Wet

The Short


Pros
- Third-person shooter-action game with a grindhouse aesthetic to it
- Feels a lot like Max Payne with its slowmo, crazy jumps, and duel-wielding
- The duel-wielding, which auto aims with one gun while you manually aim with the other, actually works pretty good
- The grindhouse look fits the game well and is presented with quality, for the most part
- One of the few games where I welcomed enemy based waves, as the combat was enjoyable
- Fast, furious, and great stress relief
- Soundtrack is straight up great

Cons
- Instead of bosses we have quick-time events. Snore.
- The tacked-on tutorial segments are forced, boring, and don't fit the theme
- If you aren't into everything that comes with the grindhouse genre (swearing, exploitation, innuendos, etc.) you'll feel out of place here
- Stupid Unreal 3 engine...pop-in problems still are here
- Never learns any new tricks; you know 90% of the moves from the get go and the game is just repeating them frequently
- Seriously, "Wet?" Yeah, I get it is for "Wetworks," but I'm pretty sure the joke had to do with female orgasms here.

Rubi is here, and she's pissed. 

The Long

Let's just get right into this: Wet is both an excellent and awful game. Yes, at the same time. As a homage to both grindhouse movies and games like Max Payne (which this game apes a lot of its style from), Wet is a hybrid shooter/slasher with a heavy emphasis on slow-mo and stylized gunplay. Odds are you already know from just reading this whether or not you are into this kind of thing, and if you are you might as well just go pick Wet up right now. It's like $20; you could do a lot worse. 

If you are still here, let's give the rundown and see if this is what are you looking for. But first: I still can't believe this game's title. I guess that was the point: to try and titillate and attract attention, but still...stupid.

This review is rated PG-13 for lots of forced, bad innuendos.

Now that I'm done with all the review foreplay, here's the story. Rubi is a badass bounty hunter who has the unfortunate character flaw of only associating herself with people who will eventually betray her. She swears like a sailor, drinks like her liver is made out of iron, and loves murdering dudes by the the dozen. From a story standpoint, it's your basic fare here: betrayal, revenge, and lots of it. Rubi doesn't take crap from anybody, a point she's determined to frequently bring across (either with bullets, fists, katana, or just yellin').

It works, to a point. The ending is freaking horrible and out of place, and while the story fits the aesthetic it never really does anything interesting. Usually the movies done in this style have some shocking twist in the middle or near the end, but there really isn't anything here. Rubi kills some people who try to kill her, and that's basically it. Not exactly Shakespeare here.

If you like shootin' dudes, though, this game is for you.

The main event of this orgy of blood n' guts is the gameplay, which borrows a heavy amount from Max Payne and then tosses a bit more on the side. The main element here is style. Like the Devil May Cry games, Wet wants you to off dudes in clever, cool ways, and it gives you a hefty amount of tools to do it in. Rubi can slip into slow-mo easier than a hooker out of her clothes, with nearly every movement causing the world to slow down and let her pop off headshots. Grabbing a pole or bar, leaping through the air, jumping to the side from cover, or just getting down on your knees will set Rubi up for a slow-motion scene. The length of time varies on your momentum (for the knee-slide) or the distance (for anything aerial), but basically it goes that if you need slow-mo, you can get to it.

The shooting is slick throughout. You always duel-wield, and the trick here is one gun auto-aims at whomever the camera is most focused on, while you have manual aiming with the second. Meaning you can easily slide between two dudes and get both of them off...I mean pop both of them off...um...KILL both of them simultaneously without breaking a sweat. It's a cool system and helps keep things balanced, because even if you have the worst aim in the world at least the auto-aiming will kill somebody for you.

Rubi is best when she's on her knees. Wait, I already made that joke. 

It's a good thing you have all these tools because the game loves to pretty much just put you in a large environment with tons of toys, throws a truckload of guys at you, and lets you use your imagination and go all out. A persistent combo meter provides both incentive to kill quickly and stylishly, and also has a practical purpose: Rubi will heal if her combo meter stays high enough. There are whiskey bottles between levels that do the same thing, but while in combat this usually is the only way to regen health. As somebody tired of the auto-heal concept in games, this is a nice touch that helps make the game hard but manageable. Kind of like how Space Marine forced you into combat to heal, rather than hide behind a box like a wimp. Captain Titus and Rubi should hook up or something.

Anyway, the point is that this is one of the few games with "lock you in a room and have you fight off waves of dudes" that I actually didn't mind that rather "gamey" aspect of. Killing dudes is a blast, and for some reason the slo-mo style never gets particularly boring. You also have a sword in case people get too close, and let me tell you: Jumping to a pole, grabbing it one handed while shooting enemies beneath you, and then leaping off it in a horizontal, slow-motion dive while raining duel-weapon death from above while plunky guitar music is blasting is entertaining as hell. Yeah, it's stupid, but it's just so fun I can't fault it.

90% of Rubi's acrobatics are for the sole purpose of killing somebody. 

This game does have its faults, though, the biggest being impotence. And by that I mean it runs out really early on. You are presented with just about every move in the book from the very beginning scenes, and while you do get new weapons (and "Rubi Time," which turns the game into a Sin City esque look and basically makes you invincible during select scenes) the core fundamentals never evolve at all. While this tends to be ok because the game doesn't last long anyway (another impotence joke, hur hur) I would have really liked to see some new tricks. Rubi is an interesting character and they could have done more with her limberness and acrobatics, but instead they just give you a few key tools, some slow-mo, and that's it. Gee, thanks. It's like and adult novelty store that only sells three items. Ok, that joke was forced, I apologize.

There is also a distinct lack of boss fights in this game. And by "lack" I mean "none." Every boss is just another wave of enemies followed by a quick-time event. Some bosses forgo the "wave of enemies" part and are just tapping the right button to win. Really? After giving us all these awesome tools, you chicken out when it's time to put them to use during what should be the climax of the game? It's a huge waste.

"Rubi Time" is cool, but why do guys all spray white liquid? Actually...I'm not going there.

A few other minor issues pop up as well. Whenever Rubi gets a new ability it flashes back to her and the junkyard she lives in (why does she live in a junkyard?) to give you an overly long tutorial explaining it. The thing is most of these "new" abilities aren't particularly unique, and the junkyard portions are way the crap too long and too boring. Another issue is the difficulty, and how it isn't consistent. At first the game holds your hand, making enemies stupid easy and your magic slow-motion powers just destroy them. Then it gets really hard and keeps slapping you across the face until you master the techniques. Then it gets easy again because you've figured the game out. It's inconsistent, and results in some stupidly cheap and frustrating deaths, and then moves on to not having much of a challenge at all. It's still fun, sure, but it lacks any sense of accomplishment. 

Insert "analogy referencing Wet to bad, unfulfilling sex" here.

The art direction is top-notch overall, though these screenshots don't do a good job showing it (these are all like promotional stills...for some reason I couldn't find any actual screenshots floating around, and I'm not doing a Google search for "wet" or "wet screenshots" because of obvious reasons). There's a film-grain and film-reel thing going on over the entire game, with the lines and the sometimes off-center screen blocking or whatever it's called; I know jack crap about movie terminology. Just know it looks a hell of a lot like a Grindhouse movie, though at some parts they could have sold it to me better. The multiplier and a few UI elements just straight up don't fit, which can be a bit jarring. But still, it looks really good (despite a few Unreal 3 texture pop-in problems) and they sell it well enough, especially Rubi time which is freaking awesome. Plus it sends you to cool places, which is appreciated. 

The music is excellent. The songs that play in battles and during cutscenes are catchy and fit the whole theme, and are just good songs to boot. I really liked listening to the soundtrack and sometimes even play it on youtube to get me pumped to go out and shoot a bunch of guys with two guns at once while leaping through the air. Don't tell the police. 

This song now is stuck in my head forever. Thanks, Wet.

Is Wet perfect? No, far from it. Parts feel a bit clunky, the balance is totally weird, it has boring bits and the mediocre story and lack of bosses is disappointing. However, as stress relief and a homage to grindhouse movies and stylized action movies, Wet pulls it off and in spades. It certainly isn't for everyone (as I said at the beginning), and even those who love the style will have to overlook it's minor but obnoxious gameplay niggles, but as it stands I had a blast with Wet. Considering you can grab it for less than $20 from just about anywhere, I'd say it would be worth checking into, especially if you liked Stranglehold, Max Payne, or games like that. There aren't enough of these badass, over-the-top shooters, and I'd like to see more of them.

But for now, on the rebound you could go a lot worse than Wet. Though I still think that title is completely absurd.

Three out of five stars. 

"Three out of five? After all that praise? I deserved at least four, raaawr!"