Wet Review [360]

The inspiration for Wet and its lead character, Rubi Malone, is obvious. The game artistically borrows heavily from Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill Vol. 1 and 2 as well as the recent resurgence in grindhouse cinema championed by Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez. Rubi's character is Tarantino's the bride, complete with katana blade and a few side arms for good measure. The Grindhouse influences continue with the whole game having a mock film-grain and reel jitter applied over it just like House of the Dead: Overkill, along with bad language and an abundance of violence. On paper this sounds great: sexy heroine who is happy to acrobatically slice, dice and shoot her way through hordes of enemies, whilst encapsulating the cinematic feel of ‘B' movie grindhouse flicks. Sadly the execution of this concept is far from perfect.

You play as the aforementioned Rubi Malone, a potty mouthed, alcohol swigging renegade assassin, who handles like a cross between Lara Croft and Max Payne (there is plenty of slow-mo gun play) liberally sprinkled with John Woo's Stranglehold. As you maim your way through the levels, having been double-crossed, chasing various drug runners and underworld hoods (the story is tenuous at best, the games emphasis is on action) you realise that Rubi is a very athletic hit-woman. You are able to run along walls, straight up walls (resulting in a cool back-flip), cling to ledges, swing around poles and knee slide dealing dual weapon, eye-watering, crotch level damage to enemies.

Hitting the fire button during these acrobatic moves triggers slow-mo time à la Max Payne where you wield dual weapons. During the slow-mo one of your weapons auto-aims on the nearest target, leaving you free reign with your second weapon to focus on other enemies around you, hopefully pulling off some nice headshots, increasing your multiplier and ultimately your point tally. You see Wet's gameplay is action focused and is all about chaining kills using Rubi's acrobatic skills. Like Devil May Cry's style point system, the more chain kills Rubi gets the higher her multiplier becomes and the faster her health regenerates. And what do points make? Prizes! The more points you get the more you have to spend on upgrades. Upgrades are accessed at the end of levels and you can increase weapon proficiency and hone Rubi's athletic abilities. This obviously encourages you to knee slide through one wave of foes, to jumping over the next set popping caps in their ass as you do so. This to begin with is a lot of fun, but after many levels of the same thing becomes tedious, as well as not offering a perfectly fluid experience.

As you progress through levels you regularly encounter arena battles similar to Madworld. During these fights, Rubi is locked in an area that is tailored environmentally to her skills with lots of poles and ledges to leap from, the aim being to take out multiple spawning points to halt the onslaught of foes. To break up the monotony of taking goons out, a boss with a chain-gun makes an appearance, which takes a fair amount of ammo, before being weak enough to be dispatched with a Quick Time Event (QTE).