Probably one of the better known titles from Artificial Mind and Movement, and certainly their most adult after a string of child-friendly titles for child-friendly consoles, WET is a third person shooter that combines guns and swords, girls and stereotypes, and grindhouse and stunts to create an ambitious attempt at grindhouse gaming. Does it work?
Not particularly is the best answer I can give.
WET stars Rubi Malone as a gun for hire, (voiced by Eliza Dushku, might I add), who is initially hired to steal a human heart needed to save the live of a wealthy crime lord who in turn sends Rubi on a mission to save his son from the underbelly of the criminal world.
However, he won't go willingly, and Rubi gets caught up in a conspiracy and has to fight her way out of various scenarios and locations to complete her goal and ultimately get a shitload of cash.
Killing hundreds of clichéd enemies along the way with pistols, a shotgun, an SMG, a crossbow and a sword for good measure, Rubi takes to various underworlds around thedoctor fm live radio world, meeting a variety of very stereotypical characters, from the Chinese to the Scottish, in her almost pointless quest.
Pointless is precisely the feeling I got from the game, as Rubi seems to be putting far too much effort into her mission. The believability factor is not helped by fairly shoddy acting, poor character modelling and a frankly abysmal storyline. But hey, WET's a grindhouse tribute, so it should be exempt, surely?
Well, no, because WET's a video game, and while grindhouse films last for a couple of hours, WET is almost four times as long, if you try and take it all in. It's completable in five, which is a poor length for a single player as it is, but I got a very strong feeling that WET shouldn't have been a game.
It's cinematic, explosive, and above all Hollywood, mixing over-the-top stunts and scenes with incredulity to create what would have made a very respectable grindhouse feast.
Unfortunately, you can't just sit back and let everything unfold before you. You have to play it. And for an hour or so, it's riotous fun, the free-running gameplay mixed eloquently with the shooting mechanics, and the violent, bloody, unexplainable rage that vents from Rubi making for a good bout of entertainment. Shame it didn't last. I was about half way through the game and the fun dried up almost instantly, approximately 3 hours after the game's start, about the max length a film should be before it becomes too long. Wouldn't you know it?
There are moments in the game that are worth playing. Scenes such as skydiving without a parachute shootingprivate white girls with black guys guys out of the air serving its purpose as a great video gaming set piece, and the blood spattered moments along with the car jumping scenes acting as great pieces of video game entertainment before being thrown back into monotony.
If the entire game was like the blood spattered scenes, the art style shown here used throughout the game, and the game was maybe 3 hours long, I'd have had my fill, and I would be lavishing praise over AM&M's efforts. But unfortunately, these scenes are infrequent, and last for around 5-10 minutes.
One thing I definitely can't fault in the game however is its absolutely superb soundtrack, something that Tarantino himself would be proud of. But again, there's a problem: Tarantino makes films. There are 35 songs in the game, and playing through the entire soundtrack lasts around the 2 hour mark. A 6-7 hour game with a tacked on challenge mode adding maybe an hour means that the soundtrack plays through 3-4 times.
Now while the soundtrack is top notch, it's most rewarding when heard once in a film, not repeatedly over and over until you tire of it.
Overall Impressions
WET has way too many flaws to class it as a decent video game, but when it does something right, it does it gloriously. Unfortunately though, you have to wade through a fair amount of average before you reach the magnificent.
I was very excited when the game arrived. A big fan of Tarantino and Rodriguez' Grindhouse double feature, I eagerly put the game into my Playstation 3 and begun playing it with excitement. By the end of WET however, I almost wished Iretail facility service hadn't heard of it to begin with.
WET let me down, and while I sit here now comtemplating what could have been, I think to myself that if WET was adapted into a film, I'd be front of the queue buying myself a copy of it. All that's here is the game though, and it's a shame.
WET's okay, but for all of its efforts, it falls flat. Great concept with the possibility of being great, but the finished version is little more than a failed experiment.
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