Got three hours?
Play Wanted!
Okay, it might be around four or five, but I doubt it. There are a few points where players will have a challenge, one point where they’ll actually get stuck, and plenty they’ll move through fast after one or two repeats, maybe. It’s far from a hard game, though several points hop off the difficulty curve a bit.
So, Wanted takes place at some point after the movie, presumably some point in the comic books, minus the racism, pornography, and hatred of the comic book form and audience, which is probably for the best lest the ESRB’s rating skyrocket.
The game is a fairly straightforward third person shoot ‘em up, with players moving between cover, firing off shots to suppress enemies, curving bullets, and shooting other bullets out of the air in slow motion.
Okay, that does deserve some explanation, doesn’t it?
Wanted‘s hook is primarily that bullets don’t have to fly in a straight line, you’re just programmed to believe they do. So while you and an enemy are sitting behind very comfortable cover, unable to get a straight shot at each other, you can hold the curved shot button, pick yourself an arc that wraps around a few obstacles, and bam, bullet meets enemy. In gameplay terms, it means when there’s too damn many enemies and they’re too hard to hit, you can take a few shots and maybe eliminate some of them safely, or aim for a conveniently explosive barrel, fire extinguisher, etc.
Beyond that, there’s slow motion abound. The game’s focus is on cover and moving between it, with quickmove functions built in for nearby cover. Players can also choose a special quickmove, which fires up slow motion during the transition and gives a little time to take down exposed enemies on the way. Outside of that, there’s rail-shooteresque sequences that would likely be a quick-time event in any other game. Wanted chose to just slow it down, let players aim for the bullets coming at them themselves, and not have to “PRESS X TO NOT DIE”, which works out very well.
Aside from slow motion, the game keeps a fast pace with extremely short breaks between the action. There’s almost no time lost to looking for the right way to go, and puzzles just don’t happen beyond “Which gas canister can I shoot to cause the biggest chain reaction?” It’s very straightforward action with lots of enemies who don’t stand a chance through a nice variety of environments, and it stays fun for the most part, if not terribly deep.
Wanted gets 4 out of 5 canes-A great action game that’s far too short, but easily worth a replay, and this could be the start of a great series of games.
