Review: Wanted - Weapons of Fate

Last year's over-the-top action film, Wanted, was primed for the videogame treatment from the onset. The zero-to-hero narrative has obvious if clichéd appeal, but it was the concept of curving a bullet's flight path with a skillful, adrenaline-pumped flick of your arm to reach cover-bound enemies that really stole the show and set the stage for digital recreation.

Despite being absolutely impossible in actuality (I asked AQA), it has a wow factor that's likely to impress even the most stubborn of realists in the same way Max Payne's Bullet Time or TimeShift's chronological manipulation did. It's very stylised, especially on the occasion where a cinematic camera tails the bullet from your barrel to the enemy's body, but as the two aforementioned games were criticised, particularly the latter, for over-reliance, Weapons of Fate suffers a similar... fate.

Call of Fate

For those of you who haven't seen the film, it chronicles the rise of Wesley Gibson – a once rusty cog in the corporate machine - breaking away from banality and panic attacks to embrace the legacy of his father as a super assassin. While the film deals with this transformation, Weapons of Fate picks up where it left off, pitting Gibson against the assassin group The Fraternity in a bid to uncover the truth about his mother.

The game begins with Gibson being awoken by a couple of SWAT officers ransacking an upstairs room in his apartment. One of the guys takes something from the back of a framed picture of Gibson's mother, and having never known about it, he pursues the now fleeing government officials in order to take back what is rightfully his and find out why they want it.

Initially Gibson doesn't possess the bullet bending ability – but, like any other, a tutorial interval teaches you the ropes as soon as it's unlocked – and so you're left to put into play what the game has taught you about the cover system.

Got You Covered

From the appearance of your building's corridors, it becomes obvious what to expect from the rest of the game: linear pathways littered with low walls, crates and obstacles behind which to take refuge in order to recharge your health and exchange tentative gunfire with the enemy. It's very familiar in this day and age of cover shooters, with X attaching you to a surface, L2 taking aim and R2 firing, but what GRIN has tried to do differently with the formula is increasing the fluidity of movement between cover locations.

When behind cover the left analogue stick unveils the advances you can make to different cover from your current location. On top of the obvious left and right, you can move diagonally, out and forward or straight over the top – of course, depending on what cover is actually available. In later stages of the game when your adrenaline meter is more substantial, pressing triangle instead of X to move from cover fills the transition with the opportunity to shoot in slow motion, which is essential in most if not all boss fights following unlocking the ability.

The cover mechanic works well and allows fluid and effective movement with the comfort of safety, particularly when enemies are pinned down by blind fire, leaving you to zip around without them even knowing. But the emphasis placed on it throughout the entirety of the game begins to sour only shortly into its feeble five-or-so hours of play. You trundle through the levels, attaching to cover whenever you encounter enemies and generally staying behind cover until they're all dead, at which you point you move to the next level.

Missed Opportunity

The AI also makes exhaustive use of cover, leaning out and taking a few pot shots, much in the same vein as yourself, but, though it's better than running brainlessly toward you, when they're behind cover any exposed body part becomes impervious to bullets as, in fact, they move straight through them. Wasting precious ammo on what you think will be a critical hit, only to see it impact nothing but the surface behind the enemy, is simply unforgivable.

But then again, once unlocked, this is why the bullet curving ability is there in the first place – to make hidden enemies no longer unreachable. It would be easy to mistake the AI's use of cover as smart self-preservation, but it is really just to catalyse the use of the game's main gimmick.

Thankfully, GRIN has made a valiant effort to break up the incessant cover-based action with few fleeting but well incorporated, enjoyable QTEs. At random points in the game, these sequences require you to do nothing but shoot in the small, timed windows of opportunity that permeate your character's predetermined route. Depending on which difficulty level you have selected the elements of these QTEs change. For example, Easy and Medium differ only in the allotted time you have, but Hard mode removes the time limit prompts and the reticules around the enemy bullets which, if left alone, cause impromptu death and a repeat performance from the beginning. Frustratingly, Weapons of Fate would have benefited from more of these events because, unlike many other uses of QTEs, they're well integrated and serve a purpose – but, then again, they might just seem great in comparison to the bulk of the game's formula.

Weapons of Fail

Worryingly, on my many revisits back to the game to verify facts for the review, a substantial bug reared its head in the form of large chunks of the levels not getting textured. Invisible walls meant I could see into certain rooms or, to recall the worst circumstance, walk across vast gaps – Indian Jones and the Last Crusade style. Other than that Weapons of Fate is generally of a high standard, appearance-wise. There's the odd bit of texture pop-up, particularly in the mountain level, but both in-game and any of the many cut-scenes are of pleasing quality – even if the prior suffers from sporadic drops in frames-per-second.

So, the movie and the game have something in common: they try hard and have some cool, fun moments, but lack the necessary substance or flare in order to make the time between each thrill worth enduring. The first time you see the cinematic bullet curving you'll certainly want more, but once you've performed the action a hundred times and sadly realise there isn't more, the game's over anyway. Another momentarily fun, but uninspired movie tie-in.