Overall… it was very boring.
T
he combat is button
m
ashing, the exploration element was very boring to me, and overall gamep
lay wasn’
t very interesting. I did like the humor at so
e parts, but ktherwise this wasn’t very enjoyable at all. The game just feels like a… mid-quality downloadable game, definitely not something worth the full price.
WET
Well, I went at this with little to no expectations. I saw a few gameplay videos last year, before the game lost its publisher the first time, before Bethesda picked it up.
Well, first things first: I love the graphical style. Looks like an old movie. I love it. The character models are a bit low quality(though Rubi is higher quality than the rest), but the style is great. The second part of the demo has a nice part where the graphic style completely changes. All in solid colors, characters and object are black, the “background” is red red and blood is white. That part looks awesome. And the little we hear of the soundtrack is actually pretty fun. It’s an original soundtrack made for the game, and it fits the visual style quite well.
So the gameplay. Well, it’s relatively simplistic. The game doesn’t even use all the buttons, which is commendable since these days it feels like developers are forced to use every button despite rarely actually NEEDING it. X jumps (a bit weird to get used to, since Rubi jumps forward all the time), Square uses the sword, circle makes you slide on the floor, R1 shoots your guns (you can just hold the button for better shooting) and L1 makes you wall-run (either vertically or horizontally). The d-pad makes you switch guns (the demo gives you access to a few more than the standard pistol). You can use some of those in combination for different moves. Using L1 near an enemy when you’re sliding towards him makes you do a Human Wall-Run, for example. Oh, and Triangle is used for various context-sensitive things(opening doors, using ziplines, drinking alcohol).
The combat is pretty simple. Actually, your sword kills pretty much everything in one hit or two. Slash your sword, kill stuff, move on. The interesting part here is the gunplay. When you, jump, slide, or wall-run, you can shoot enemies. As soon as you press R1 in these cases, the game goes in a slow-motion thing, where you can aim at your enemies easier. Added to that is an auto-aim feature for you second pistol. So you can aim and shoot at one enemy with one gun, while the other gun will automatically aim for other enemies, or if there’s only one enemy, pme gun will automatically aim for him and you aim on your own for the other. The combat is simple, but it’s actually satisfying, and button-mashing will get you killed.
The game isn’t perfect though. After the fun first part where you’re chasing after some guy and the BADASS part after where Rubi goes berserk, you get what could be an AWESOME chase scene in an action movie. Here Rubi chases after… some car I guess, on a highway. Her method of transportation? Her hands and feet. She starts on a truck, then jumps from car to car, shooting and cutting baddies as she goes forward, doing death-defying stunts. The scene is truly awesome. But the gameplay… Well, it plays like an on-rail shooter, and your aim is SLOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOW. You shoot enemies as they come out of their cars to shoot you(killing them is pretty important, because the longer they live, the closer you get from dying). And then… QTEs. Why? QTEs suck, I’d rather just look at this awesome scene instead of the whole stupid “Press X to not die” parts.
While I’m in the subject of QTEs, I guess I’ll also whine that opening doors by mashing buttons is still the stupidest idea ever.
Another thing I find is that some things lack transition. For example, to heal up, you drink liquor. Those scenes are cool. Rubi takes a sip of whatever the drink is, throws the bottle in the air and shoots it. But there’s no… transition after it, it goes straight back to gameplay and she’s instantly back in her neutral animations instead of moving back from the “bottle-shooting” animation. A bit weird.
Overall though, the demo was quite enjoyable. The gameplay is pretty fun, and the style of the game is just really cool. *Insert perverted “Wet” joke here*. Not sure if it’s gonna be worth the launch price of 60$ (70$ here in Canada), but it definitely looks like a fun game. Check out the demo if you have a European account, it’s worth it.
Console, Games, Preview, demo, impressions, ps3, sexy, xbox 360
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