Wanted: Dead PC Review

Wanted: Dead is a third-person hack-and-slash backed by an impending global war, a strike force composed of reformed criminals, and a cyberpunk-flavored plot. Developed by 110 Industries and published by Soleil, the game has many positives where you'll use guns and swords against intelligent enemies in its futuristic setting. It's clear that Soleil wanted to present a game that could replicate the thrill of gunfights and close-quarters combats. 

It's not irrational to expect that the game will have some of the elements seen from Team Ninja since the director of Ninja Gaiden was also a director of Wanted: Dead and the team Team Ninja employees that left Tecmo. The question is whether or not the blood-soaked title can replicate the ethos that was imparted by these well-known individuals.

 

Despite its lofty expectations, sadly, however, Wanted: Dead suffers from weak execution and a lack of fine-tuning in its gameplay. When there are names in the credit like Tomonobu Itagaki, Yoshifuru Okamoto as the Producer, Hiroaki Matsui as Director, and Natsuki Tsurugai as the Lead Planner, expectations from the fans of the games they've delivered in the past go much higher.

Even though the developers have worked on games like Ninja Gaiden and Dead or Alive, Wanted: Dead isn't what most of us anticipated. Buried beneath a slew of unfocused concepts, with the exception of brief moments of greatness when the gameplay eventually clicks, it's evident that this isn't precisely the kind of thing that Soleil hoped to achieve.

The story of Wanted: Dead is intricate, and there are some quite dark and violent elements, but there is also potential for a funny subtext. You take control of Lt. Hannah Stone, the head of Zombie Squad and a cold-blooded murderer armed to the teeth with a katana and a collection of weaponry. Her companions, marksman Herzog, specialist Cortez, and the medic Doc, get entangled in a scheme and must expose the plan or be incarcerated once again.

 

After completing a thorough training sequence, you are tasked with a mission to take charge of Zombie Squad and uncover a massive conspiracy. The game is set in a post-industrial future, and you'll have to fight your way through hordes of gangs, soldiers, and other enemies to discover a corporate conspiracy. To progress, you'll have to clean up rooms and passages sprinkled around diverse cityscapes. The story uses several themes typical of cyberpunk fiction, such as artificial humans, yet the combination of these components gives the story its own feel.

Hannah Stone is a likeable protagonist, and being a badass shooter with an assault rifle and pistol, she also carries a katana for close-quarters fighting and has a wicked sense of style. Unlike her teammates, only she has the sword-fighting ability with the katana, which mostly serves as her primary weapon throughout the game. With the katana, you can perform a variety of combinations, most of which entail the more or less ripping of body parts of the enemy, either by the sword only or in combination with the given handgun that has no ammo limit.

If timed correctly, parrying with a katana can stun your enemy so much that they won't be able to launch a counterattack in time. Once an enemy takes enough damage, you can perform special attacks, and there are unique attacks that can't be blocked and are signaled on-screen with a red glow and a sound.

 

The distinctive Soleil flair is on full display in the thrilling melee fights, as limbs are hacked off, torsos are sliced open, and heads are severed spectacularly. Wanted: Dead's gameplay is packed with hack-and-slash actions. Hannah is adept with both the katana and a number of weapons, allowing her to dispatch a wide array of enemies in style. Enhancing Hannah's abilities will also allow you to access new, more innovative abilities.

But it seems like a major flaw that you can't jump at all to do air combos. Large-scale battles can be exciting because of the sidearm's wide array of regular combos and mixed chains of actions for stunning or parrying. There are over fifty different finishers, and a wide variety of devastating attacks can make for some really chaotic battles, particularly when combined with the game's awkward controls and lack of a reliable cover system.

Wanted: Dead is more of a tactical action game, despite its fast-paced action. The game's combat is engaging enough to keep you playing for a while, but after a few deaths that force you to restart from a distant checkpoint and several crude encounters, you could start to lose interest. Apart from the common enemies, most levels in Wanted: Dead end with a boss fight against a new enemy, which is a nice touch.

 

On the other hand, a few of these enemies are unnecessarily made to be robust, which often results in a disappointing death. Even if Hannah's defense may be upgraded to endure more knocks, parrying remains the primary technique of avoiding harm in close quarters due to the system's default limitations.

Hannah's health can be partially healed by sword strikes, which cure any damage from certain enemies. Also, the game's checkpoint system allows Hannah's gun to be updated and improved over time. However, due to its clumsy control, sometimes it's difficult to pull through certain situations and repeatedly dying also gets overly frustrating.

The absence of a jump button is strange when considering how the battle system is designed. Having to empty all your ammo just to take down a few enemies or to cause any significant damage is the game's most unpleasant feature. In contrast, you can go down easily after taking a few since enemies are always hitting you simultaneously.

 

Hannah's move repertoire seems considerably more restricted than expected, even with a completely maxed skill tree. While you can obtain Offence, Defense, and Utility traits from a skill tree, they won't affect much in terms of enhancing the gameplay. Other than some of the defensive skills, most of the traits involve dashing attack or the ability to execute defenseless enemies in certain combos.

These traits don't necessarily increase Hannah's ability to deal with or even take more damage if compared to her stats from the beginning of the game to the end. Since you're mostly going to be in a chaotic situation, and the game's complex mechanism won't really let you focus only on a newly unlocked technique. And the more you'll unlock the skill tree, the more frustrating it'll become for the lack of jump ability for doing air combos.

The game has a cover shooting mechanism, although Hannah usually takes on enemies head-on. The layout of the level provides very little opportunity for cover shooting; however, doing so sometimes might be helpful when throwing grenades. Since the majority of the enemies will start attacking Hannah and be heading in her direction the moment, they appear on screen, sword and handgun combos over shooting become inevitable.

 

You have a few options when it comes to weaponry, and both the basic pistol and machine gun are capable of being modified with additional components. Though the weapons are fun to use and the different methods are easy to understand, a more even distribution of battle types across the levels would have served to tie everything together.

Seamless transitions between third-person shooting and hack-and-slash keep you amused as you eliminate your enemies, but the difficulty of Wanted: Dead is almost absurd. Its merciless nature stems from its frustrating control mechanisms and the limited number of lives you are given before the game screen appears.

Unfortunately, despite appearances, you have no control over any of the team members at any time, which was a major flaw for what was ostensibly a squad-based game. Hannah's team doesn't do any significant damage to any enemies, not even bosses, when it would be of great assistance. They do through grenades and keep on shooting in the enemy's direction, but they don't take hits and don't do much either other than appear in the reviving Hannah cutscene when you're down.

 

Wanted: Dead encourages you to dispatch any long-range enemy by just dashing toward them and swinging her sword till they're dead. Probably because the shooting is terrible, and there is always hardly any ammunition left in the weapons. You can pick up ammo from the guns randomly dropped by the enemies, but they aren't enough. Locking onto enemies isn't available, and aiming the handgun is likewise unavailable.

You'll encounter five distinct sorts of foes: Gunmen, machete-men, shield-men, ninjas, and heavy hitters are all dead. In one mission, you'll face up against just android, and you'll find that they play out similarly to the rest of the game's enemies. You'll spend much of the game fending against the same five foes with the same three weapons.

Sceneries in Wanted: Dead are somewhat nicely done with well-balanced lighting effects. The character models could use some fine-tuning. Hannah's appearance is rather anime-like, while the rest of the crew seems a bit cartoonish. A lot of the cinematic animations, particularly for the main crew, seemed like they were motion captured.

 

It's actually nice to see that none of the characters can sit motionless for more than a second without making a dramatic gesture. The game's audio is aided by a playlist of both original and well-known songs, together with a voice-over of adequate quality. Even though there are some visually appealing sections, however, overall the game looks and feels like it was made for last-gen platforms.

Despite its uniqueness, Wanted: Dead is not for everyone. Design-wise, it falls short and frequently seems unfinished. Even though people behind the game also worked for Ninja Gaiden and its sequel, the quality of Wanted: Dead is nowhere near as high. While the time spent with this game cannot be deemed wasted, it ultimately falls short of expectations. 

Wanted: Dead's challenging settings, unique approach to battle, and visual presentation will attract some interest, but they certainly won't be adequate to hold most players' interest for very long. Its gameplay mechanism and core plot shortcomings made it difficult to enjoy as a whole. If you, however, like hack and slash, decapitating enemies, and are willing to die often to do it, then Wanted: Dead is the game for you.

Azfar Rayan (@AzfarRayan)
Editor, NoobFeed