Games based off of popular licensed products are generally not very good. They are usually rushed onto shelves in order to coincide with the release date of the movie that they are derived from with low production value and a huge marketing budget hoping to ride the wave of popularity that comes with a big Hollywood release. Luckily for GRIN, Warner Bros decided to give the developers an extra nine months to get Wanted: Weapons of Fate released.
Wanted: Weapons of Fate Review
Wanted: Weapons of Fate
Developer: GRIN
Platform: PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 (reviewed)
Weapons of Fate is based on the immediate aftermath of the movie’s conclusion and sees the player controlling the ultra-assassin Wesley continuing his quest to find information about his family and continue to wipe out the various other Fraternity organisations around the globe. Intercut with this story are several flashbacks to Cross, Wesley’s father, and what he was doing before the events of the film. These flashbacks provide some variety to the story and help fill in some blanks along the way.
Fun happens when you shoot the barrels.
The gameplay in Weapons of Fate is your standard 3rd person, cover based shooter with a few extra mechanics thrown in. The most obvious of these mechanics is the ability to curve bullets around cover to hit your targets. You build up adrenaline basically by shooting guys in the face a lot. When you have enough adrenaline you can use them to bend a couple of bullets. This is done by aiming at an enemy and adjusting a line that travels from your gun the enemy until the line goes white which means you have a clear shot. More often than not the bullet will not kill the enemy but it will be enough to remove him from his cover allowing you to clean up what is left of him. On the rare occasion that you manage to pull off a headshot with a curved shot, you will be treated to a glorious slow motion shot with the camera following the bullet all the way into the unfortunate enemy’s cranium.
Unlike most other movie-based tie-in games, Weapons of Fate’s gameplay is solid throughout. The cover system works well and with the touch of a button Wesley and dive, roll, slide and sprint his way between various places of cover. This method of movement can be used to confuse your enemies as well. By blind firing in a bad guys general direction, he will usually take cover, at which time you can quickly hop to another hiding place and watch as said bad guy furiously tries to kill the inanimate object you were just behind. This can be fun a couple of times, but just isn’t satisfying enough due to the AI’s stupidity.
“Gimme a powerslide! Full throttle!”
For a force of soldiers sent to kill a near superhuman assassin, the enemies in Weapons of Fate are pretty dumb. They will more often than not decide that the best place to hide is next to, or directly behind, some sort of explosive barrel or gas canister which leads to the inevitable blowing up of both themselves and whichever giant glowing red object they were previously hiding behind. Some enemies act slightly different from others, some are able to dodge bullets and others initiate a button mashing minigames to see who gets stabbed, but they don’t pose much more of a threat or challenge than the regular enemies.
Despite being fairly solid gameplay, during the incredibly short campaign mode offers very little variation and such becomes tiresome fairly quickly. The game gives you the ability to do everything straight away which doesn’t leave you much to look forward to. The only real deviations from the cover-shoot-curve bullet-move on style of playing are annoying turret firing sequences (in which it is difficult to see what it is you are actually shooting at) sniper rifle sequences and ultra slow motion sequences which are an eclectic mix on a lightgun shooter and a quick time event where you must shoot down incoming bullets. The challenge however isn’t in your reaction time but rather seeing the poorly lit circles that the bullets are surrounded by. These scenes look pretty good but they become more of a chore than a gameplay mechanic.
Sadly, that funky orange neckerchief can’t repel blades.
Wanted: Weapons of Fate suffers heavily from a lack of content. There are some comic books scattered throughout the levels and you can unlock the ability to play as boss characters and alternate costumes for Wesley but in reality they are just different skins and have the exact same moves and animations as Wesley does. Even in the cutscenes, no matter who you are playing as, the default Wesley model will appear which seems like a strange mistake to have been made. With no multiplayer modes and the campaign mode only lasting about five hours, there is very little to actually do in Wanted after the first playthrough.
The game also seems to not have taken full use of its extended development time as both characters and the environments look very rough around the edges and there are all sorts of crazy animation glitches such as weapons floating in mid air and dead bodies seemingly having a fit. When shot with a curved bullet, enemies will often stumble right through the cover they were just using which is far too obvious a problem for the developers to have just missed. The loading times are both long and frequent enough to be annoying and this problem was unfortunately not relieved by installing the game to your hard drive. The frame rate also seemed largely inconsistent especially when entering a new area for the first time.
The Final Word
If video games were only made as tie-in products for movie releases, then Wanted: Weapons of Fate would be one of the best. Sadly for GRIN, there is a world of video game that are head and shoulders better. Repetitive action, lacklustre visuals, and a complete lack of variety really drag down an otherwise decent shooter.
– MonsterVine Rating: 2 out of 5 – Poor
By Andy Jackson
