“a AAA love letter to the sixth generation of consoles,” third-person hack n’/cover shooter Wanted: Dead proudly touts. And I believe it. From its linear corridor and arena-clearing combat missions, to its acting and writing, the game has the half-baked but full-arsed charm of its target era in spades. There is a huge part of me that wants to be an evangelist for This Sort of Thing, but it has left me reminiscing about how the truly great thing about the actual 6th generation of consoles is that it also had Blockbuster Video.
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If said temple of temporary ownership was still breathing, in all its popcorn-pushing, Haribo-slinging, drab carpeted splendor, I would be demanding with frankly unbearable enthusiasm that everyone and their hamster nabbed this incredibly fun trashfest for the weekend. But it’s not. And Wanted: Dead is 50 quid. And that, I’m afraid, makes it a rather more complicated proposition.
However, value is nebulous and subjective, so with the disclaimer that I absolutely do not recommend you purchase this game brand new, let’s pretend money isn’t an object for the rest of the review, and say that Wanted: Dead is a must-play if you have a.) any love for the camp but immaculately choreographed ultraviolence of films like Tokyo Gore Police or Meatball Machine Kodoku b.) ever lustily imagined a very short Yakuza game made by Grasshopper Manufacture where the entire dev team had the flu and were hopped up on Lemsip hot toddies for the complete production cycle. c.) a penchant for beautiful trash that rivals that of an aesthete racoon.
Here’s the set-up. Zombie Unit is an elite cop murder squad, rag in appearance and tag in moxy, each of them various shades of one day away from retirement, too old for this shit, a loose cannon, and a cop on the edge with nothing to lose. Your heroine, Hannah Stone, is a hi-top wearing war criminal with a penchant for karaoke. Also, Stepfanie Joosten plays a gunsmith who we’re informed, quite early on, smells perpetually of cat piss. When you discover the reason for her odour, you may feel ashamed of your words and deeds.
There’s a conspiracy of sorts, in a sort-of cyberpunk Hong Kong, and the player, as Hannah, has to hit a lot of people with swords and bullets to work it all out. That’s basically all you need to know. The plot is nonsense, fascinating in its sheer lack of momentum and mesmerising in its seemingly coin-flippant decisions between which moments to drag out to the point of farce, and which to rush through like it needs the toilet after a particularly strong Lemsip hot toddy. I loved more of it than feels noble to admit.
It’s tempting to call the voice acting and writing bad on impulse. I would not blame anyone who did. But if I enjoy spending time with these characters – which I do – then surely both these things have done their job as well as anyone could reasonably ask for? It’ll be a dull world indeed when we all start demanding prestige classical realism from every game, regardless of emotive or experiential intentions. HBO and Hollywood are modes to work in when it suits the flavour of shooty and/or slashy, not standards by which everything else should be judged. That said, it’s all a bit shit, yeah. But I still enjoyed my hangout time – singing, eating ramen, arcade games, all playable – with Zombie Squad a great deal, Hannah especially.
There is, undeniably, jank in Wanted: Dead, notably in frame drops, stutters, crashes, and enemy AI. But the combat itself feels like a very deliberate blend of demandingly exact and mindlessly mashy, and when you start chaining it together with parries, counters, grenades, flying kicks, and dodge steps, it slaps. It’s sort of like playing Sekiro at half speed while submerged in a bath of beans. It took me hours to get even half competent at it and I enjoyed the process immensely.
I generally dislike canned finishers on principle, but Wanted: Dead’s are as goldilocks in both frequency and length as, say, Doom Eternal’s. Either by chopping off a limb with heavy damage, or when using a meter-draining gunkata supermove, Hannah can stun enemies, which can then be chain-finishers in a variety of creatively gory kills. It lends combat both punctuated pacing and stylish flair, and while this is neither Ninja Gaiden or something like God Hand – it doesn’t have the depth or potential for self-expression – it is a bloody good time if you’ve got the patience for it.
If I’m honest, Wanted: Dead is often suspiciously reminiscent of Tommy Wiseau pretending The Room was a comedy after the fact. Despite how much I enjoyed myself, and despite how much I’d love to think the game’s every foible is some subversive, curated throwback, it doesn’t always feel intentionally shaky and camp as it does, well, “Oh, hi Mark”. . A sheen thrown over a troubled developmental dead end to sell it as something both less and more than it was earnestly intended to be.
Oh, and I didn’t mention the third person cover shooting because I mostly ignored it, except when I was desperately low on health. Some things are best left forgotten.
Wanted: Dead is available on PlayStation, Xbox and PC. This review was played on PC.
Verdict
I want everyone to play Wanted: Dead, but I don’t want anyone to spend any more money on it than they’d be comfortable spending on, say, a guilty takeaway meal. In its best moments, it feels like an oasis in a desert, a balm for the self-serious excesses of Sony‘s first party offerings. At its worst, it’s incredible how something so seemingly confident and free in its own strangeness can make such obvious and dull choices.
Pros
- Confident, gory combat with a peculiarly satisfying rhythm
- Absolutely does not care whether you find its writing, acting, or storytelling the least bit interesting
- You can sing 99 luftballons at karaoke with Stefanie Joosten
Cons
- Obscenely overpriced for what it offers
- Third-person cover shooting feels quite literally sellotaped on. Also, the sellotape is wet
- I cannot fully unwrap its pass-the-parcel-esque layers of sincerity and irony, and I’m not sure I want to, because I reckon there’s a black hole at the center