WET and wild Action
WET sees you take on the role of fixer, and gun for hire, Rubi Malone, one of the more believable female video game characters in recent times. Over the course of the game the story takes Rubi across the globe and double crossed and left out for revenge. That’s about as deep as the story gets, which makes it all the easier for it to set up the somewhat over the top action set pieces.
These set pieces make up the vast bulk of WET’s gameplay, whether it’s the intense arena style shoot-outs, the mad cap highway car chases or the highly stylized ‘Rage’ sections, all of which twist the game’s core mechanic just enough to keep the action broken up nicely. WET also plays simply whilst maintaining it’s sense of style, letting you chain together slow motion shooting dives, slides, wall runs and jumps with vicious sword play without getting overly complex or long precision requiring combo’s. This may alienate some of the more hardcore action fans, but it does let you pull of moves constantly fitting the games sense of style.
However, between these sections lays the first of WET’s small problems. Whilst navigating the levels, as long as you keep momentum, it’s fine. But it’s sometimes easy to lose sight of your path, and when you do, the game doesn’t do much to help you get back on track. There is ‘Rubi Vision’ which lets you see area’s you can grab, but if they’re out of sight, then you’re stuck. This is even more noticeable in arenas when you can’t see how to get to one of the set targets. There’s also the occasional challenge level, seeing you run around Rubi’s bone yard home and showing off new weapons you acquire, but after the first one the rest just feel out of place. The worst offence WET commits is how flat it’s last section is, even though it maintains the game’s look and style, it just felt anticlimactic.
Visually, WET goes all out on it’s 70’s Exploitation / Grindhouse inspired aesthetic. The film grain and short video’s masking load times add to the feel that the game’s after. Also, while the main character model looks great, some of the other characters look like they received a lot less work, which is even more strange when they don’t even look as good as some of the grunt cannon fodder enemies you dispatch. This is only made more noticeable when you turn off the film grain effect. WET’s audio though, is quite possible it’s strongest point. The psychobilly music always kicks in during the most hearted action and it’s wide variety keeps it all feeling fresher than you’d hear from most action games. It also all fits in within the settings and style the game sets out for, never feeling out of place. The voice acting is mostly good too, with notable high points being the shouts from Rubi mid-fight, but at the same time, outside of action during the longer cut-scenes, the voice work waivers a little and Rubi has the most unintentionally funny death-cries.
In the end, WET is a really good game, with a strong lead character and an impressive framework and action game mechanic. It’s an 8 hour thrill ride from start to near the finish. However its small flaws and weak ending just hold it back from being great, despite its strong sense of style and exciting gameplay.
