Written by Jeff Buckland, 3/22/2009
Played on:
PS3
This is a review for a movie-licensed game, so while your curiosity might have brought you here, it's reasonable to think that you're also highly skeptical. You've probably played a few movie games in the last couple years. Maybe you were tricked into renting Iron Man (or possibly buying it - ouch). The only thing really fun about that Hulk game from last year was smashing buildings. And maybe that Watchmen game a couple weeks back caught your eye for $20, then you realized that those characters can't even jump. What kind of self-respecting beat-em-up won't let you jump? So when I come in here and say that Wanted: Weapons of Fate - based off the hit movie from last year - is actually pretty damn good, no one blames you if you're a little wary.
But the developers took the time to try and make this game right, and they've actually succeeded in many areas. It's also why we're seeing it eight months after the movie's release date: because you simply can't make a good game based on a licensed property in the same time it takes to make a movie. So what did that time buy the developers at Universal and Barcelona-based GRIN? We get to skip the lame rehash of the movie's plot where you "play the movie" (or so the back of the box would say) in the most dull, horrible, poorly recreated shootouts you've ever seen. No, with Weapons of Fate, you're getting both a sequel and some backstory that serve as bookends for the film. The movie's main character, Wesley Gibson, continues to explore his new role as one of the world's most talented assassins, and you'll also play as his father, Cross, in flashback levels. Cross is trying to save Wesley and his mother from the Fraternity of assassins that sees his budding, new family as an affront to their way of life. On top of a solid plot idea, you also get some new action elements and innovations that you wouldn't expect from a movie-game.
First, Wesley's ability to curve bullets comes in handy, as you will use some of this limited power - along with the right analog stick while holding the R1 button - to pick a custom trajectory for your bullet. You'll need to be quick in some situations and will need to make sure your bullet doesn't crash into a nearby wall or other piece of the environment, and if you get the angle right, will get either a quick kill, your enemy staggering out unprotected and ready for a few more regular bullets, or a quick, satisfying pause in the action while the camera follows the bullet on its course into the enemy's skull.
The game uses a lot of cover, a system that action games have been leaning on more and more heavily recently, but the developers have tweaked the formula to ensure that you'll still move quickly and kill with impressive speed. First, anyone who's hiding fully behind cover can be taken out with a curved bullet, but when they do pop out to fire, you can employ a bit of bullet time to take out several enemies at once - assuming you've got the aim to get solid hits in during a window of only a few seconds. Sometimes this feature is a bit disappointing, though, because it's not terribly often when three or more guys are all exposed at the same time - neither Wesley nor Cross are able to curve bullets while in slow motion at the same time.
There's also an option to blind fire out from cover and then quickly swap between cover spots to flank your enemies unseen while they think you're still in your original spot. The game only forces you to use this system twice and one of them is during one of the tutorials, and frankly I didn't find it very useful until I started playing on the highest difficulty. Before that, I spent more time learning how to move quickly to make use of the game's powerful melee system where Wesley can get instant kills on any non-boss character - assuming you live long enough to get close. And unlike bullet time in some games, you'll only have limited use of it, so you'll be employing a mix of strategies in most fights. What's important here is that you have plenty of options for taking out a room full of enemies. Should you blind fire to trick them and get around behind them for some easy kills? Charge forwards and stab a couple with the knife, get behind cover to regain health and charge out again? Curve a bunch of bullets? Wait for a few of them to pop out at once and use your cover-to-cover bullet time to take them out in an instant? There are plenty of ways to take on any given fight, and each strategy is a little different but about as deadly.
The ability to quickly slide, hop, and dash between cover objects really does make for a faster-paced game where you still get some protection from enemy fire. It also means that the developers could make bullets inflict a bit more damage on you since you have both cover and a regenerating health system, but it's a solid balance overall between playing smart and getting some fast, satisfying kills in. But one of the better additions is the interactive cutscenes where Wesley or Cross will pull some great John Woo-style antics like diving through the air, busting through glass, and sliding on the ground - and your job will be to aim and shoot at enemies in quick succession with only a few seconds to get your hits in. It's a wonderful take on the old and tired Quick Time Events, but here you are seeing the action in a way you simply can't focus on when staring at the bottom of the screen looking for a button indicator.
Not everything is peachy in the world of Wanted: Weapons of Fate, though. First, the game is rather short, and the unlockable content doesn't add that much to the game. The three difficulty modes do help, but that's probably the best source of replay value. The feisty vixen in the game, an enemy named Araņa, doesn't have much of a role, and the one Hollywood actor that reprises his role with new voice acting - Terence Stamp's Pekwarsky character - kind of peters out halfway through the game. (The voice actors filling in other roles, including Wesley, Cross, and even a good substitute for Morgan Freeman's Sloan in a flashback scene all do a great job, though.)
Another level of annoyance comes in near the end of the game with bad guys that can dodge bullets that appear with little explanation. The dodging animations look very awkward and the whole thing is liable to cause a lot more in the way of frustration than fun - at least, until you figure out that the guy that took a good four clips' worth of bullets is dodging rather than doubling over in pain. The cutscenes are used to play while the game's loading the next level, which unfortunately means that on the PS3 they're relatively low quality. They also seem to have been built inside the game engine, something that wasn't really built for showing character conversations; overall, they look a little iffy. And finally, the game's final boss is a disappointment and the ending comes rather abruptly.
One thing the developers intended on was pulling some of the elements from the original Mark Millar comic that Wanted was based on and representing them in-game, but that didn't seem to go quite as planned. The suit that Wesley wears in the comic gets a nice spotlight in the game, and a few bits and pieces from the comic made it in, but you'll find that Weapons of Fate still resembles the movie's look much more than the comic's. At the very least, though the attitude from the comic and movie are intact here in-game. The developers could have compromised on the language and only a bit of violence and snuck by with a Teen rating, but they didn't - this is a fully M-rated title.
The problems I found with Wanted: Weapons of Fate are much smaller than you'd see with most movie-games - many of them can't even keep players' attention as long as the running time of the movie they're based on. For this game, it's worth actually finishing it, which right there is an accomplishment for this genre. Hopefully this experience will also give other game developers some ideas on using things like interactive cutscenes and cover without compromising the fast action you expect from a third-person shooter. Overall, Wanted: Weapons of Fate won't win any GOTY awards, but it's still a major improvement for movie-licensed games and serves as an example for how to truly do a movie-game right. Other publishers could stand to learn something important here from the accomplishments of Universal and GRIN with Wanted.
