Game Review: Wet

Artificial Mind and Movement’s Wet is a game that has huge potential of being a mind-blowing experience. Part Quentin Tarantino, part Robert Rodriguez, with a little John Woo thrown in for good measure, you’d think something like this would be a gamer’s wet dream…

Wet has a bit of a rough history. See, the game was originally being published by Sierra, but Activision gobbled the company up and announced that Wet was no more. Luckily, Bethesda Softworks swooped in at the last moment to save the day and there was much rejoicing across the land. Or at least in the A2M offices.

In the game, you play as Rubi Malone (voiced by my future wife, Eliza Dushku), an F-bomb-dropping, whiskey-chugging, tough-as-nails gun for hire. For the right price, she’ll take on just about any job, and if you even think about trying to double-cross her, she’ll seriously fuck your shit up and ruin your whole day.

Like most good pulp stories, Wet is all about revenge. Rubi gets double-crossed and sets out on a journey that spans three continents to find the man who did it, and make him suffer. On the way, she’ll meet up with an offbeat array of friends an enemies like the weird spooky albino chick that walks funny  the sadistic midget who is a master of torture, and, of course, the horny old lesbian who collects rare books, because, why not.

While the graphics aren’t really all that great when compared to other games of this console generation, this game certainly has a lot going for it in the style department. To keep with the whole grindhouse theme, there’s a film grain that makes it look like you’re watching an old B-movie, but you can turn it off if the flickering grain gives you a headache. The developers also did a clever little thing where some of the loading screens are these really bizarre animated movie theater intermission commercials. The one that creeped me out the most featured a talking hot dog putting ketchup on himself and asking a little boy toeat him. I’d be all like, “fuck no, Mr. Hotdog. You have a voice and free will, therefore I cannot eat you because it would be wrong.”

There’s also some great set-pieces including a landmine-infested shoreline, a ship harbor in Hong Kong complete with oldschool Chinese sailing ships, and rainy nigh time section outside of a neon-lit opera house which has a dragon head statue that spits freaking fire! The combination of the rain effects and lighting make this the prettiest section of the whole game and the way the water glistens in the dimples in the small of Rubi’s back — that’s attention to detail.

To break up the monotony of all the slow motion hacking and slashing, the developers sprinkled some simple platforming sections, firearem training obstacle courses, and awesome car chases that are part quick time events, but still let you aim and shoot in real time. Then there’s the uber-stylish Rage Mode. Rage Mode levels are these Sin City meets Killer-7-esque cell shaded levels consisting of just 3 colors: Rubi and the bad guys are black, the walls, floor, and ceiling are red, and blood is white. In rage Mode, Rubi can take way more damage and her attacks are loads more powerful, reducing her enemies into clouds of black smoke.

But then there’s the gameplay which is kind of not so great. Rubi has three basic moves: the jump, the slide, and the wall run. As soon as you start firing your weapon during one of these moves, the game enters the Max Payne/Matrix bullet time zone. While in this slowed-down state, Rubi pulls out a second gun and automatically targets a random enemy with her left hand while you’re free to aim at someone else with the right.The game has this reward system that replenishes your health bar as you chain together different moves, so when you’re stuck in an arena with dozens of enemies, you’re forced to keep doing these moves, which is almost impossible thanks to the shoddy controls. You’d think that for a combat system all about acrobatics, you’d have maybe a little more control over your character, or at least more combat options. Sure, you can buy extra upgrades like the ability to run up a bad guy and do a backflip off his face while shooting him down, but other upgrades like the ability to use your sword while airborne should have been basic moves included from the get-go.

It’s not like the controls are so broken that the game is unplayable, they just could’ve used a little more tightening. Oh, and a little more diversity in the levels would’ve been nice, too.

Awesome

The car chases. Just when I was getting sick to death of quick time events, Wet comes along and mixes the QTE with real time action. You’ll use button prompts to jump between car rooftops and running along the sides of tractor trailers, all while aiming and shooting on your own. It’s a hugely satisfying experience.

The music. Set to a horror Psychobilly soundtrack that helps pump up the adrenaline while taking on swarms of baddies, there’s some great licensed tracks here by bands like The Creepshow, Knock Galley West, and The Arkhams.

Skydiving shootouts. I thought the car chases were awesome, but there’s a scene where you’re falling out of an exploding carrier plane without a parachute wile bad guys are shooting you! It’s a gorgeous scene in the game and it’s fun as hell to play through, too bad they didn’t incorporate some kind of Sixaxis control for the PS3 version.

Rage Mode. The rage mode sequences are easily some of the most fun in the game, even if some of them feel a little too short. They also have the best songs.

Boneyard challenges. These firearm obstacle courses do a good job of teaching you how to use each weapon in the game while giving you the chance to pull off some sweet acrobatic moves. Once you beat the game, you unlock more challenges at the Boneyard which are actually more fun than you’d think.

Overall presentation. The cut-scenes in this game have some truly sick camera work, the voice acting is great for the most part (aside from some downright cheesy lines and bad voice acting early in the game), the menus and titles look gorgeous, and the story was pretty much just as good as a real b-movie pulp flick.

Going down ladders. I’ve never had so much fun on ladders in a video game ever. If you shoot while going down a ladder, Rubi hangs upside while straddling the ladder and sliding down. What other game lets you go down a ladder upside down while shooting dudes in the face!?

Not Awesome

She’s lost control. Seriously, controlling Rubi can be a pain at times. You know how in pretty much every game in the world when you press the ‘jump’ button, the character jumps straight up? Well, for some reason Rubi jumps forward. I tried to rationalize why the developers made this decision, but I just couldn’t find a reason. It doesn’t help that I only noticed this in section of the game full of land mines. Yup, I jumped right into one.

Not enough variety. The gameplay consists platforming sequences that take you to where the bad guys are, then running through hallways while killing the bad guys, only to wind up locked in an arena where more bad guys spawn from multiple doors that you have to block off. They try to mix it up buy giving you access to turrets where you can pick up enemies like ducks as they crowd around exploding barrels, but these sequences just don’t feel as rewarding as they should. It would have been more fun if they let you use the turrets to kill off enemies by destroying certain parts of the level.

Kill Bill wannabe. I know that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but some scenes might come off as too much of a Kill Bill/Desperado ripoff. There’s even a scenario straight out of the House of Blue Leaves fight in Kill Bill where the 5, 6, 7, 8’s play. In this section of the game, you’re taking on a huge swarm of enemies as a female-fronted Chinese rock band plays. A little too similar if you ask me, but I chuckled when the chick singer said “Are you ready to rock, bitches!? One, two, one, two, fuck you!”

What, no cover? Okay, I know that this game is meant to be played in an acrobatic style, all slow-motiony and what-not, but when there’s like 20 dudes with guns coming at you and you’re right next to a big table that’s flipped over, chances are you’re gonna’ want to take cover behind it rather than do a fancy pistol dive right into the crowd of enemies. Good games are all about giving the player options and letting them play how they want to play, not restricting them to a broken combo/reward system.

The final boss battle is a 3-minute quick time event. Seriously. There’s all this build-up to Rubi finally getting her revenge, and throughout the game they tease at this boss and his two henchmen that would make great sub-bosses, but Rubi takes them all out within a few minutes and a couple of button prompts. It almost makes the whole rest of the game feel worthless.

Final Thoughts
While Wet had a decent enough story that kept me interested, plenty of intriguing characters, and a world that I’d certainly like to see more of, the monotony of the gameplay and the lack of variety in Rubi’s move & weapon arsenal fell a little short. Sure, they tried to spice it up by throwing in car chases, Rage Mode, and some mediocre Prince of Persia platforming elements, but I just felt like there was something missing. Maybe some interesting boss characters at the end of the levels, or a wider array of crazy moves… something. The presentation and voice acting were just about perfect and I wouldn’t mind taking Rubi on another adventure in a sequel, but try and polish it up a little by focusing on the substance next time, A2M.