Review: Wanted: Weapons of Fate (PS3)

Author: Mr Nelly | Date: April 3, 2009

Oh dear, another film tie-in. Another tie-in to an action film with zero plot. I promised to myself that I would treat Wanted: Weapons of Fate with unbiased opinion and a suitably critical eye, but that’s hard to do when games companies churn out dozens of hideous, unplayable crap games every time a film comes out. The Burning question is; does it fall into this frighteningly numerous category? No, not really.

The game takes place a few hours after the end of ‘Wanted’ the movie, so you’re going to be left in the dark if you haven’t seen it. I feel I should clarify that I like both the movie and comic versions of Wanted, despite the fact that the two had nothing to do with each other. They’re both childishly violent, with the sort of dialogue that could only appeal to a 14 year old, a 14 year old under-achiever who smokes pot behind the bike sheds, but all this appealed to a side of me that is so rarely stimulated these days. That side of me that really does want to shoot someone in the face for wishing me a good morning.

So, the game then. Weapons of Fate is a cover-shooter, meaning that you’ll be moving from point to point, hosing down legions of masked gunmen and hiding every time the screen turns a funny grey colour. It does, however, move at a blistering pace, particularly because you can leap from points of cover with a single button press whilst laying down surpressing fire, allowing you to keep moving under fire. Wanted’s main feature is that you have the ability to curve bullets, letting you to take out your cover hugging foes with ease, often getting a funky little cinematic that tracks the bullet into his face. You also get some obligatory bullet-time mechanic thrown in too, both as an in game power and in on-rails sections where you’ll be shooting bullets out of the air. As for looks, well it’s nothing special but not really bad for what it is, although there are times when the lens flare makes it impossible to see whats going on around you. The enemies look very much the same throughout and there are some pre-rendered cut scenes that look really shoddy.

The game does have its irritating parts, the worst of which are the two sections in which you take control of a turret mounted machine gun, these are shockingly bad, it drove me mental before I realised that you have to look up when you’re hiding to not die. The other serious bugbears were the quick time events that occur when you get charged by a knife wielding maniac, you have to push the left analogue stick in the (not so well) indicated direction and hammer the O button. Easy enough you might think, but the direction of you push the stick has to be spot on otherwise you’re dead on site. Fortunately though, these are the only QTEs that feature in the game. And my final whinge is that it’s far too short, you’ll only get about 5 hours of gameplay out of it. There are secrets to unlock and you can play through game again in different costumes, but with no multiplayer modes it gets boring quickly.

The story, for what it’s worth, concerns your mother and how she died. That’s really all you need to know, the fact of the matter is there’s a bunch of guys trying to kill you and you need to kill them… It’s as simple as that. One thing I really liked about Weapons of Fate was that I was never lost or even slightly unsure of where I should be going, so the level designer should feel free to give himself a pat on the back. Ultimately, I liked the game and would have enjoyed it if it were twice as long. I liked the simple pleasure of shooting and stabbing everything in sight, the idiotic dialogue and the fact that 4 out of the 9 levels in it have the word fuck in the title. Wanted isn’t quite a bullet in the throat for the rubbish movie tie-in, but it is a slap in the face. It’s a great rental title, and can occupy you for a couple of evenings, but I can’t say I’d be rushing out to add it to my personal collection.
7/10

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