Cinematic gunplay and gruesome sword action
Up until this morning, no-one knew of the existence of WET, Vivendi’s new third person action shooter which, whilst pushing all the usual buttons for excitement and playability, promises to be something a bit special with it’s ease of use, superb cinematics and wince-inducing swordplay.
You play the role of Ruby, a sexy, nubile and bloody dangerous mercenary for hire. She’s a ruthless killer who’ll do anyone for money, and I don’t mean ‘do’ in the way you’d like a supple bird to do you… even thinking that’ll probably get you a samurai sword through the groin. And yes, that is one of the special moves Ruby performs and believe me, having seen WET in action, it’s a toe-curling sight.
Click for larger imageThe basic idea behind WET is that Ruby can perform all sorts of moves whilst wielding her dual pistols. Wall-running, sliding under tbales, vaulting obstacles… all whilst targeting bad guys. One nice feature is the ability to target two different guys at the same time, one with each gun and take them out simultaneously.
When you go into manual targeting, the game slows down to give you full cinematic effect and also to give you time to pick out your unfortunate victims. The control set for your attacks is highly context sensitive, so you can grab onto a beam over head, twirling round it like a gymnast all the while blasting away with the gun in your free hand. Surrounded by bad guys? Why not run up a wall, vault off it doing a balletic back flip over their heads and give them the goods news from above?
Click for larger imageBut the real visceral stuff comes into action when you get up close and dirty as Ruby will deliver a slow-motion series of punches and kicks before whipping out her sword to deliver the coup-de-grace, slicing, dicing and skewering bad guys like sexiest blender you ever saw.
When I asked Vivendi as to the origin of the title WET, the answer was that it’s derived from the black-ops phrase of ‘Wet-work’ when they have to kill a target covertly. But they also admitted it was because of the games excessive amounts of blood that start spraying once Ruby whips her sword out.
Click for larger imageThink along the lines of Kill Bill: Volume One and you’ll get the idea. In fact, Quentin Tarantino an John Woo are cited as two of the games inspirations… and from what I’ve seen today, they’re not far off the mark.
WET will be released for Xbox 360 and PS3 in Winter 2008
