Wanted: Dead Review (luc2posse)
"Less is more... how can that be? It's impossible... more is more."
The Yngwie Malmsteen of video games.
It's kind of audacious just how much this game is trying to do. The whole experience is ridiculously entertaining.
Have you ever liked ?
Well, this game does it.
Do you like
the handgun counter from Bloodborne?
the sword parry from Sekiro?
the sword combos, delimbing, and obliteration from Ninja Gaiden?
any third-person cover shooter?
gaining experience and getting new skills?
long story cutscenes?
mini-games?
This game does all of it, all at once, with wildly varying degrees of success.
Lack of Polish or Intentional Trolling?
Did you like the Spider Tank boss from Ninja Gaiden 3? Of course not, no one liked that. Well, it's back in Wanted: Dead.
The Wanted: Dead logo is like a stylized, upside-down, horizontally-flipped version of the Metallica logo.
For some reason, the keyboard settings bind sword swings and firing the assault rifle to the left mouse button. This has to be changed every time I start the game. Every other setting I changed is remembered other than that one. If I forget to change it, I either can't shoot or can't use the sword.
The in-game loading screen.
Lieutenant Stone wears a necklace with two crosses, because one isn't enough.
The amount of blood on Stone's face in-game and in cutscenes is ridiculous. Hilariously distracting.
Exiting the game from the menu doesn't always stop the game in the background. At 1.8 hours, I exited the game to get lunch and think about it. Came back a while later and Steam said I was at 4.7 hours.
The twelve cats at the police station. The cat tree. The cat on the cat tree.
There are no Asian people in Hong Kong at all.
I usually hate "games as movies" with long cutscenes, but the long cutscenes in this game are so absurdly compelling, I haven't skipped a single one.
There are a ton of enemies in Level 3 with the exact same voice actor, all calmly taunting you as you carve them into pieces. They speak over each other in a cacaphony of violence and absurdity.
Still Somehow Fun
Somehow, after everything it does wrong (which is almost everything), the game is still a lot of fun.
It shouldn't work. It doesn't work. But it all comes together in one of the most memorable video games I can remember playing.
The combat is great. Maybe the best combat since NG3:RE (which had excellent combat but a slew of other issues).
I love this game.