Review | Wet

Format: Xbox360/PS3 | Genre: Action | Publisher: Bethesda | Developer: Artificial Mind and Movement | Release date: 18/09/09 | RRP: £39.99

By Mark Brown

Some games wear their inspirations and influences on their sleeve.

You wouldn’t be shocked if Bungie revealed Halo was conceived after an Alien and Starship Troopers marathon, and Shadow Complex’s Metroid comparisons are no secret. As for WET, Quentin Tarantino’s entire back catalogue and half of John Woo’s stylised action flicks proved ample brainstorming material.

Rubi, an acrobatic, samurai sword-wielding fixer, voiced by Eliza Dushku of Dollhouse and Buffy the Vampire Slayer fame, is caught up in a web of betrayal and double-crosses. She’s looking for gruesome, limbless, blood-geysering vengeance and will flip off a wall and slide under a table while she does it. She’s the dazzling femme fatale on a roaring rampage of revenge. She’s pretty much Uma Thurman in Kill Bill.

But Tarantino’s film was a theatrical love letter to classic Asian cinema, wushu and martial art epics, complete with referential nods and an experienced team to boot. WET doesn’t deserve that much credit. It feels more like a devious cribbing of Tarantino’s work than an admiration of his source material; it’s a rip-off of a rip-off, and it’s pretty brazen.

//Not Just for Show
Luckily, WET doesn’t get too hung up on its flimsy story or borrowed visual style; even the grindhouse aesthetic, including scratchy film grain and flickering projection lights, can be turned off. At its core, WET is a stylised shooter that dresses up classic gunplay with exaggerated dives, graze-causing slides and gravity-defying wall runs.

At the height of her abilities, Rubi can move from wall run to leap to slide to lacerating sword slash with slightly-stunted fluidity. She’s not immune to dodgy hit detection and some awkward controls, but she handles fairly well. Even the dual-aiming mechanic, where Rubi automatically guns down the nearest foe while you manually aim at another, works well without making the game play itself.

Chaining kills and combining moves in quick succession racks up points and keeps a combo meter running. You trade points for upgrades and extra manoeuvres, and as long as your combo is high, your health will automatically regenerate. This is particularly useful in the arena segments - cordoned-off fights with respawning enemies - where there are few health pick-ups, represented in WET as a quick chug on a bottle of booze.

//Wet, Rinse, Repeat
The arenas, as well as the linear stages that make up much of the game, are often bookended by “rage” mode segments: high intensity, rapid fire fights, rendered in silhouette and painted in crimson. They’re the only scenes that can’t be traced back to a Tarantino film. But they never offer much more than double the enemies and a fresh lick of paint. WET plays its cards in the opening hours, and then deals them in a different order for the rest of the game: plenty of fights dressed up in different guises, the odd Tomb Raider knock-off and a few familiar quick time events.

It’s as if the designers had trouble figuring out how to ramp up the difficulty, resorting to bullet-soaking, mini-gun toting goons who take several clips and a repetitive QTE to down. Outside of these nuisance baddies, the game fails to offer any new challenge or sophistication as levels come and go.

Even the odd scripted and cinematic events - including a fuselage dodging, sky diving section - outstay their welcome, demanding multiple attempts thanks to unpolished controls and harsh fail states. It’s hard to maintain the “wow” factor of narrowly escaping a burning and collapsing tunnel when you’ve tried it four times already.

//Grab a Towel
WET’s best assets, including its unique gameplay and stylish execution, are showcased to great effect in the unlockable challenge modes. In a dusty aeroplane graveyard, Rubi races through harsh obstacle courses while nailing targets and posting great times. If you’re anywhere near as competitive as me, you’ll be gunning for gold and unlocking the achievements as soon as the game is over. But tucked away in a sub menu, and only offered after the main game is complete, they fail to capture the sort of excitement and competition that such modes thrive on. There are no leaderboards either, so there’s little reason to replay them.

Ultimately, the imaginative gameplay is squandered in the repetitive and mundane story mode. Even the quirky 50s advertisements that are spliced into the reel begin to grate, and I hope you’re a fan of classic rockabilly music. WET makes for a reasonable diversion, but it’s a title destined for bargain bins and rental queues.

5/10

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