I would put money on WET beginning life as a failed pitch for a Kill Bill game. You play badass action-babe Rubi Malone, who wields a katana and dual pistols as she travels around the world on a roaring rampage of revenge. When Rubi gets really mad they even do the siren thing!
This Tarantino/Rodriguez neo-grindhouse vibe is exceptionally strong: the entire game has a scratchy film-effect filter over it, the gory and anarchic vibe nicely echoes straight-to-video trash, and the game even pauses to show you short public domain adverts from the 1950s (that are slightly at odds with the overall 1970s tone but whatever).
Sadly for WET this aesthetic arguably peaked in 2007 with Grindhouse, which may be part of the reason why this was a sales flop and has all but disappeared from memory. Or, alternatively, it could be because “WET” is an objectively terrible name for a game.
It’s a shame, because the acrobatic slow-motion gun and swordplay works extremely well. There’s a lot of DNA in common with Stranglehold, with points awarded for dispatching enemies stylishly as you dive, slide and wall-run around the combat arenas, each of which contains slick Tony Hawks style trick lines designed to keep you twirling and leaping your way through enemy fire.
There’s not a tonne of depth, though the sole aim of the combat is to make you feel cool and it knocks that out of the park. I particularly enjoyed that WET isn’t stingy with the slo-mo: unlike Max Payne or Stranglehold there’s no meter holding you back, making combat pleasantly balletic.
But there are rough edges. The reliance on insta-fail QTEs in cutscenes isn’t great, there’s almost no variation in enemy types until the final levels, and I encountered a couple of bugs that forced a reload. But given that the game is only 7 hours long most of these are easy to ignore (and having paid £1 for this from a bargain bin I’m happy with the length).
The biggest problem is with the unnecessarily convoluted story. At the beginning you’re presented with a crime boss played by Malcolm McDowell and his eccentric underlings. “Great”, you’ll think. “I’ll enjoy carving up each of them before getting to the big bad”. Instead you’re sent on a winding and confusing path involving various other crime bosses, none of whom is as fun as Malcolm McDowell.
Characters seem to simply disappear from the story: a friend asks you (with his dying breath) to rescue his kidnapped brother. You don’t. At one point you’re injured by a bizarre flamenco cowboy swordsman who promises to see you again for a rematch…. before flouncing out of the game never to be seen again.
Perhaps that’s is a symptom of a chaotic development or stuff reserved for a sequel (that would never happen), but how hard can it be to tell a comprehensibly B-movie story about a cool chick with an insatiable bloodlust and access to a private jet?
WET isn’t some forgotten classic, but it’s not a bad little game and probably deserved a sequel to iron out those kinks. With it trapped on Xbox/PS3 and zero chance of a remaster happening it’s only going to sink further into obscurity, but if you ever see it for a quid you could do far worse.
Pixel Hunted 