WET Demo Review

Greetings denizens of the internet. I know updates to this blog have been pretty damn infrequent lately and I also realize that by and large this doesn't matter, even if by some miracle someone other than the three of the authors actually read this blog. But none the less I figured that I would post something, partly because I felt like doing a little writing and partly since I always feel bad when this blog goes without updates for too long.

Since our usual game guy around these parts seems to have gone into hibernation I felt like writing about the demo for the upcoming game "WET". Now for those of you that have not checked out the demo for this game it's an upcoming release from Bethesda Studios and developed by Artificial Mind and Movement. Bethesda really needs no introduction. Their work is topnotch for the most part and more likely than not you know who they are. If you don't then Google them, seriously I'm not gonna waste my time explaining them anymore. Now Artificial Mind and Movement (A2M) is another matter altogether, looking at their list of games is not very encouraging. With a few exceptions all of their games to date are tie-in games to movies and children television shows and frankly that is worrying, but the demo is encouraging.

The game is a third person shooter featuring a female heroine named Rubi Malone. The style of the Game's music, art, and theme feels kind of like a film noir as done by Quentin Tarantino. It seems to have that sort of Kill Bill-esque violence as a spectacle sort of thing going on. And I think it works, granted violent games are a dime a dozen these days, and it's not like this game is going to stand out on it's violence alone. But really isn't that a good thing. Games can't really ride that train anymore and really that whole sort of thing stopped woring back in the 90's.

Anyhow, the demo. Like most demos the goal is to show the game off, show the control scheme, and several game modes. I could get into a whole different rant about how that should be what ALL demos do , but I won't bore any of you with that. The demo starts with a cut scene, of a deal gone wrong, classic and nothing out of the ordinary, I personally like the guy with the voice box, and in true gaming tradition, the cool one off characters get killed off way to fast. Rubi enters and the demo runs you through the controls for the games fighting and one of the main action focuses of the game, the acrobatic fighting. basically, when you jump, slide, or wall run the game goes into bullet time and allows for easier kills. Actually this leads into the closest thing I have to a complaint about the demo, Shooting normally is basically a waste of time your accuracy and the effectiveness of your weapons seems to drop to near uselessness. Granted that could be more an issue with my own skill, and since the game thoughtfully provides you with many, many, many places to jump of and run off so this is probably needless bitching. Moving on, after you kill all the enemies you go through a few more areas that show you health regen (Drinking Whiskey, awesome) and sword attacks (good feedback, awesome).

After a bit more linear progression, you come to a large and fairly open area and kick off the second main action focus, Arena Combat. I could get into this but that's unnecessary. The basic idea is that there are a certain number of spawn points and you have to close them while killing enemies. Since there is no whiskey lying about, you regenerate health by building up a multiplier by killing enemies, which is fun and challenging without being overly hard. After that is done you move onto the next action focus, a high speed car chase, with Rubi jumping from the roof of car to car, shooting baddies and doing, you guessed it quick time events!!!! Now I know that a good amount of critics bag on these but I don't have a real problem with them when they are used responsibly (a minority even to be sure) and I feel in this game they work, they are infrequent enough to not get in the way, pervasive enough so you know to watch out for them, and while some of them (especially in the driving section) are "Press X to not die affairs", the game is generous enough with checkpoints so they aren't controller snappingly annoying.

Overall I can't wait for this game. Granted all these things could be thrown off in the real game, but Bethesda is a good developer and I am choosing to invest some faith in them to put out a good game.