Judging from the demo, I don’t see why WET would be something I’m interested in playing.

The game’s neo-grindhouse aesthetic is one I’m usually pleased with. The game, like the film genre it emulates, is not to be taken seriously.

Sadly, however, this game seems nowhere near as fulfilling.

I’m not talking about silly things like the impossible acrobatics, in fact the highlight of the recent demo was a sequence played as the character is moving between speeding cars. My real complaints start when you begin to realize the Stranglehold-esque jumping wears thinner than a set of fishnet tights. It’s interesting to Matrix up your gunplay, but when that’s basicly the entire fighting mechanic it gets old incredibly quickly.

The inclusion of a points system seems somewhat useless, though I would hope that this at least ties into an upgrade mechanic. Gamerscore has entirely destroyed what little interest I had regarding in-game leaderboards.

This game can’t decide what it wants to do regarding Health. There are two situations where you can recover your life, one through finding bottles of whiskey and downing them (this is a terrible set-piece, by the way, the game pauses and shows you an animation you can’t skip, which also doesn’t vary regardless of the amount of times it happens) the other is within certain sections where you’re told to “keep your combo meter up”. The designers should have picked one or the other, having both makes it seem like the pick-up form was an outdated design idea, kept because someone wouldn’t stop vouching for it’s value.

The music, although in some cases good, is unfitting. The game makes heavy use of songs with lyrics that don’t have a digetic source. This means that there isn’t really a reason for any backing track to be playing because there’s nothing around for the sound to come out of, a jukebox, stereo, that kind of thing. I completely understand that you need music in order to convey the right tone, but when you throw lyrics in it rarely makes sense. Either they’re far too literal (#hey she’s a lady, she’s fighting some dudes, gotta shoot them with your gun, yeah yeah) or aren’t connected to the events in any form, in which case they aren’t needed at all.

Part of the demo takes place in a stylized black-on-red motif where you become hyper-infused with death power. It would be a nice change if it were much of a difference to the game you were already playing. By this I mean that the style’s closest comparison, No More Heroes had very standard but enjoyable melee combat, but on occasion you would fall into a killing trance that would change your camera angle and allow you to attack foes at a distance. Already having gun-play in WET means that this inclusion would not be any form of change.

Let’s also not forget quick time events; the ones that make you retry from the beginning of the scene should you fail one instance. Ugh.

I would expect much better from a source that otherwise seems incredibly self-aware.