WET

While most women are content on living the family life there are a select few that travel the globe kicking bucket loads of ass for money or the thrill of it all. Rubi Malone is one such ass kicking chick who does it for the money and the thrill. You see she’s a professional bounty hunter of sorts who can get pretty much any job done - for a price of course! During one such contract she gets betrayed by her employer and is left for dead. Naturally vengeance is on the top of her priority list once she recovers and so begins her blood soaked journey of retribution.

This is essentially the basic premise of WET, developer A2M’s latest effort. As you can see the game’s not too keen on providing an intricate plot and its one dimensional characters don’t help matters either. Rubi, voiced by Eliza Dushku can get pretty annoying and there were times when I prayed she would get owned hard. The rest of the characters including the bad guys are so generic and unforgettable I won’t waste time talking about them.

Over the top gameplay is the name of the game here and in that respect, the game delivers to a certain extent (more on that in a bit). All those who’ve played Max Payne would feel right at home with the game’s bullet time where you dive and shoot in slow mo. Rubi however has more moves up her repertoire like the ability to wall run and shoot in slow mo, or slide down a ladder while shooting in slow mo or slide across the room while - you guessed it - shooting in slow mo. As and when enemies get too close for comfort she can cut them up with her sword smoothly transitioning from gunplay to swordplay.
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The reason I said the game delivers to a certain extent earlier is because gameplay while entertaining tends to get repetitive as hell. Nearly each and every level goes something like this: You enter an area, slide, dive and jump around the place shooting everyone up and finish the level in a larger area where you’ll have to take on multiple waves of enemies until you cut off their spawn points. It was fun the first few times but then I realized I was doing the same thing in nearly every level. Breaking the monotony from time to time are levels during which Rubi goes absolutely bat s***t crazy with rage and these levels are denoted with a very tripped out color palette. The entire game world turns to shades of red and black and enemies when shot (or cut) explode in a cloud of white blood. It looks pretty cool and is a pleasant respite from the usual stuff. And then you have the unconventional levels that rely heavily on QTEs (Quick Time Events) that are extremely over the top and entertaining. But then again those levels get over real fast and the game descends into monotony once again.

While you’re not killing everything that walks you’ll spend time indulging in platforming that in all honesty feels terribly out of place. Still it’s not as bad as the challenges the game forces you to undergo every time you unlock a weapon. Like WTF! Mate. If I unlock dual shotguns I wanna move onto the next level and blow stuff up, not run around in my base shooting cardboard targets against the clock.

Visually the game has a pretty wicked personality and is definitely inspired by the works of Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez. The entire game is bathed in a grainy filter of sorts and from time to time loading screens are disguised by ancient (and I’m pretty sure fictitious) commercials. Once you get past the game’s zany attitude you can see it’s not a very good looking one. Character models look all right and levels lack any serious amount of detail (I think games like Uncharted 2 and Assassin’s Creed 2 have really spoilt us).

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So yes WET is a pretty entertaining game but it never rises to anything beyond a mindless better than average action game. It gets monotonous pretty fast thanks to repetitive gameplay and boring level design. Still it’s got some enjoyable moments and if killing loads of generic bad guys in slow motion as a pretty hot chick is your thing, by all means go ahead and get this game. Just wait till it hits platinum status because it’s definitely not worth full price.

WET is now available for the Xbox360 and PS3 only.