Yesterday the PSN was treated with a demo for the upcoming game Wanted: Weapons of Fate. This game is loosely based off the movie with some tweaks to the overall story line. The demo takes place on a plane which has been hijacked and all of the passengers have been killed. Your goal is to fight your way past all the hijackers in order to make it to the cockpit.
The overall controls of the game work rather nicely. X will snap you to the wall, and from there you can do a few things. By simply hitting R2 you will blind fire. Holding down L2 will allow you to pop out from cover and aim; simply press R2 to fire. The aiming system feels a lot like Uncharted, which is nice but does have a specific drawback. Because it is more realistic, it does take some time to get used to. If you’re leaning out from behind cover, an indicator will pop up at the bottom of the screen asking you to hit X to jump to another area. All of this feels very similar to Gears of War, and in fact it’s pretty much an exact replica.
In addition to the normal shooting, you have the ability to curve bullets. Pressing R1 will cause you to stand up and see the outline of the closest enemy, even if they’re hiding behind cover. Their outline will either be red or white, depending on if you can hit them or not. Red outlines are a no go, while white means you can actually hit them with this feature. But be careful with your bullet arc, as misaiming can still lead to tearing the hell out of walls and ceilings rather than enemies.
In addition to the gunfights, they also implemented cinematic close-quarter kills. When you get close to an enemy, hit circle and you will go into a cinematic cut scene where you will perform an instant kill. From my short gameplay experience, there are a few different kills, but they did start to get repetitive. Hopefully the full release will offer a full roster of kill animations.
The environments are somewhat interactive. I was able to move around some carts and blow up some destructible environments, including a moment where I blew up a fire extinguisher, causing the airplane door to bust open. The effects are cool, but when the door opened it didn’t really change anything other than adding more environmental sound along with making it look like wind was rushing out.
The only negative part of the demo is that the camera can be a pain. Sometimes it worked extremely well, while other times it refused to cooperate. It felt like if they just backed it up a few more feet it would have worked nicely. The camera also caused issues in some areas when trying to kill some of the highjackers. They use cover very well, so if the camera happens to misbehave it can be quite difficult to get a lock on your enemy.
Overall, the demo is a success as Weapons of Fate wasn’t even on my radar up to this point. Previously, I had looked at this game and figured it was just another movie tie-in game doomed to failure. However, I was pleasantly surprised and, although it does borrow heavily from other games and does not really do anything new, it was pretty much a blast to play. As it stands, the game is more of a rental. But if a few issues are fixed, this could actually be a worthy movie adaptation. Stay tuned for our full review when the game is released March 24th.
