Wanted: Dead is a game that makes me angry and to be honest games are not really something that I get angry at very often.
It made me angry not because of its clunky gameplay, bizarre difficulty curve, or clumsy mechanics; it made be angry because of a strange sense of betrayal.
Like many I had been lured in and colored intrigued by the many trailers and gameplay teasers leading up to the games release. The aesthetic looked fantastic, the premise of shooting and carving your way through swathes of enemies as a cyborg taskforce was tantalizing.
The 80s style anime trailer, featuring Donna Summer's "She works hard for the money", was just the icing on the cake. I couldn't wait to get my hands on this game.
Really I have no one to blame but myself for my disappointment. In life we learn to temper our expectations and even more so in the video game sphere. Launch day bugs, performance/optimization issues and unfinished games are unfortunately all too common.
However in the case of Wanted: dead, I allowed myself to get caught up in the hype, only to be firmly regrounded and thoroughly disappointed.
Created by 110 industries and Tokyo based Soleil, on paper the game has excellent pedigree. Soleil are responsible for some decent output including: Ninjala, Valkyrie Elysium and Naruto.
Most notably Ninja Gaiden which, if the marketing is to be believed, carries its DNA into this game.
The premise sees you take on the role of protagonist Lt. Hannah Stone the leader of a special task force called 'zombie unit', hacking, slashing and shooting your way through a dystopian, cyberpunk vision of Hong Kong.
Graphically the game does look really nice, but that's really where any praise I can honestly give the game ends.
It's a clumsy mix of cover shooter and close quarter hack and slash, however it does neither of these elements well and is a complete chore to play.
The shooting feels cumbersome on a controller. Compounded by the fact that more often than not, your view will be obscured by your own characters head or body making it doubly difficult to aim.
If you do manage to aim correctly, you will find that ordinary rank and file soldiers, will take upwards of 10 shots to dispatch. That's getting on for half a magazine and ammo is particularly scarce in this game.
Low availability of ammunition, along with the seemingly infinite supply of grenades that the enemy has, seems to force you out of cover and into close combat.
It seems as though this is the way the game wants you to play and I would be perfectly fine with that if it were fun ....which it is not.
The game is being pushed as a difficult, almost souls like experience and it has souls like melee controls to match. But this is where all similarities end.
Melee combat feels just as clunky and awkward as the cover shooting. The AI for both enemies and your team seems almost placeholder in its stupidity.
The whole time you are engaged in close quarter combat, there are still a plethora of bullet sponges shooting at you and tossing grenades from behind cover.... Seriously where are they getting all of these grenades from?
Soulslike games are always very difficult but at the same time very fair, learning patterns, repetitions along with well-timed parries and Dodges will soon earn victory.
Wanted: Dead just throws seemingly mindless enemies at you until you die.
Going back to a checkpoint isn't so much part of the learning curve as it is simply frustrating because very rarely will you ever feel that your last death was justified.
There is a 'limb sever' mechanic and slow motion chained kills, which both look very cool but only the first few times. It's just gimmick and very quickly wears out it's welcome. Paper over the cracks.
In summary Wanted: Dead is a deeply frustrating and very unpleasant experience.
An awkward 'frankensteins monster' of a game, with different genres stitched together with no real cohesion.
The core gameplay and ai is so flawed that even pretty graphics and some genuinely 'genius level' marketing can't carry it.
Avoid at all costs, one of, if not THE worst game I've played this year.
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