
Weapons of Fate picks up where the movie left off. Wesley Gibson has already transformed himself from an anxiety-filled office worker into a card-carrying assassin. He's managed to kill his own father, as well as most of the other assassins who tricked him into committing patricide in the first place. So now he's living among his father's things and attempting to learn more about his origins. But, as you might expect, clearing out one segment of a worldwide order of assassins means that other parts of the organization are going to come calling sooner or later. So you're quickly sent off on a nine-level journey that both tells the tale of Wesley tracking down his father's nemesis while also flashing back and putting you in his father's shoes to let you know how the rivalry you're setting off to finish came to be in the first place.
It's becoming such a common shooter sub-genre that you almost don't need to spell it out anymore, but in case you haven't figured it out, Wanted: Weapons of Fate is a good-looking third-person shooter that relies heavily on a cover mechanic. It is very much a product of a post- Gears-of-War world, but that's not to say it's some sort of heartless clone. In this story, Wesley has some pretty special abilities--the most important of which is the ability to curve bullets. When you combine people hiding behind corners with bullets that can bend around corners, you get a sharp new way to eliminate your targets. When doing this, a line extends from the barrel of your gun. You can lock onto a hiding enemy with this line, then curve the line around until you find a viable trajectory for your shot. It almost feels unfair, but you can't just use it whenever you want.

Of course, you could argue that the game doesn't give you enough time to actually get tired. Wanted's nine levels absolutely fly by, and I'd guess that many players will finish it in one sitting without even realizing that the end is always near. It's the sort of thing that you can finish in five hours or so. There are additional modes to unlock that require you to focus more on headshots or up-close melee strikes, and you can go back through the game using a different character model or play on three different difficulty settings, but even when you add all that together, it doesn't make for a very replayable experience.
Wanted: Weapons of Fate kind of gets it from both ends. It's a short game, but if it were longer, the excitement of bullet curving would probably wear off. That said, it's got some cool concepts and it compliments the film fairly well. If you can find it for less-than-full price, it's worth checking out.