Multiplayer Game Reviews

Wet – Get Ready for some Monkey Business.

Every game has to start with an idea, but it’s rare to find a game that feels like it truly started with a vision. This one most certainly does. It captures the gritty, raw feeling of emerging action cinema and combines it with the modern stylization of slow motion combat and environmental manipulation. It’s fast paced, action-packed, challenging, full of interesting options and has an artistic charm all its own. Ah, and you can’t forget the creepy cymbal smashing monkeys you can collect! In short, Wet is what you’d get if you gave Quentin Tarantino the reins behind a video game development studio. It’s fun packed in a never-say-die main character, rolled in blood, guts, and explosions, and kicked in the face for good measure. Here’s the breakdown.

Technical Quality

The game had a vision of style that it carries out flawlessly. The graphics are excellently crafted for its design, fit the motif at every turn and purposely gritty, which adds greatly to the experience. For those looking for a smoother feel though, the film-tear is optional, and can be turned off very easily from the options menu. The sound runs in the old school action movie clique and the music creates an energized atmosphere that will rock your socks. Controls are easy to learn and work well with the environment, giving you as many opportunities as possible to use the environment to your advantage and create a genuine movie-style play on the action. On top of this all, the interface is as simple as it gets, and it works out perfectly for the game. You’ve got a health bar, an indicator of which gun you currently have equipped and it’s ammo count. Everything else is all about the visual action. Wet gets a high five in the tech department, courtesy of its own merits.

Gameplay

The gameplay for Wet is fun, visceral, and rewarding, while at the same time being unforgiving in the vein of any true hardcore action flick. At certain stages of the game you’ll find yourself completely surrounded by continually spawning hordes of baddies, all bent on beating (or shooting) the hell out of you until you break the entrance controls to their spawn point. At other points it plays almost like a throwback to the old Dragon’s Lair game, or more familiarly, Indigo Prophecy, where on screen cues prompt you to press certain buttons in order to survive the challenge. It also mixes up the level designs, going from close quarters hack-and slash stages to balcony jumping shootouts, car chases and even more interesting and original stages I’d rather not ruin for you. The game certainly gets you engaged. You’ll quickly find yourself empathizing with the main character’s begrudgingly frustrated attitude towards her antagonists, and occasionally even her reluctant allies. No matter what way you look at it, Wet is downright fun, and it doesn’t punish you for losing the occasional firefight. Returning you to the nearest checkpoint if you die, which is always reasonably close by, it never seems like a chore to try again. Instead, it feels like a motivating “I’m gonna get that son of a *$&@^!” challenge. It’s a rare game that can make you feel happy to be running back for more after you just got whomped, but Wet does just that. And it’s all the more rewarding when you beat it the next time around.

Any way you look at it, Wet is a hardcore work of video gaming art.

The next review is still pending, I’m working on getting a way to post screenshots of console games without having to deal with the copyright nonsense from other review sites. Did find an interesting game on steam last week though that I wanted to review immediately following its release, but some things came up, so maybe I can get it some late exposure here sometime this week.