I'm not much of a demo guy. Never was. I read reviews and bought games on those notions.
Eh, things change. I downloaded the WET demo on PSN last night and finished it not 30 seconds before I started writing this review. It was a lot of fun. In short, you play Rubi, a "cleaner" who is killing people for...something. In the demo you are after a case with something in it. No idea. It's a demo tho, so it doesn't matter. This was to try the game, not the story.
The most immediate thing about the game, which has been pressed since we've seen it in all the pre-release material, is the came has this crazy Tarentino style about it. This comes from character designs to the music. As far as crazy characters go, we've seen some previews but in the game you see some wheelchair bound guy talking through his throat into a microphone. Something like that immediately set the tone and said "We're going to be a little weird here, but it's going to be a col kind of weird." Music sticks out very well too. It's catchy and has this cowboy(girl?) beat to it most of the time but then it can switch into something like...trip-hop depending on the scene. And it works. Overall visual appeal is great, from going into a "berserk" mode and everything turning to shades of black and red, to film burning up when you die into a game over screen. They hit the nail on the head if they were going for something unique in style.
Gameplay is fun. You have some simple options when it comes to the controls. X is jump, circle is slide, L1 is to wall run. Press any of these and off you go into that action. It's uncomplicated, the way it should be. R1 is to shoot, square is for the sword. You can use either of these in any motion. If you slide, you can focus on shooting some guys farther off and finish the slide with an uppercut using the sword. It just happens. Like I said, nothing complicated about it and it still looks awesome. Also, every time you start an acrobatic movement (jump, slide, wall run) and start shooting, you go into slow motion automnatically. This is invaluable to gameplay because if gives you the time to do some precise aiming and let's you look around to check how many guys you're dealing with. You also auto-aim a second gun when jumping in the air, making taking out three or four guys cake.
Something I want to talk about real quick is quick time events. This game has them, but it's the first game that I think makes sense in their execution. The last game I played with quick time events was God of War on PSP, and I hated it. Even after I got used to it, I still hated it. In WET, quick time event buttons are not random so you're guessing until the last second what button you are pressing. If you have a quick time event where you're going to jump...the button is going to be X because X is the jump button. That makes perfect sense. If there is an event that has you using the sword, square is going to be the button. Why didn't anyone think of this sooner?
A few things annoy me, and apparently other people who've played the demo. If you are not doing something in slow motion, the aiming is a bit too loose. In the berserk section in the demo, I was on the verge of flailing around shooting, so I just went back to jumping and sliding. I'm sure there is a sensitivity option, but I didn't check for it. Shooting outside of slow motion is just fucking boring tho, so why would you do it? To regain health you drink some Jack D, which is follow by this cool animation. While you only find two health restores in the demo (That is all you will need.), it will probably get old in the actual game.
And that's all I've got. Will I buy it? Probably. It's a fun game that bleeds style all over the place and the two complains I have are passable. I haven't played a good action game in a while so WET should fit nicely with it.
|
Anyway, you're one of the few people I know who actually enjoyed the demo enough to buy the game. Most of the people I've talked to said that they'll wait for a price drop or they'll just pass up the game altogether.
Me? I'm indifferent about the game after playing the demo. I'd say what I liked and what I didn't like is about 50/50. The game gave me a budget title vibe, so I would be hard pressed to shell out $60 for it. That said I enjoyed the no-bullshit-bang-bang-bang gameplay it had going on.