Just released to the PlayStation Network this week was a demo of Artificial Mind and Movement’s new over-the-top shooter title WET. Bathed in blood, action, and visual flair, WET sets up players to redefine how outlandish action can, and perhaps even should, be in games. Does the game have enough substance to back up its style? Keep reading to find out.

WET stars a strong heroine named Rubi, a gun-and-sword wielding potential model leather-clad and hell-bent on murdering tons of dudes. For what reason, well, we don’t quite know yet. That is part of the suspense, I suppose. What is known is that a shady transaction goes down, a handicapped man is handily capped by his supposed business partner, and said partner runs away with a package apparently sought after by Rubi. In catching this man, Rubi will surely lay to rest thousands of anonymous henchmen.

The first thing players booting into WET will notice is the movie-like visual quality to the game. Cutscenes are overlaid with a dim-toned color palette with potent red hues and instilled with a flickering film effect, lending a B-movie, Tarantino-esque quality to story progression and gameplay. In many areas, the film effect will intensify when Rubi is running low on health. While it may be distracting at first, the effects quickly seem to disappear once bullets start flying around – which is basically the entire duration of the demo.

Rubi herself is able to fire guns in very outrageous situations – sliding beneath objects, running across walls, doing backflips, and apparently even more. Acrobatic maneuvers can also be chained together to prolong the shooting off of faces as well as turned into sword attacks as simply as pushing the corresponding buttons.

The slow-motion gunfire in WET is extremely fun, and was quite obviously well-developed. Interestingly enough, just running around and getting into position for a flamboyant attack can be somewhat frustrating. Sliding around and flipping is much easier, and in turn seems to be a more preferable way of moving about. Also, gunfire and melee attacks from opponents seem to be faster than natural outside of the slow-motion bits, lending to a more comfortable pace during the bullet spraying segments.

About midway through the demo, Rubi busts a fat cap into a man’s dome, covering her face in his blood. Cracking a sinister wide smile, Rubi enters what I can only call a blood rage. Everything in the game turns red, and the protagonist fights much, much faster than normal. Enemies are flooded into the hallways and are dispatched in an extremely quick manner due to the increased agility and rate of fire with Rubi’s pistols. Fallen foes disappear leaving streaks of black and white, and some even seem to disintegrate. Awesome. Though short-lived, this rage mode proved to be a more frenetic version of the standard brawls as well as a surprisingly striking way of playing the game.

After slamming through the hallway, the scene jumps to Rubi riding on the top of a car chasing down her target. This highway car chase is one of the more riveting parts of the demo, but definitely the most frustrating. Shooting moving targets from a moving vehicle while dodging vehicles proves to be a bit much to handle, though luckily sniping henchmen isn’t exactly the main goal. Periodically, the player is given a quick-time prompt to hit a specific button, usually to dodge the inevitable wrecked cars flying around. While the action is great fun to watch, the button prompts themselves seem quite finicky (it took me four tries to get past the last prompt, and the time frame in which to hit the button is by no means small).

Throughout the course of the demo, funky rock music is stirring behind the action. In a unique turn, the music actually has lyrics, lending to the game a feeling of playing the hero in a big-budget film. While the songs themselves will certainly not be to everybody’s tastes, they are dead-on to the overall style of the game.

All in all, WET is set to be a ridiculously fast-paced and over-the-top shooter. Fans of action fims like Kill Bill, Wanted, and Shoot Em Up will find plenty to enjoy here. Artificial Minds and Movements promises more unlockable combination attacks, a gripping narrative, and copious visual flair. Be looking for the full release of WET on September 15th of this year.

Tags: Artificial Mind and Movement, Bethesda, WET

This entry was posted on Saturday, August 29th, 2009 at 3:09 am and is filed under Impressions, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.