, so unless you have no adrenaline, there is no real need to flank anyone.
The lack of need to do anything other than shoot and curve bullets isn’t helped by your opponents. There are only a handful of enemy types, each with its own predictable AI. Some enemies run mindlessly between the same two areas of cover, while others merely bob up and down in the same place, seemingly waiting for you to end their miserable, repetitive lives. They never work together and they never try to flank you, and only exist as cannon fodder. While this acts to move the game along, it can make most of the gun-fights a pretty basic experience. Add to that that Wesley and Cross are basically identical to use and both have access to only two weapon types, and you start to get an idea that the developers weren’t trying to make the next Killzone 2 or Metal Gear Solid.
In an attempt to break up this linear shooting action, the game has some pretty cool on-rail sections where you have no control over your character other than the ability to shoot at enemies and at the on-screen markers. This includes a section on a plane which is about to crash and you’ll have to shoot at particular things to make it out safely. This can be quite fun and looks pretty cool to boot. Less successful are the sniper and turret gun sections where you duck in and out of cover and shoot at your foes. In particular, the turret mission can see you die in seconds if you don’t take the time to stop shooting and protect yourself. These sections add nothing to the game except the odd bout of frustration.
We didn't start the fire.
The environments are also fairly standard, including a church, industrial areas complete with exploding red barrels, and city streets. Oh, and an office building complete with our favourite shooting game cliché – the cubicle. Wesley even makes a joke about how he’d hoped that by becoming an assassin he would never have to see a cubicle again. We felt his pain.
While the game tries hard to match the visual eye-candy of the film, a lot of the time the graphics are a bit murky and grey. Despite a few pretty moments, it’s often not that special. There is also a big difference between the quality of the cinematics and the in-game graphics, and this stands out when the game tries to move seamlessly from one to the other. It’s no Resident Evil 5 that's for sure, but it’s not the ugliest kid at the dance. The sound is one area where the game excels and features some excellent voice acting, (most of the actors from the film reprise their roles) sound effects such as the bullets whizzing towards an enemy, and some chunky explosions that will rock your sub should you be lucky enough to have one.
It’s great to see that movie tie-in games are on the improve, and by comparison with most movie-to-game titles, Wanted is certainly above average. Had this game been a few hours longer with some additional special moves and some more thought put into other aspects of the game, or at the very least been bundled in with the Wanted blu-ray or dvd, it could have justified its price tag. While game developers have argued that renting and buying a game secondhand damages the industry, in our opinion passing off a five-hour game for $100 bucks is far more destructive. While this is at times an enjoyable experience and will appeal to undiscerning shooting fans, we can’t recommend paying full price for it.
Loading...
