PlayExclusive: Wanted - Weapons of Fate

Console: X Box 360, PS3, PC
Genre: 3rd Person Shooter
Players: 1
Rating: Mature 17+


The story of Wanted: WoF delves into the past of Wesley and his father, Cross and the tale of how Wesley came to be.


Battling his way across rooftops, to the destroyed fraternity headquarters, to various places in France, Wesley shoots his way through anyone in his way to shut down the French branch of the Fraternity, and find the clues to find the man that murdered his mother, while Cross fights to save his wife and child.


While the developers did attempt to flesh out the story behind the two protagonist's, the story cutscenes only seem to detract from the action, with one-liners making up most of the script.

Gameplay
Two words.

Curving bullets.

The most distinctive ability in the comics, the movie, and now the game is yours to control, and no cover can stop that little piece of hot lead from making contact with your enemies skull. Burning up one unit of adrenaline, players can change the trajectory of their rounds to curve around cover in all sorts of angles, smoothly controlled by the right analog stick.


Eventually, you'll even learn to pull off some nifty situational bullet time by performing “Quick Enhanced Movement”, letting you pull off headshots in style with slow motion runs, slides, jumps.

Sadly, you'll only be pulling these maneuvers with two guns in the entire game (Three if you count the dual-wielded Fire-Eater guns) leading to dashed hopes of possibly curving buckshot out of a shotgun, or sniper rounds out of the sniper rifle you acquire in only two parts of the game.


While all the flashiest moves are the most impressive, the 3rd person cover system is excellent, and based on how the player leans the left analog stick. Most of the maneuvers include quick movement to bridge gaps or slide over cover, blind-fire to suppress enemies to get close, and then, if you're an arms length away, just a simple button press for a quick lean to finish enemies with a quick stab.


Though a little bit fumbly at times, these controls bring the entire game to life, and eventually, become repetitive. Towards the end of the game, you'll wonder where all the fun went, as you duck behind that wall for the hundredth time, curve a bullet into that guys face, then rinse and repeat till it's all over.
Graphics & Sound
Though obviously lacking polish, Wanted's graphics are mostly alright, with Cross and Wesley looking excellent, but all the henchmen you'll be facing look as if they were thrown into the old copy-paste machine.


Sadly, while the in-game graphics are decent, all the story cinematics in the game are pre-rendered, and badly at that, giving the game that cheap, movie-game feel. With terrible compression all over the video, mediocre animations, disappointing gun sounds and somewhat lame voice acting (With the exception of main characters).

Overall
With an average of 6 hours of total play time, a lack of variety in weapons, linear gameplay and very little in the way of rewards, Wanted: Weapons of Fate barely earns it's place on players shelves, only because of it's addictive cover based shootouts, and awesome bullet-time sequences.







Review by Johar Aston, TheLAG

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