WET (Xbox 360) Review
Posted by Adam Larck on 10.05.2009
Can waves of dead make a good game? Find out inside.
Title: WET
Publisher: Bethesda Softworks
Developer: Artificial Mind and Movement
Genre: Third-Person Shooter
Players: 1
Rated: M for Mature
WET went through its fair share of developer trouble. It was actually dropped by Activision in 2008 before being picked up by Bethesda in 2009. However, did this bit of trouble still produce a good game, or does WET suffer from the delay? Read on to find out.
Gameplay
You control Rubi Malone, a mercenary for hire that will take any job. In fact, the game starts with her doing a short job for Trevor Ackers to help save his father. After this, the game forwards to the present where the chapter screen kicks in.
To give a brief rundown of the main storyline (after the intro), Rubi is hired to bring Trevor back from China, gets betrayed on the way, and goes after the people who betray her. The story is decent, and has a few twists among the way.
As far as gameplay goes, WET is a game that borrows from a variety of games. It has Prince of Persia style acrobatics, Mass Effect load times (stupid elevator loads) and a Stranglehold style of gameplay.
Most of the action centers on using various forms of acrobatics to slow down time and accurately aim at enemies. Rubi can jump, slide, run on walls or slide down ladders, among other things to slow down time. Also, various places to use these acrobatic moves can be seen by holding LT to access Rubi Vision. This vision highlights places that can be jumped off of to get to higher places or to use during battle.
During the slowdown that happens, one gun will automatically focus on one enemy, while the other gun is able to be aimed freely at the other enemies in the area.
Besides her pistols, other long-ranged weapons that can be gotten as you progress in the game are shotguns, submachine guns and crossbows. However, unlike the pistol, these guns have limited ammo. While ammo boxes were fairly frequent, I just used the pistols for the majority of the game. For short range, your sword can take care of most enemies in just a few swings.
Each gun can also be upgraded, as well as Rubi’s abilities. For the guns: damage, firing speed and ammo can be upgraded. Some of Rubi’s movies that can be upgraded include: firing off of zip lines, swinging a sword while sliding and auto-relocking onto the enemy in front of you. The upgrades can only be accessed after arenas, after Rage mode and between chapters.
This game also brings back a gamer’s “favorite friend,” quick time events. These QTE range from jumping from car to car in the car chase scenes, to killing mini-gun enemies, to ruining what could have been a good ending, which I’ll address in a bit. Thankfully, during the majority of the game there isn’t a lot of these, they just come into play later on.
Since I mentioned the chase scenes, I want to talk about the three primary modes in this game. The first, arena, is what you’ll run into most often. You have to shut a certain number of doors while trying to fend off an infinite number of enemies. Once you close all the doors, you take out the remaining enemies to proceed onwards. This isn’t a bad mode, but is just repetitive after a while.
The second, Rage, starts when Rubi kills an enemy in a cutscene and sprays blood on her face. Rage allows Rubi to kill enemies easier, rack up a high kill count and turns the screen red while making killed enemies disappear in a puff of white.
The final mode, chase scenes, has Rubi jumping from car to car while trying to kill enemies shooting at her from other cars. I died here most frequently, as you cannot regain health and enemies can mow you down quick without the use of the slowdown. The slowdown can be used during the QTE that sometimes appears, but this really shows that without the slowdown, this game would not be as good as it is.
The story mode spans 12 chapters, a few of which are just the short chase scenes. Chapter 3 actually takes you to Rubi’s hangout, the Boneyard, and just has you doing a few challenges and learning how to use mounted machine guns before advancing to the next chapter. Early on, the chapters are fairly easy and quick to progress through. Chapter 6 and 7 did get a bit annoying, though, as they introduced some one-hit kill places. It just made no sense to break the flow of the game with these cheap kills.
The last thing I want to talk about is the (very) disappoint ending. Throughout the game, you meet a few rivals that could have offered a great boss battle before the ending. Instead, the last few chapters have you chasing someone you meet two chapters until the end just to kill him. What disappointed me more, though, was that after this, you go back to the main villains and fight them with just a QTE. It could have been such a great battle with them, but a few button presses is all it takes. Not only that, but then they leave it open for a possible sequel. This just seems like one of those games that would have been better being one and done.
Overall, the gameplay is average. You’ve seen all the gameplay styles that have been used here before, and the ending will probably disappoint you when you finally see it. It’s also a fairly short story, able to be completed in about 8-10 hours.
Graphics
The graphics are dated, that much can be seen. Even if the game had been released last year, they wouldn’t have been top of the line. However, after seeing more and more big caliber games release with polished graphics, the graphics in WET seem like a bit of a letdown.
However, the development team tried to enhance the graphics by giving it a movie feel. Throughout the game, it has the grainy feel that used to be seen in movies ran off of reels. It’s not bad, but did start wearing on my eyes after a while seeing the grain. Thankfully, there was an option to turn this feature off.
An interesting thing that is seen during some of the loading times is movie advertisements. Not the new ads, either, these ads are the cheesy ones you may have seen during older movies. This took me by surprise when I first saw them, and it was always interesting to see what different one would be shown during some of the loading times.
Overall, the graphics are good, but nothing spectacular here. The environments vary between chapters and all have a unique feel, and the main characters are fairly well detailed. However, this is outweighed by the waves of generic enemies you’ll face in the game, which there are plenty of.
Sound
The soundtrack is one of the saving points of this game. When you’re running around during minor battles getting from place to place, there is often very little to no music. It does get bland during these times, having very little to listen to.
The music really comes to life during the various modes. The music is upbeat, catchy and has some interesting lyrics to listen to during the battles. It would have been great to have heard more of this music throughout the game. However, at least the game gives a jukebox mode to listen to these tracks in.
Also, the voice acting in the game is good as well. Eliza Dushku does a good job as Rubi, and really helps to bring out the sarcastic and cold attitude that she has.
Lasting Appeal
WET misses something that could have added greatly to the lasting appeal: a multiplayer. The thing is I really can’t see why this game didn’t come with it. Stranglehold had multiplayer, even though it was a basic deathmatch/team deathmatch mode. They could have made the slow-mo a power-up to find, as well as Rage mode. However, multiplayer mode isn’t anywhere to be found in this game. Maybe it was because without the slow-mo, the regular shooting is subpar and most matches would turn into sword matches. Whatever the reason is, multiplayer is nonexistent here.
To try and keep your interest after the story mode, a challenge mode unlocks that allows players to visit Rubi’s Boneyard to do various challenges there, or to go back to previous chapters and compete for a high score. Besides that, there are a few more difficulty levels (giving five in all) that open up as well, but the main story doesn’t change. The last difficulty is a Golden Gun type of mode, where one shot kills you and one shot kills an enemy.
Also, you can go back through and try to collect the monkeys and scorpions. These collectables really don’t do anything besides unlock a few achievements for collecting all of them. Various media is also unlocked by beating the chapters, such as character bios, concept art and jukebox songs.
Overall, there really isn’t anything to make you want to come back to this game after beating the story mode.
Fun Factor
When I started off on this game, I was having a good time playing it. However, the novelty starts to wear off quick. Sure the guns add a bit of variety as you progress, and the Rage and car chase scenes are a nice change, but I often just used only the upgraded pistols and the different modes come few and far between. The game always just seemed like it boiled down to trying to kill every enemy in the room by using the acrobatics, and also trying to close doors during the arena mode. While this may sound great to some, I guess I just expected a bit more out of this game.
The 411:
Overall, WET was a decent title. Unfortunately, the time between publishers didn’t really help the team when it came to extra time to polish the game. The story mode is fairly short and doesn’t really offer much after it’s beaten. This game is worth a weekend pickup, but don’t expect anything long lasting out of it.
Graphics
7.5
The graphics look decent, even if they are a bit dated. The grainy aspect was an interesting idea, it just bugged my eyes after a while. Thankfully, there is an option to turn it off, but the game seemed to lose some of its luster.
Gameplay
6.0
Every mechanic in this game has been done by another game. While borrowing isn’t bad, nothing new is given. Plus, the ending still seems terrible when compared to what it could have been.
Sound
8.0
The soundtrack really helps to save this game. Whenever the music was playing, it was great. Even the voice acting was decent. It was the quiet times that hurt the game, though.
Lasting Appeal
5.0
After you beat the game there isn’t too much reason to go back. A few new difficulties and some challenge modes to beat high scores are all that are offered.
Fun Factor
6.5
The game was fun for a while, but the repetitive nature of the game really brought this area down. Using the same few skills to take down the same types of enemies just started to bore me after a while.
