Wanted: Weapons of Fate-Has fate brought us an immortal game?

I've said it before and I'll say it again-games with licenses usually suck. Yet developers don't stop releasing games to tie in with the movies that are released yet we have seen some improvement over the years, with games like Riddick and King Kong providing thrills and spills despite heralding a license. It took around a year to create it after the film, but Wanted: Weapons of Fate is finally on store shelves, curving money spenders into buying this game. The curse of the license game is usually brought about by being rushed to released with a film, so the fact the Weapons of Fate was released a year after its film counterpart is a good sign already. Has fate brought us a game that's immortal or is this just a p**** b****?

WoF takes place a few hours after the events of the films. Without spoiling the ending of the film in case anyone hasn't seen it, Wesley is in his dad's old apartment when members of French Freternity of Assassins' attack and steal something from there. Now, he's on a mission to discover why the Freternity want him dead, what this has to do with his mother and father, and discover the truth about his past. The film did provide a slightly interesting premise, and so does the game. Sure, unless you've seen the film and/or read the comics it will probably come off as confusing to you but for the most part is not so bad it's funny, and it's not really bad either. Unfortunately, the cutscenes using the in-game graphics are horribly compressed making for a really bad screen quality. Plus, some may take a hate to Wesley's attitude problem depending on how you took to him in the film.

Wanted is a third-person shooter taking place over nine levels of shooting, killing hordes of enemies and, well, more shooting. The game is like Gears of War-you take cover behind objects with the press of a button, which works well like most games. The difference here is that you can jump from cover to cover in a myraid of different ways, whether it's over one cover to the next, diagonal and more, the game has a less restrictions than most cover-based games meaning it comes off as fresh and freer. The levels are linear, with no alternate routes or choices to make, aside from which gun you use out of two. The only way to get through levels is to kill enemies and then make it to the next checkpoint where you do it again. It can become stale after the first few levels, as there is little changes to the action throughout.

Where Wanted obviously strays from the norm is the trademark bullet curving madness. Yes, you can curve bullets-otherwise this would be another generic shoot em' up. Curving bullets is easy-you hold one of the bumpers on the controller, move the analog stick until you get a definate shot then let go and the bullet will curve. It's simple to use and yet you can't take advantage of it, not in the later levels anyways. You can't just use the move on free will-you must kill enemies to earn adrenaline governed by bullets. You use up a bullet on curving bullets and two bullets on another special move. If you kill an enemy with a curved bullet immediately, you can earn the adrenaline used to fire it right back. At first, you can keep killing and killing with curved bullets, but towards the end of the game enemies don't die with one curved bullet, meaning you can't just rely on it. Unfortunately, the game grows stale mainly due to the fact that you only can use two weapons- a standard pistol/magnum, and duel wield sub machine guns meaning theweapons lack variety and the only other weapon you use on a couple of occasions is a sniper rifle.

There are a couple of other tid-bits to gameplay as well. There is another move you can pull off where you slow down time and any enemies you kill in that mode will give you adrenaline again, whic is a move that can be easily taken advantage of. The other part of Wanted's gameplay is 'flanking'. If you blind fire from cover the screen will become tinted white which shows that the enemy will keep firing on that position meaning you can sneak around from cover-to-cover to pull a blind shot on them while they are supressed. It's like the tactics you could use in Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway except instead of your team mate's supressing them, you supress them and go in for the kill by yourself. These extra moves are nice to have in the game, though they don't genrally avoid the monotony of the usually one-note gameplay.

The attempts to shake up gameplay come off as a bit forced. The first thing you'll come across is on-the rails style section where you have a few seconds to shoot enemies in front of you as well as take out bullets being shot at you. It's an interesting way to elimate annoying quick time events as you still take part in the action but it doesn't require lame button presses, instead giving you the same control as normal gameplay-minus the movement. They're pretty good, but there aren't nearly enough of them-more would be awesome. Unfortunately, the other attempt at spice is quite abysmal. These are turret sections where you man a gun and must fend off enemies coming at you. Unfortunately, these are lackluster thanks to them being quite a cake walk-as long as you aren't shooting when you're about to die you won't fail these sections, and in one case the section was bugged as after killing a few enemies I had to wait until the time went up as no enemies appeared.

The main problem with Wanted is that it lacks challenge. Even on the hardest difficulty, as long as you don't run around going nuts and not taking cover, you shouldn't die as enemies aren't smart enough to flank you or charge at you while in cover. Even the bosses, what should be the highlight, come off as mediocre thanks to the fact that follow a pattern where you attack the boss with a specific ability, kill grunts to get adrenaline, and then repeat until the boss is dead. It's a shame because these could have been spectacular like the bosses in Gears 2. Instead, they come off as a bit half-assed with almost no effort. The only thing that really shakes up the challenge is the fact that you can use codes to unlock Headshot mode and Close Combat mode, where you must kill a certain number of enemies with, respectively, headshots and melee kills. Just try playing on the Killer difficulty in Close combat mode-that will test your skills.

Scratch that, the biggest issue with Weapons of Fate is that it's a game with poor value for money. The single player campaign will take you barely 5 hours to complete and after that the only incentive for replay value is extra character skins you unlock, like the hilarious Janice skin, as well as the two other modes, but to be honest it's just not enough. There's no online play, no downloadable content, and no leaderboards. Sure, it's some good fun while it lasts, but charging £30-35 for a 5 hour game with little value is absurd. The achievements don't help extend the value either, considering if you play on the hardest difficulty, you can earn around 30 achievements from just that. The other achievements are quite generic too-kill X number of enemies with curved bullets, kill X number of enemies during slow-mo, blow up X number of explosive rats-it's just a grind. It's quite an easy 1000 though, mainly because of how easy the game is.

Graphically, Wanted is a decent looking game. The animations during gameplay and cutscenes are fluid especially the brutal melee kills which send shivers down your spine as Wesley kicks an enemy's head in-literally. Unfortunately, the poor in-game cutscenes let the game down as they are compressed to the point of being grainy though the cutscenes at the end of levels which are CG look much better. The explosions and gun effects look ok but in some places Weapons of Fate looks average. The enemy characters constantly repeat meaning you'll fight the same few grunts a lot throughout the game which adds to the stale factor. The environments look mostly ok, with drab colours which disappoints, but the one exception is the air plane level from the demo, which conveys fear and disater as the plane and all its passengers are dead while you try to escape.

The sound is good too. With only two weapons, it's good that the weapons you do use sound pretty good especially the pistol/magnum which packs a great punch. The music, which sounds like it was taken from the film, is pretty good, but unfortunately it is repeated far too often as it starts to grate on towards the end of the game. The voice work, with only one original actor from the film, is an okay imitation of that, though with only three character look-a-likes from the film this isn't really a big issue. Unfortunately the sound gets really screwy when you reach checkpoints as it stutters and splurts like a sick person and it also stutters graphic with huge slowdown affected by checkpoints in every level which is quite bad in terms of polish.

Is Wanted: Weapons of Fate good, bad or ugly?

Weapons of Fate isn't the worst licensed game to come in a while, though considering the flaws, it's certainly no Escape from Butcher Bay. With repetitive gameplay that gets stale into the fifth level, poor value for money, a lack of weapons and some other issues, Wanted fails to achieve great or 'most wanted' level. Yet, because of it's innovative bullet curving mechanics, solid cover system and perfectly servicable gameplay, Wanted is far from mediocrity. In the end it all comes down to whether or not you know the source material. If you liked the film, comic books or especially both, or just have an itch for some trigger-happy action, then Weapons ofFate is for you. But for everyone else, this cannot be recommended as anything more than either a rental for those really intersted, or waiting until it eventually hits the bargain bin.

Controls: 9
Gameplay: 7
Graphics: 7
Sound: 7
Value: 5
Overall: 7.0

Wanted: Weapons of Fate was released on April 3rd, 2009 on Xbox 360 and PS3. It is rated 18+ for strong bloody violence and language and is available from most stores from £30-35.