Canadian developers Artificial Mind And Movement owe a lot of credit to a lot of people. Not in terms of business or financial assistance mind you, though the company certainly had some trouble in delivering WET to us, but rather in terms of its creativity. This is a game that’s effectively a collage of influences both from the realms of cinema and videogames, loosely pasted together to make something far inferior than any of the ingredients that have gone into it. Take the stylistics of Rodriguez and Tarantino’s Grindhouse, the slow-motion bullet-battles of John Woo’s Stranglehold and the platforming of Prince of Persia: Sands of Time – albeit far less refined, add a repulsive female protagonist and you’ve got WET. Ta daa.
WET – a euphemism for being covered in blood we’re told – tells the tale of foul-mouthed, whiskey-swilling gun-for-hire Rubi Malone and her pursuit of vengeance after a customary deal-gone-bad encounter. Armed with dual pistols, shotguns, a katana and some gravity-defying acrobatics she brutally works her way through the ranks of an underground organisation to find her prey, and to try and convince us that she’s not just Kill Bill’s Beatrix Kiddo with a darker hair tone and a busted-up aeroplane for a house. She succeeds in one of these areas.
The good news is that WET provides exactly the kind of bloodthirsty enjoyment you’d expect from its synopsis. The run-and-gun dynamic is perfectly functional, as Rubi throws herself around rooftops of Hong Kong, ice-houses, a carnival of Chinese New Year and various others. WET rarely withdraws the user’s control of firearms when controlling Rubi, and even during the most frivolous of gymnastic flourishes, she still finds a way to pepper her enemies in gunfire. To WET’s credit, there are small thrills to be had in watching Rubi knee-slide at break-neck speeds through crowds of enemies, her bullets flying in all directions to despatch foes as she goes.
The de rigour features of wall-running, pole-swinging, slides and dives are all present and correct, and provide more than enough opportunity to rack up the kill count. Snapping into slow-motion whenever Rubi partakes in a little gymnastics, WET allows good use of its dual-aiming system. Automatically snapping a cross-hair to a nearby enemy, and allowing the player control of another with the right analogue stick, it’s a perfectly acceptable control feature, and perhaps the only originality we can credit to AM&M that operates well. Use of the katana is reserved for enemies only at the shortest of ranges, but largely goes neglected in favour of the four types of firearm – accessed in real-time using the D-pad.
So yes, WET has a couple of tricks that are mildly enjoyable, but it chooses to use them with such regularity that the slow-motion acrobatics and style that initially appeal to a player are soon enough likely to be the reason they turn WET off. Rubi may as well be on the moon for the amount of time she spends floating through the air in slow-motion, and what makes it worse is that the game demands that you kill everyone in bullet-time. Rubi can be standing directly in front of a enemy with dual shotguns pointed head-ward, but chances are that she’ll lose an awful lot of health (which she recovers by swigging whiskey before blasting the bottle, by the way) by just pulling the trigger straight away. Instead, she’ll have to dive left, then right, then find a pole to swing, then run on a wall to best protect herself. Ultimately, stylish is almost exactly what Rubi isn’t. There’s nothing impressive about rolling around on the floor in front of a stationary enemy whilst he drills bullets at you. WET overdoses on slow-motion, then treats itself with some more.
Fluidity is clearly AM&M’s aim with Rubi, but WET’s physics means she navigates her environments with awkwardness. Leaps from buildings see the protagonist snap onto poles or ledges without any real sense of weight or gravity, and this makes for some unenjoyable platforming. What we can give credit for is the fact that these platforming sections are not cordoned off from the gunfights, and more often than not Rubi will need to look out for enemies in windows on or balconies as she climbs and swings her way forwards – carefully guided by the curiously named ‘Rubi-vision’, some big red lines telling the player where you can go and where you can’t. This is a problem with WET, as where Rubi will survive or die from drops is left very much up to the level designers rather than the physics, and as a result there’s little if any room for exploration alternate routes. The terrain rarely makes clear where it is Rubi is supposed to be going.
Graphically WET just about makes the cut, and it’s grainy-film filters and flickers are enough to make the game look a little distinctive at least, and although it’s stylistics are massively derivative of the aforementioned Grindhouse, it is a reasonably fresh aesthetic in the realm of videogames and gets away with it on that basis. In terms of narrative, forget it. Something about a gang and revenge, and there’s an evil British nemesis in there somewhere, but WET doesn’t seem to pride itself too much on its story-telling thankfully – take note of the final climatic encounter, and count just how quickly the credits are rolling after you’ve completed the frankly god-awful Quick Time Events.
So there you go, that’s WET. Short, straight-forward, unimaginative, but play it through once and there’s some guilty pleasures to be had amongst those grainy visuals and ridiculous action sequences. With little to no replay value other than a few unlockable difficulty settings, though, it’s perhaps best that it’s not trying to call you back for more, because you sure as hell won’t want any – and what’s more, you’ll never value slo-mo again.
VideogameUK verdict: 5/10
