WET Review

If developer A2M had been tasked with making the game to tie in with Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill, WET would have been the result. The comparisons are many: WET’s star is a deadly and sexy katana-wielding assassin called Rubi. Kill Bill’s star is a deadly and sexy katana-wielding assassin called Beatrix. WET is a B-movie-inspired, violent swear-fest. Kill Bill is a B-movie-inspired, violent swear-fest. WET’s violence is all about looking cool. Kill Bill’s violence is all about… well, you get the idea.

Quentin Tarantino’s critics accuse him of focusing on style over substance. That same criticism can be applied to WET. While the silly, over-the-top carnage is cool, brainless fun, as soon as you realise there’s hardly any depth to the combat system, it gets old quick.

For the first couple of hours though, WET’s a blast. Rubi, voiced by Buffy the Vampire Slayer star Eliza Dushku, feels like the love child of Lara Croft and Max Payne, and, as you’d imagine such a video game character would be, she’s a lot of fun to use. Her acrobatic skills let her swing out off poles, wall run and leap great distances in a strange, almost Halo-esque floaty way. But it’s her ability to slow down time at will, and shoot the living crap out of anything that moves, that gives her the edge.

Shoot while jumping, or Thierry Henry goal celebration-style sliding, and you’ll automatically trigger slow motion. From here dispatching the countless goons that get in Rubi’s way is a much easier job. It’s simply a case of lining up the targeting reticule on enemy heads, keeping your trigger finger down and waiting for that satisfying skull pop.

WET’s got an interesting mechanic, called Split Targeting, which allows you to bag two bad guys at once. When in slow-mo, firing on a thug will auto target him with one weapon, leaving you free to aim Rubi’s other weapon with the reticule. With this you’re able to leap into a crowd, slow down time and dispatch two bad guys at once, and then chain your jump into a slide, for example, and repeat, scoring hundreds of style points in the process. Clearing out a room full of goons in one fluid motion, then admiring your corpse strewn handiwork when time rights itself, is by far WET’s greatest thrill.

Mastery of Rubi’s various acrobatic moves becomes increasingly important the further you get into the game. The linear level design often chucks you into gauntlet style arenas that house a number of enemy spawn points. To clear these arenas you need to destroy the spawn points then kill all remaining bad guys – usually a mini-gun toting goon (who takes a huge amount of punishment before opening himself up to a quick time event powered stab to the groin) and melee-focused nutcases who can only be killed with headshots. From the second half of the short campaign onwards, these gauntlets can get quite difficult – scores of goons pummelling you with weapons fire can result in frustrating death after frustrating death. The only way to survive is to keep moving, swinging from beam to beam and passing through style point multipliers while filling enemies with more lead than you’d find at a pencil convention.

The stylised violence is supported by an even more stylised art style. A film scratch effect is layered on top of the base graphics, reinforcing WET’s B-movie feel. At first it looks cool, but after a while it starts to grate, annoy and even irritate, almost getting in the way. Thankfully you can turn it off in the options menu, but when you do, WET’s graphics have nowhere to hide. It’s a bit like when the lights are turned on at the end of a club night – everyone’s not as sexy as you thought.

At times WET looks good, with detailed, vibrant environments, especially in the Hong Kong levels, but more often than not the textures, character models, animations and enemy faces are nothing but poor. You’ll end up turning the film scratch effect back on just to cover up WET’s ugly last gen underbelly.

WET’s biggest problem, however, is that despite the ability to purchase new acrobatic moves and upgrades at the end of arenas and chapters, there’s little variety and hardly any depth to the carnage. Jumping and kneel sliding are the two basic acrobatic moves Rubi can perform at the beginning of the game, and you won’t need much else throughout. Rubi unlocks shotguns, SMGs and crossbows, but nothing’s as good as the default twin pistols she starts off with. Spend some points increasing the damage and rate of fire of the pistols, and you’ve got what’s probably an overpowered weapon. Put simply, the novelty of jumping and sliding and wall jumping and killing in slow motion soon wears off, and when it does you’ll be tempted to quit.

The gameplay, too, doesn’t change all that much. WET is basically a trawl through one arena after the other, with the odd cutscene thrown in for good measure. You’ll soon tire of this repeated challenge – the same enemies types always appear, and you’ll hardly notice the subtle environment and layout differences.

A2M was clearly aware of this fact when developing the game, and so chucked in exploration-based sections, Rage mode moments and movie-inspired quick time heavy sequences to add variety. Unfortunately these don’t hit the mark. The first almost Tomb Raider-like area, which sees Rubi infiltrating a gangster mansion on the English coast, only serves to shine a light on WET’s clumsy platforming controls. This is doubly disappointing because Rubi’s acrobatic abilities had the potential to enable much more enjoyable and rewarding gameplay. There’s little free form acrobatic exploration possible – the levels are too linear for it and only ledges highlighted in red are open for use. Assassin’s Creed this is not.

Rage mode is perhaps WET’s clearest nod to Kill Bill (although an area that’s got an all-girl band playing on stage while you go to work runs it close). Rage mode begins with a short cutscene that ends with Rubi’s face covered in blood. Sirens blare, the environment turns red and black and she goes berserk. Ring any bells? The problem is that Rage mode doesn’t fundamentally change the gameplay. You’re still using the same abilities to kill the same kind of enemies, it just looks a little different.

The movie-inspired scenes are similarly disappointing. One sees Rubi leaping from car to car in a highway chase reminiscent of that scene from The Matrix Reloaded. It’s designed to be watched more than played – all you have to do is shoot a bit and press the action button when the on screen prompt tells you to (the game’s too quick time heavy, with boss battles a particular disappointment). Another sees her sky diving from an exploded aeroplane – you control her, killing falling enemies and dodging bits of plane on route to a parachute. Again, the controls are clunky – the collision detection seems way off and you’ll die when you clearly dodged shrapnel.

With no multiplayer to speak of, the only reason you’ll play WET once you’ve finished the campaign is to hunt down all the collectibles (including mechanical monkeys), unlock all the extras, dabble in Points Count mode and better your Challenge Mode score. Some will enjoy this, but for most the game won’t keep their attention long enough to justify forking out full price. WET is good fun for a couple of hours but ultimately it’s a classic case of style over substance.