Wanted Weapons of Fate is based n the movie called Wanted. The game takes place hours after the events of the movie. You play as both Wesley Gibson and his father (switching in between occasionally at the start), mainly Wesley and basically continue the quest of finding out more about his family. The exact details of the story is available at wikipedia. Spoilers are plentiful, just for you to take note. In the game, you can curve bullets, enter slow-motion to catch your enemies off guard and even parry bullets with bullets. I’ll jump straight into the gameplay mechanics and share with you guys what I think about it.
Gameplay is similar throughout the whole game. You take cover, shoot your enemies, proceed further and repeat. Throughout the 9 levels long game, you will find yourself repeating the same old pattern over and over again. Sure it is fun to curve bullets and watch the cut scenes whenever you do a curve head shot. It is fun to enter slow-motion and then shoot the many enemies and watch them fall at the same time. But how long can your excitement last for all of that? 1 hour? 2 hours? If you get bored it will be rather difficult for you to continue playing on the game for I guarantee you, there aren’t any surprises at all.
Boss fights are similar to that of normal enemies. What is so different between the boss encounters and the normal encounters are that the bosses have a longer health bar attached to them! How fantastic! Of course the bosses all look different from each other and perhaps that is why they’re called bosses. The methods you used to kill them differs but not by much. For the start you basically shoot him till he is dead. Moving on towards the end boss encounters requires a little bit more skill. And that is for you to enter slow-motion to damage them. After killing the bosses you get to see a cut scene and then the game progresses as you search for the next person to kill. The game then repeats itself.
Occasionally you’ll enter a some sort of reaction time situation where the game simply shows some cut scene of your character jumping around, flying or whatever and then stops for you to shoot the enemies. You’ll be given a short but sufficient amount of time to react and there is only two things you need to do. Shoot the enemies and any incoming bullets. And yes, it is the same whenever such a situation takes place. Alright, perhaps it might be surprising at first and it might even catch you off guard but as soon as you proceed on to another such situation, everything feels the same.
Enemy types aren’t many at all. Each level reusing them over and over again before finally introducing a new type every 3 levels or so. The way to deal with the different enemies are extremely similar except for one or two. You’ve the choice of shooting them to death or using melee combat which isn’t really smart for you’ll get gunned down before even reaching any of them. You’ve 2 types of gun to use, a pistol and some sort of sub machine gun? Each gun have different curving bullet shots. The pistol shooting one bullet at a time while the sub machine gun shoots a burst of 5 bullets creating an explosion whenever it hits the enemy.
Here is a very very short gameplay footage of the game, it basically shows the curving bullet and the covering system:
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The game is short. Yay or nay? Well it is a little of both. Yay for you don’t have to repeat the same pattern no more. Nay, for you’ve spent money on a game that lasts you for just a few hours. The game can be completed easily in a time frame of 3 – 5 hours? It took me only 3 days, each day spending around an hour or so to complete the game from the start. I’m glad that the game didn’t drag on and on for the gameplay would simply bore me to death. There isn’t much to do after you have completed the game. There are some extras such as comic book covers, videos for you to discover in the game but all of such certainly didn’t encourage me to play the game for a second time.
You also get to play the different acts and levels with different characters. Do not expect to have new cut scenes with your special character for there isn’t any. All you get is cut scenes with the original character before putting you into the game with the special character you’ve chosen. These characters do not provide any sort of excitement for the game pattern remains the same. Perhaps if they allowed me to play as a superhero or some sort would get me happy and gay. Just imagine being Hulk or something. Who needs to curve bullets? I’ll just smash them.
Graphics are okay. Environments are fine but nothing too special about it. It repeats throughout the levels but just with new textures pasted on. The surroundings are sufficient to bring up the feel of the place and gives the mood for the gamers to start killing. Sound effects are fine, guns feel just about right. Enemies squeak whenever they’re shot and the music comes in whenever enemies are present. What I’ll like to comment on is the voice-acting of the different characters. They’re just about great and it helps a lot to bring out the characteristics and personalities of the individual characters in the game.
Overall the game is alright. Too short in my opinion and with the lack of anything to do after you’ve completed the game, it certainly doesn’t live up to its selling price. The idea of curving bullets and slow-motion certainly strikes many. But to repeat such a pattern of covering, shooting then proceeding certainly makes the game boring. The sleekness of assassins and ability to do such cool moves definitely doesn’t help much if the game was so monotonous. If you’ve any local game store that provides rental, rent it and then return it. No point buying it for it doesn’t give you much benefits for doing so.
