WET, this is a shortened term for wetworks, which involves a messy job that involves hands being wet with blood. This is where our heroine, Rubi Malone (voiced by Eliza Dushku), comes into the picture. You start off the game with the task to retrieve a heart for Trevor Ackers, so his father William Ackers, head of a crime syndicate, may continue living. One year later you are tasked by a man you believe to be William Ackers to find Trevor. After things don't go as planned, you realize you have been setup and you are out for revenge, traveling between Hong Kong and London.
Action in this game is all based around Rubi's acrobatics and mixture of gun and sword play. Rubi begins the game wielding dual pistols and brandishing a katana. As you traverse the various settings, you perform various acrobatic motions in the form of wall runs, knee slides, flips, and even ladder slides. While performing these moves, anytime you attack the enemy with firearms you enter slow motion. When in slow motion, targeting is more precise, you can easily combo kills and you earn multiplier scores. As your multiplier increases, so do the scores for killing enemies and the speed at which your health regenerates. I did find that trying to aim while not in slow motion is almost unbearable, which forces you to constantly use acrobatic tricks in all the fire fights. It would have been nice to have a better zoom for shooting while you were stationary.
Throughout the game you will be involved in different scenarios. Often you will find various Quick Time Events popping up as you progress through the game. These never feel forced and usually the buttons you are asked to press coincide with the buttons used during normal action sequences. The best scenarios are when you find yourself riding on cars during a chase. This creates a great mix of shooting elements and the Quick Time Events, as it makes you stay alert to needing to jump from vehicle to vehicle. There is also a sequence of falling out of a plane and practically sky diving while shooting enemies and even dodging debris to reach a parachute pack. I did find an area with land mines to be quite frustrating as jumping with Rubi can be touchy and you may find yourself not always jumping to the exact location you attempted to.
Throughout the game you can access an Upgrade Shop to make purchases that will improve gun damage, fire rate and your abilities. You use your Style Points you have collected to purchase these upgrades. To gain Style Points, you need to combo enemy kills and ensure you keep your score multiplier at the highest level during gun fights. You can also find Style Points hidden throughout the game ranging from 250 to 1000 points. You will also add more firepower to your arsenal as the story progresses, including shotguns, SMGs, and exploding cross bows.
At times, you will enter Rage Mode after blood splatters onto Rubi's face. In this mode you will take down enemies quickly and easily. The goal in this mode is to close off all enemy entry points while racking up as many chain kills as possible. The mode is all in Red, black and white, and features some great music to increase the intensity of the fire fight. Unfortunately this mode only happens as part of the story and can not be entered manually.
WET isn't a long game by any means and definitely doesn't rely on a long, drawn out story. Instead, the game relies on fast paced action, over the top characters and an excellent soundtrack that feels like it was ripped right out of a Quentin Tarantino film. While I found myself having a lot of fun with the game, there were a lot of frustrating incidents usually dealing with controls just not being tight enough at times. This game has a lot of faults, but none that I found to be game breaking. Your enjoyment of this game will be in your ability to forgive these faults and enjoy the game for the mindless fun it is. This is one of those hate it or love it titles, and due to that I suggest trying the demo first or giving this one a rent before getting your hands WET.
*Reviewed on the XBox 360*
