There is a trend I’ve noticed as of late that I don’t recall being much of a thing with older games, and that is when I start them up I immediately fall in love with them, but that feeling only lasts so long before I simply don’t. The first few levels are great, I am sucked in and ready to go, and then out of nowhere like a car slamming into a brick wall, I hate it. It saddens me to say it because Wanted: Dead had been on my radar for some time, but this pretty much sums up my experience with it.

The game focuses on Stone, a member of a zombie response team division of a fictional futuristic police as they are sent in to deal with someone attacking an office building. They are tasked with clearing out the SWAT-looking attackers and finding out the who’s, why’s, etc. Stone is a heavily armed vixen covered in tattoos and featuring a robotic arm (that really never does anything cool like I was expecting, so that was let-down number one) who uses a combination of swords and guns to dispatch whatever threat is thrown her way. This was something I was really enamored with until her little imperfections turned into craters so large that I feel like no number of post-release patches could fix them.

At first, the combat felt great; I was able to switch effortlessly from swords to her pistols to bust out combos without issue, and if I was feeling squirrely, I would pop in and out of cover and just use my rifle to pop some heavily armored heads from across the room. The combos weren’t overly complex, the parry mechanic worked well, and everything was appealing enough to stare at that I thought this was going to be a winner. However, once I opened the skill tree, I reached the startling realization that this was about all there was and I had just started the game. The skill tree features three areas, each with a dozen or so options, but outside of adding a few legitimate upgrades such as grenades and a teammate gaining the ability to grab some enemies for a brief time, the upgrades felt significantly underwhelming – like I never was actually making progress beyond filling in a box with a symbol and losing some of the accumulated points. Sure, I could add a few hits to my combo, do a charged move, or add another medkit to my stash, but it just left me feeling massively overpowered until the scales tipped in completely the opposite direction and I had no way to even them since the skill tree was completely maxed a few levels prior. With this coming from some of the talents behind the Ninja Gaiden franchise, I was expecting something more along the lines of DMC, and what I got was something that felt like it was from the original Xbox era in regards to combat.

You can also customize your loadout a bit, but again, there isn’t much to it that can add anything substantial to the experience. You’re limited to starting with the same rifle and the same pistol, but can modify them slightly with a few attachments that show various changes to the appearance and overall stats. However, there is one area the developers decided to go hog wild with, adding some conflicting and slightly confusing metrics that required a bit of trial and error to find my perfect fit. For some reason there are four different areas that allude to damage, but it’s unclear as to which one really was the best option since there aren’t elemental abilities or anything along those lines present. I really just wanted to know which setting would make my bullets feel less like I was shooting crayons and more like I was a weapon of mass destruction. I really would have loved to see some other melee options, which as it stands is limited to your vanilla sword and then the occasional chainsaw (which was crushing disappointment number two). The chainsaw is a limited pickup that is a one-hit kill against most enemies, but is easily lost, is clunky to use, and despite shooting torrents of blood out the enemies, has a large “Censored” sticker over the carnage. I get that this was for comedic effect, but it added insult to injury no less.

The enemies you’ll face are a very limited roster of SWAT-style soldiers, some bots, and gangsters that all come in a few flavors that mostly equate to fighting a palate-swapped variation of the same enemies, with the tank-like brute and ninjas being the only truly unique baddies. These foes are not only bland but go from having the IQ of a potato to superhuman in the flick of a switch. At times, they were so dense they would take cover on my side of the asset, at times right in front of a big red container that screamed “shoot me,” while others would attack in a way that felt like I was sandwiched between Ryu and Ken doing hurricane kicks simultaneously as I felt each and every hit from both of them. This quickly became more and more frequent as the game progressed. Making matters worse, Stone has to be idle, just standing about doing nothing in order to heal. If you’re hit, trying to move, or are coming out of a combo pressing the heal button does absolutely nothing. I honestly feel like naming the main character Stone was a joke, since she can take about three standard hits before being at death’s door.

The issues with AI are compounded greatly by the level design, as open areas eventually turn into tight linear corridors that make melee combat difficult when it comes to managing groups of enemies where your greatest challenge is keeping the camera focused on them. In many cases, I was attacked from off-screen with no indication it was coming, and only being able to see part of my character. In addition to not being conducive to the style of the game, the backdrops have a reasonable amount of detail, but this quickly fades once you realize almost everything is copied and pasted repeatedly, meaning it quickly becomes bland and extends the length of the game artificially. A few of the levels took me well over an hour to complete without any deaths or substantial roadblocks. Making matters worse, once death becomes more prevalent, the checkpoints are so far apart that it results in losing an unforgivable amount of progress just to repeat three or four different encounters without one being triggered. There are also some mini-games that bloat the playtime further, with most being Guitar Hero-styled rhythm games or a shooting range. Much like everything else in the game, neither of these serve a real purpose and feel like they drag on for days.

Overall the visuals and sound meet the minimum expectation for this kind of game, but textures popping in late, clipping, and the previously mentioned repeated assets make this feel more like a shovelware title than a full-on retail release. The voice acting is also subpar, with Stone coming across with a stereotypical Euro accent that feels disinterested and lacks any real emotion. This carries over to most of the cast, with the exception of the Captain who nails a role that feels largely like Samuel L Jackson playing Martin Sheen’s role in The Departed. 

I went into Wanted: Dead expecting to be an overpowered badass that ripped and tore through the opposition. It delivered for a fleeting moment, but quickly deteriorated into something I wouldn’t recommend unless you’re into the so bad it’s good style games, but I would discourage from doing so until it gets a deep discount.

4 out of 10

Pros

• The Combat Starts Off Well

Cons

• Terrible AI
• Glitches and Bugs Galore
• Inflated Levels and Padded Mini-Games
• Lack of Checkpoints

Wanted: Dead was developed by Soleil Ltd. and was published by 110 Industries SA. The game is available on PC, PS4, PS5, X1 and XSX. The game was provided to us for review on XSX. If you’d like to see more of Wanted: Dead, check out the official site.

 

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