Wet adj. wet-ter, wet-test 1. Covered or soaked with a liquid, such as water; or blood. Rubi is a very special girl. She can run, and slide and pivot and shoot- all the while wielding her katana. Rubi can run along walls and perform powerful combinations of shooting and aiming at two enemies at the same time. If Rubi gets enough blood on her face she will get angry and you won’t like Rubi when she’s angry. The environment changes to a noir of red and white with black and allows her to cut sick with nothing but bloody vengeance to serve. Rubi is also a shameless rip-off of Beatrix Kiddo, aka ‘The Bride’ ala Kill Bill.
For those unfamiliar, Kill Bill was a movie released in 2003 by Quinten Tarintino and WET might as well be the spiritual successor game of said movie. You can certainly see where Artificial Mind and Movement were coming from. It is also fair to say that Tarintino re-created the style known as “Grindhouse”; in which WET is firmly seated. Looking all the while like a bad 70s shlock horror exploitation flick, you assume the role of Rubi, an assassin with a hit list of criminals ripe for the picking. All the elements of what makes “Grindhouse”; film grain, dodgy camera poor visuals low lighting and a myriad of other filters and bad language are front and centre in WET. Unfortunately unlike the movies, which offer an underground revival of B grade genres, exploiting adult themes and gratuitous violence- the game is just that; sub-par.
After being pushed back in 2008, the demo through publishing giant Bethesda, states plainly that it does not reflect the finished product, which might go some way in explaining the sloppy aiming and average graphics. What you get on top of that though, is slow motion, bullet time battles and a lot of quick time events which attempts to make everything as fun and thrilling as Max Payne or free poker games, but ultimately fails at doing so. Rubi has a bunch of different moves to pull off and similar to 2006s Stranglehold directed by none other than John Woo himself, Rubi can pretty much jump and use any surface, in slow motion; to shoot across. It feels though those games like this have not progressed far enough from Max Payne or The Matrix and should offer much more. With so many options the camera doesn’t know which way to point and neither do the guns. Compensation comes in the form of quick time events which are ‘interactive’ in that you can shoot in-between pressing A or X. These events though are still scripted and can be ridden out without much loss of life let alone firing off a round. Rubies’ katana on the other hand, offers salvation with some truly gut wrenching moves as she dives and slides around.
On par with the 70s vibe, the music is up to snuff but combined with set pieces and combos, minimal health and regeneration through combination multipliers only, it comes off feeling like some warped Tony Hawk skate park. Definitely worth a rent, WET is an interesting combination of controls that relies too heavily on the special effects and filters with not enough fine tuning to sustain it for long.
Pros
1. ‘70s “Grindhouse” noir’ graphics
2. Humor
3. Soundtrack
4. ‘live’ action quicktime events
Cons
1. Too many effects and bullet time
2. Poor aiming and camera controls
3. Too many quicktime events
4. Linear
Release Date: 18th September, 2009
Previewed and Written by Ian Crane