Site icon Game Cheats & Walkthroughs

Wanted: Weapons Of Fate Review – Underrated Hidden Gem

MrCheater
Wanted Weapons of Fate Review

Wanted: Weapons of Fate is a post-movie, licensed-based, tie-in game. It’s a mouthful, no doubt. But that’s exactly what the game is. It released a year after the movie, working as a pseudo-sequel of sorts. Oberon Media and Grin were tasked with the development under the super vision of Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment and Universal Pictures. They even managed to land a somewhat all-star cast for the game, minus the likes of Morgan Freeman and James McAvoy. Interestingly enough Thomas Kretschmann, Peter Stomare, Paz Vega, Common and Terence Stamp all lend their voices to the game, helping bring the story to life.

It’s an odd experience because it’s a heck of a lot better than it has any right to be, but you can also see where the game falls criminally short of what potential it should have had. Hence, why I’ll start with the game’s most glaring trait…

Replay Value

Wanted: Weapons of Fate clocks in at about 3 hours if you play on the easiest setting, “Pussy”, and is about 4 through 5 hours on the medium setting, “Assassin”. Add an extra hour or two onto the gameplay experience for the third and hardest difficulty setting. In short, there isn’t a whole lot of playtime here for this game, especially to be a single-player outing.

I can’t imagine paying $60 at launch for a game this short.

If it didn’t sell well that’s a big part of the reason why.

However, as a post-gen experience, it’s well worth the time investment if you’re willing to indulge your senses to a bit of vocal debauchery and your reflexes to some much needed dexterity training.

If you manage to beat the game you can unlock new playable characters, mostly including the bosses you faced off against throughout the game. It may give you an added reason to play through again, similar to Jet Li’s Rise to Honor… or not.

There are also a ton of hidden collectibles scattered throughout the levels, as well as additional unlockables you can earn by unlocking trophies/achievements. Despite the short runtime you are given ample reasons to go back and play through the game again, and this is actually a really nice addition to the game.

Added to the unlockable concept art, comic book covers, and development photos, there are also a ton of cheat codes you can unlock as well if you own the original Wanted movie DVD.

I can’t say at all that this game is worth the $60 price of entry, but if you can grab it from a bargain bin for the Xbox 360 or PS3, or nab an ISO from a local distributor, there’s nothing to lose here but time, and even then I imagine you will find yourself enjoying the gameplay experience more than regretting it.

Story

I’m not going to waste a lot of time talking about the story, but it is worth mentioning because it’s actually quite well done, and had the movie studios decided to move forward with a sequel, I imagine this would have been the story they went with.

The game picks up five hours after Wesley kills Sloan – which is the ending of the movie – and a group of French SWAT specialists raid Wesley’s apartment looking to get their hands on a picture of his mother. From there Wesley ends up on a globetrotting adventure in order to uncover the secrets of his parents, the real reason the Fraternity sought to kill his parents, and who was actually responsible for them dying.

There are a few neat twists and turns as players will control both Wesley and his late father Cross (the latter via flashbacks) as you unravel the mysteries of the Loom, the fanaticism of the Fraternity, and how Wesley and his parents were roped up in it all. The story is told rather well and Jimmy Simpson does a darn fine job of narrating the events in a very snarky yet entertaining fashion.

The game recognizes the absurdity of its situations and doesn’t try to take gamers’ attention for granted. The points aren’t mind-blowing but they do explore the world of Wanted in a way that makes it intriguing. In fact, upon reflection, it’s very reminiscent of the world of John Wick and you can easily see the similarities between the two.

Gameplay Mechanics

The big hook for Wanted as a franchise was the whole bullet-curving thing. It looked good in cinemas despite being little more than an evolved derivation of the bullet time mechanic from The Matrix. Here, you won’t be dodging bullets so much as curving them and using them to pop enemies tucked behind cover.

While a lot of games rely on the whack-a-mole tactic to get enemy AI who are hunkered down behind pillars of concrete and indestructible wooden boxes, Wanted: Weapons of Fate encourages gamers to think outside the box by giving them a variety of unlockable skills to take down foes who would otherwise seem too difficult to defeat by camping at a distance and either sniping or incessantly laying down suppression fire.

To rout these enemies, you can make use of a slow-motion cover mechanic or bullet-curving. These special skills take up adrenaline slots, and you can earn adrenaline slots by killing enemies, either by shooting them or using melee attacks. Melee attacks earn you two adrenaline slots, while shooting enemies earn you one adrenaline slot. So you’re rewarded more for being a bit frisky during shootouts.

The bullet-curving is exactly as it appears in the movie, and honestly it’s one of the coolest video game features in any video game, bar none. It looks fantastic when you do it correctly and the bullet-cam that follows the curving bullet around corners and/or obstacles has a very satisfying look and feel when the bullet finds its target and sends them rag-dolling to their death.

It’s a real shame we don’t get to curve bullets in more games because the better you get at it the more fun it is to use. Initially it takes a while to figure out the angle and arc in which to curve a bullet around certain obstacles/obstructions, but eventually you’ll learn to pull it off like a natural reflex. By the end of the game you’ll be mixing and matching skills, taking down enemies in droves as you blast through them, moving seamlessly from cover-to-cover with tons of style to boot.

The controls feel reactive, fluid and smooth, and I never felt like Wesley or Cross were outside of my control or too difficult to handle, or as if it was too cumbersome. It reminded me a lot of playing Max Payne and eventually learning how to get good at shoot-dodging with ease and seamlessly integrating it into taking down loads of enemies.

Gameplay Content

The good and bad of Wanted: Weapons of Fate’s gameplay content is that it suffers heavily from the Ubisoft effect.

If you’ve played a Far Cry or Assassin’s Creed game, then you know exactly what I’m talking about: where you start the game as a noob, and slowly earn skills as you progress through the levels. By the end of the game you’ve amassed the deadliest of techniques, the coolest of traits, and the sickest of skills. Only, you don’t get to use them much because it’s the end of the game.

That’s exactly how Wanted: Weapons of Fate is.

You spend the entire game unlocking these cool traits and skills, and eventually Wesley gets to don his father’s ultra-cool assassin’s garb and his twin, silenced, automatic pistols, but it’s only at the end of the game.

It’s like… why?!?!

It’s kind of annoying because if you want to replay the game, you have to replay through most of it not having your max skills. And then only near the end do you have access to all of Wesley’s skills and weapons. It kind of limits what levels you’re allowed to go full balls-to-the-walls max assassin on enemies.

Another downside is that you don’t get different weapons throughout the levels.

Wesley and Cross only use their designated pistols. It makes some sense, but it’s also kind of lame because it means you don’t get to wield shotguns or assault rifles or any other kind of weapon other than what the level deigns you to have.

For the most part you’ll use a dinkly 9mm for Wesley’s earlier levels, and Cross gets to dual-wield pistols and machine-pistols throughout his levels. Only in the last level does Wesley get to switch between an awesome, highly upgraded pistol and his father’s machine-pistols. Both weapons are awesome to use, but it would have been so much better if you could have been able to pick up the enemy weapons and use them occasionally.

Overall

Visually Wanted: Weapons of Fate doesn’t look terrible and holds up decently enough for what it is. The audio is okay for the most part – the music is on point by Danny Elfman, and I wish some of the weapons had more kick to them. The voice acting is serviceable, and the explosion and impact effects could have used a bit more panache.

Only the end level weapons really look and sound impactful, and it’s a shame because the gunplay in this game is actually pretty good and fairly satisfying.

While this gem likely (and deservedly) went ignored when it originally released back in 2009, it’s well worth playing now that it’s forgotten and there are no other third-person shooter games out there like it. If you want a raunchy, masculine, no-holds-barred shooter that does its licensed-based progenitor justice, Wanted: Weapons of Fate is a good way to burn through four or five hours on a lazy weekend.

Exit mobile version