Screenshots :.
Wanted: Weapons of Fate
PS3
Jay
07-04-2009
"Wanted: Woman with sense of humour, blue eyes.. oh, sorry."
"Well he wasn't expecting that!"
"Stay away from knives, kids."
"Someone's up a bit of a creek here."
It would seem the nitty-gritty arse-kickers that exist today are only valid if they cuss more than the next guy, kill more than the next guy and either have a) Super Powers or b) Super Clothes. Wanted: Weapons of Fate, is based on the 2008 film “Wanted” that was generally well received. Although half the time the lead character looks like Tobey Maguire over James McAvoy, I suppose they've managed to keep it with in the boundaries of people with special abilities. At any rate, they decided it was best to try and tick all boxes, even if it was a blunt pencil and they tore the paper more than left a mark.
You play Wesley Gibson, an emo-sounding, disgruntled, “I was probably a Goth once, and haven't really moved on”, teen/20-something year old who, unlike the film, jumps fully-fledged into his roll as supernatural assassin... and then proceeds to put both ass's in assassin into everything he does. OK, sure he's good at killing everything in his path, but he waddles like a girl while he does it – the draw back to not using motion capture... or a girl wearing a thong 2 sizes too small.
The main special feature that Wanted: WoF offers is the ability to slow time and bend bullets, both of which can be achieved with adrenaline. You gain adrenaline by killing bad guys, and thus a perpetual loop of super-cool moves is obtainable by making sure that for every bar of adrenaline you use – you kill a dude. Slowing time is only possible when jumping from one cover point to another, but bending bullets can be pulled off from anywhere. The nice thing in all of this is that the cover system is one of the better features of the game. You snap into cover and choose the direction to jump to, should you wish. It's at this point that you can slow time briefly to take out multiple enemies.
Should you wish to bend a bullet, you hold the shift key (in the case of the PC version) and align an arc that will show you how the bullet will travel. It's a nice-n-easy system that even rewards you with a great little bullet-cam moment if you gleam a headshot. Sure, not something that leaps out of the “original bag”, but some things tend not to die as possible features. I mean, killing people hasn't stopped entertaining, I can hardly see why seeing it in slow-motion would.
Within the realms of the cover system there is the ability to blind-fire. This in itself causes the enemy to take cover, failing to pay any further attention to where you are, at which point you can sneak around from another vantage point and take them out. The odd thing is this doesn't work for anything other than blind-fire. You can shoot in their general direction and they'll never take that same level of cover. However, I'm at least happy that they use the cover more often than not, rather than standing around waiting to be shot.
There is a downside to Wanted: WoF before we've even started. The game isn't that long. It clocks in at around 6 hours worth of gameplay for your £30 with no real replayability factor. Particularly as you can unlock new characters throughout the game but add no storyline, or special abilities to the mix – not even a new animation or 2. This is probably the worst decision since someone asked the poignant question of what would happen if they cut that tiny little molecule in half?
As the game progresses it its timely fashion, the Wanted begins to not only unlock further abilities, but a couple of new guns and a flashy new suit. Now, the Daddy guns fire rapidly and their bullet-curve is more of a bullet-explosive-death that's all well and good but you run out of bullets like a crack-whore runs out of... well, crack – and either have to hope you can run up and smack the crap out of the bad guy and nab his ammo, or... die. It's far easier to stick with your default weapon, which also gets upgraded to knock the socks off most things that cross your fanatics. Well, for a level at least until they introduce fanatics that can dodge bullets – classic.
The suit that you end up in raises an interesting point for me. I have to ask “why?”. Thing is, you have the cool looking bright red lit-up eyes, the tight-fitting leather, digital voice and... gas mask. So, any one of these things could perhaps be utilised. Seems a bit of a silly thing for aesthetics sake, unless you were going to unlock a new high-street designer range of outfits to prance around in. But then, why change the designing curve this game has opted for in that most of the unlocks are highly obtainable and highly pointless.
Again it seems that for the second game running, something has come close to being decent but missed it on some fundamental points. It certainly has that rushed feel about it, particularly for a console to PC Steam port it could've certainly done with some spring-cleaning and at 6 hours it's not really worth the cash. Maybe when they knock a few quid off it would be worth more of a look in.
You play Wesley Gibson, an emo-sounding, disgruntled, “I was probably a Goth once, and haven't really moved on”, teen/20-something year old who, unlike the film, jumps fully-fledged into his roll as supernatural assassin... and then proceeds to put both ass's in assassin into everything he does. OK, sure he's good at killing everything in his path, but he waddles like a girl while he does it – the draw back to not using motion capture... or a girl wearing a thong 2 sizes too small.
The main special feature that Wanted: WoF offers is the ability to slow time and bend bullets, both of which can be achieved with adrenaline. You gain adrenaline by killing bad guys, and thus a perpetual loop of super-cool moves is obtainable by making sure that for every bar of adrenaline you use – you kill a dude. Slowing time is only possible when jumping from one cover point to another, but bending bullets can be pulled off from anywhere. The nice thing in all of this is that the cover system is one of the better features of the game. You snap into cover and choose the direction to jump to, should you wish. It's at this point that you can slow time briefly to take out multiple enemies.
Should you wish to bend a bullet, you hold the shift key (in the case of the PC version) and align an arc that will show you how the bullet will travel. It's a nice-n-easy system that even rewards you with a great little bullet-cam moment if you gleam a headshot. Sure, not something that leaps out of the “original bag”, but some things tend not to die as possible features. I mean, killing people hasn't stopped entertaining, I can hardly see why seeing it in slow-motion would.
Within the realms of the cover system there is the ability to blind-fire. This in itself causes the enemy to take cover, failing to pay any further attention to where you are, at which point you can sneak around from another vantage point and take them out. The odd thing is this doesn't work for anything other than blind-fire. You can shoot in their general direction and they'll never take that same level of cover. However, I'm at least happy that they use the cover more often than not, rather than standing around waiting to be shot.
There is a downside to Wanted: WoF before we've even started. The game isn't that long. It clocks in at around 6 hours worth of gameplay for your £30 with no real replayability factor. Particularly as you can unlock new characters throughout the game but add no storyline, or special abilities to the mix – not even a new animation or 2. This is probably the worst decision since someone asked the poignant question of what would happen if they cut that tiny little molecule in half?
As the game progresses it its timely fashion, the Wanted begins to not only unlock further abilities, but a couple of new guns and a flashy new suit. Now, the Daddy guns fire rapidly and their bullet-curve is more of a bullet-explosive-death that's all well and good but you run out of bullets like a crack-whore runs out of... well, crack – and either have to hope you can run up and smack the crap out of the bad guy and nab his ammo, or... die. It's far easier to stick with your default weapon, which also gets upgraded to knock the socks off most things that cross your fanatics. Well, for a level at least until they introduce fanatics that can dodge bullets – classic.
The suit that you end up in raises an interesting point for me. I have to ask “why?”. Thing is, you have the cool looking bright red lit-up eyes, the tight-fitting leather, digital voice and... gas mask. So, any one of these things could perhaps be utilised. Seems a bit of a silly thing for aesthetics sake, unless you were going to unlock a new high-street designer range of outfits to prance around in. But then, why change the designing curve this game has opted for in that most of the unlocks are highly obtainable and highly pointless.
Again it seems that for the second game running, something has come close to being decent but missed it on some fundamental points. It certainly has that rushed feel about it, particularly for a console to PC Steam port it could've certainly done with some spring-cleaning and at 6 hours it's not really worth the cash. Maybe when they knock a few quid off it would be worth more of a look in.
6/10
