I don’t try movie tie-in games. They are hurried games that take part during the movie while not conveying any of the fun from the movie. Calling them cash grabs would be a compliment. Once in a way there does come a movie tie in that shows some kind of promise. The 2 easiest ways to identify these promising games is that they do not launch along with the movie, showing that they weren’t rush jobs and they don’t take part during the movie meaning that they don’t have to castrate themselves to fit into the movie’s story. Rare’s 007 GoldenEye will go down in history as being the rank and file for a great movie tie-in game that came out 2 years after the movie.
Wanted: the action flick with Angelina Jolie, Morgan Freeman and James McAvoy came out mid-2008 (not the POS Indian film that came out in 2009 which I went for thinking it was the former). It was fun, fast and a really good movie for those of us who liked action. The movie didn’t cover the full Wanted story, there were a lot of loose ends that need to be covered. Grin offered to cover these in Wanted: Weapons of Fate.
Story:
Fair warning to everyone playing. Wanted: Weapons of fate depends to a small extent on the story from the movie. The game starts a few hours after the movie finishes while at the same time giving Wesley’s farther Cross a backstory. The movie acts as a base for both these stories while being good fun and worth watching.
A few hours after Wesley has blown up the facility around the Chicago Loom he finds his apartment raided by what seem to be SWAT operatives. In reality, these are operatives of the Paris fraternity on a mission to take out Wesley while getting the loom back. Wesley’s story follows him going against the fraternity while finding out what happened to his parents on the way.
The flashbacks follow Cross as he tries to protect his wife and his newborn son from the vengeance of the fraternities. Mating between fraternity members is against the code causing the fraternities to want a baby Wesley dead.
The story is mostly delivered by cutscenes and a few in-game lines. While not being overly extensive it does do the job to the levels of the movie. The story isn’t great or anything but at the same time is enough to join the movie’s level while still delivering a small amount of drama and a high level of dumb fun.
Sound:
“Have you heard the news? Bad things come in twos but I never knew bout the little things” … sorry I got distracted by the soundtrack. The soundtrack is amazing, it’s amazing because it is the same soundtrack as the movie. It’s not some dumbed-down version filled with trance or hip-hop like other games. It is a brilliant soundtrack. That is all I have to say about the background music.
The voice acting is a bit of a dilemma: I would have liked to have the actors from the movie reprise their roles but instead, we get stand-ins. Don’t get me wrong, the voice actors do sound decently like their movie counterparts but at the same time seem lacking here and there. An example of lacking is how French Cross sounds and I guess that could be because of his time in France but it is acceptable. The only weak point in the voice is the standard enemy voices which isn’t bad but compared to the rest of the voice acting, feels weak especially since most of it is them calling out barely audible stuff.
The special effects are good and I mean good. Every action has an attached piece of sound, be it walking, sliding for cover or even a mash button prompt growing. No expense has been spared in this department, hell! in bullet time you not only hear the sound of the guns being fired but also your character’s heartbeat. The pistol sounds heavy while the SMGs sound lighter but not weightless like a lot of games do. The sound of explosions is loud which makes you quickly look at them.
The sound is normalized well too, making the sound in this game great.
Graphics:
The game doesn’t look bad at all for a 10-year-old game. It looks quite good. The only time you notice the game’s age is when looking at textures on the floors or walls in dark areas. The rest of the time the world looks great, a little glossy but great.
Characters are well detailed too. They look like their movie counterparts and are well detailed too. Their outfits have a bit of a glossy shine as well that can be distracting but nothing I would really take offence with. Their animations are good too, they slide, roll and dodge in exquisite detail.
The special effects are good but at times can feel lacklustre. The trails from bullets and the eyes of the player character are nice touches along with the smoke from bullets but at the same time, the bullet effects in slow motion need some work. They are not bad but could have been better.
Gameplay:
Pre gameplay: I would like to mention there is a bug in the game: The higher the FPS, the lower the mouse sensitivity. At 120 FPS the mouse will barely move. I needed to lock the game to 70 FPS and max out the in-game mouse sensitivity to make the game playable. Now back to your regularly scheduled review:
Wanted: Weapons of Fate is a cover shooter. We recently covered Gears of War: Ultimate Edition so we have a point of comparison. While Weapons of Fate is a member of the cover shooter legacy it does improve on the standard cover shooter formula by making level design more focused, improving enemy attack points while most importantly improving attack methods. We will get to explaining each of the above later but do know that you are not getting another cheap cover shooter.
There are only two weapons in Wanted. There is either the pistol or the akimbo SMGs. The pistol is highly accurate while the SMGs are great for crowd control. For most of the game, the weapons are linked to the character being played. Wesley has his pistol while Cross, being the badass that he is, dual-wields SMGs. Close to the end of the game, Wesley gets his hands on Cross’s SMGs from which point the player can choose the weapon they want. When using the pistol, you need to go for headshots which is insanely easy when using a mouse. The damage and accuracy of the pistol make you feel like one hell of a badass when you nail multiple headshots in a row. The SMGs due to their rapid-fire allow you to take out multiple enemies quickly as well as enemies that can dodge the pistol. This forces you, the player, to make the right weapon for the job.
This is Wanted: Weapons of Fate. Your character isn’t some run of the mill generic action hero, he is an assassin, a weapon of fate, a God among men. You can curve bullets to take out those assholes hiding behind cover or slow down time to take out multiple enemies who think they have the numerical advantage. Curving bullets takes one special bullet and bullet time takes out two special bullets. While that might sound like a lot you get a special bullet (the special meter) back by getting kills, kills from specials get you bullets too. Hell! Melee kills get two bullets back. The only problem is in the early levels since you only have one or two bullets and gain all four by taking out bosses.
Enemies are for the majority: cannon fodder. There are a few specials that you need to watch out for but they are few and far apart. The primary difference between the standard enemies and the special ones is that the special one can either take more damage or can dodge pistol shots. The abilities make these clowns easier but bad bets early in the levels can leave you with nothing to do but take pot shots. There are also around 5 shielded enemies that you need to distract by blind firing at them from a position and then walking behind them to take out if you’ve run out of special shots but they are child’s play if you can fire a curved shot.
All enemies can take a few body hits but next to none of them can take a shot to the head. Most of the time a few well-aimed shots are all you need to clear out a section. The bosses are decently fun, the first one makes you distract him, the second one forces you to injure him with curved shots, the third one needs you to slow down time to get shots in. The boss’ design, while limited, is varied enough and the story makes sure that they are interesting with Wesley/Cross’s bullshit covering the attacks.
I suspect the game was primarily aimed at consoles since a keyboard and mouse make even the highest difficulties child’s play thanks to mouse aiming.
Levels are concise. They are not open levels but rather controlled corridors that you need to get through. Even levels that try to look like open areas are just larger corridors. Littering these corridors are tons of cover points that the player can hide behind while being hunted by bullets. Once the hail of bullets come down you can look out and nail the bastards going for your head. None of the levels feel unfair, they are designed well for this type of game. The levels also have special sections which slows down time to make the player drop bullets and enemies in slow motion. These sections don’t do anything more than adding to the cool factor but they make you feel like a badass while breaking the monotony of a cover shooter. Finally, there are also sniper and turret sections: all of you know these sections, since they are not new you can write your paragraph here.
Conclusion:
Amazing sound, great graphics and fun combat make Wanted: Weapons of Fate a great look back to the PlayStation 3 era. While a short game with a few points of monotony Wanted: Weapons of Fate is a fun game. It’s disappointing that it can be finished in a single 4 hour sitting but that could also be a good thing as it doesn’t overstay it’s welcome. It was so short that I actually recorded every level on the highest difficulty, see the videos here:
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Pros |
Cons |
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Fun Story |
Short game |
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Amazing Soundtrack |
Not the original voice actors |
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Fun boss fights |
Cannon fodder enemies |
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Cool special abilities |
Two weapons |
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Tight levels |
Levels are linear |
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Bullet time events break the monotony |
It can still be monotonous |
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