I appreciate a AA game with jank if the core gameplay is good and refined and a mess everywhere else but Wanted: Dead is a mess everywhere from top to bottom.
I can not even remotely see why some like this gameplay. It feels stiff and restrictive. There is little combo variety and feels like a complete chore to play. I love the idea of a character action game mixed with third person shooter gameplay but the game doesn't do any of these two elements well.
Guns seem to be the easiest way to dispatch enemies. The problem is that, the zoom in so so bad in that you can't even see what your aiming at as the game moves so fast. Then when i get the cursor to be where i want the damn auto aim refuses to let me move to aim for a headshot. Fine I'll turn it off. Now it's incredibly hard to just move the reticle as it either moves too fast or super slow. Then to top it off enemies take an insane amount of bullets to take down. Some will take over two damn clips. So you would think you would have a massive amount of ammo but i constantly ran out when leaning on the shooting side of combat. And this is just the shooting mechanics, the sword combat isn't any better.
When engaging in sword combat. You instinctly want to go in to the enemy and slash away. This is counter intuitive to Wanted: Dead wants you to play it. Enemies take many slashes to take down. Almost comical levels. What the game wants you to do is stand next to an enemy and wait for him to attack and then counter it with either your sword or handgun depending on the attack. Then the enemy will instantly stagger where you can kill them instantly. This isn't very exciting or satisfying to pull off. Even when I successfuly parry and land a stun the follow up will just not register my button press and I'll just stand there. I'm a person who loves counter heavy games like Onimusha or Sekiro but there is a balance to it which Wanted does not get. Regualar attacks in those games are not worthless. Also the whole time there are a million enemies that are constantly spray and praying bullets that make many encounters feel like the cheaply chip away at my health little by little without much i can do. If you pull of a finisher you can regain some chip damage health back but again, the game is forcing me to play in this one style. It's bad.
Speaking of bad this game is badly optimized. Wanted: Dead crashed on me constantly on my PS5. Granted the game auto saves on checkpoints but it still doen't excuse it. Plus the game is quite tough and checkpoints are rather spaced out so going back to a previous one becuase the game crashed sucks big time. It's not even a preformance things. Even with a ton of enemies and slowdown a peak preformance it doesn't crash. It seems to just crash entirely randomly. Like in a cutscene or when your just standing there. It's weird.
As for the story and presentation of the game it might be even jankier than the gameplay. The voice acting is bad, like holy shit this is worse than RE1 or house of the dead bad. Heck I said Daymare was bad this might be just as bad if not worse. I swear some scenes, acting and lines are so muted and stiff with little sense it feels like a scene out of samurai cop. The main character is so bad with a voice so deep and dead pan it doesn't jive with the character at all. Is this intentional? I don't know but it's not good and not in so bad it's good kinda way. It's like the line reads were all one take and no one wanted to be there.
Scenes come and go with what seems like no connection to each other. I can't even tell what I'm supposed to be doing in missions or what my damn goal even is. Then after a stage it's like it never happened and the game moves on to something else that has little context or meaning. There are so many pointless scenes that do nothing. Add nothing to the characters or what's going on. The game has a certain style to it I'll give it that but they do not pull it off in anyway whatsoever. Like for example sometimes the cutscens will shit to straight up animation for no reason. Like there was a animated scene of a character staring at a mirror and looking around a room for like a minute and then it cuts to something else completly unrelated with in game visuals. WTF why put the effort in, I just don't understand. I did not finish this game but from what I read it doesn't get any better. I remember before I bought this game there was this mini trailer/short movie about the waitress in the diner the characters go to and I thought it was pretty charming but context or even this scene isn't even in the game as far as i know and the character was only in like one scene for a brief moment. I just don't get it.
The game also has a bunch of side minigames you can play inbetween stages to break up the tedium of the combat. They are actually decent with games like a crane game full of collectibles, a space shooter arcade game, kareoke and target practice and so forth. The kinda feel good with a decent amount of effort put into them. I wouldn't play them ever outside the game but it does help brake the pace and set the mood it's going for. Side note though FUCK that ramen eating music ddr style minigame. That shit is so hard and you tie an achievment to it that you can't miss a single beat. Shit a song is like 6-7 min long and not easy. I could never do that and it's really annoying to me becuase even if I loved this game to tie a trophy to perfecting guitar hero on the hard mode when the gameplay of the main game is a whole different genre is extremely grating. Rant over.
I struggle real hard to see want some people say about this game. The game didn't get great reviews but there was a small minority that said this game was a hidden gem and had great combat and that to me is as baffling of a thing is as crazy as this game thinks it is but is not. To think this launched at 50 bucks lol.
I can not even remotely see why some like this gameplay. It feels stiff and restrictive. There is little combo variety and feels like a complete chore to play. I love the idea of a character action game mixed with third person shooter gameplay but the game doesn't do any of these two elements well.
Guns seem to be the easiest way to dispatch enemies. The problem is that, the zoom in so so bad in that you can't even see what your aiming at as the game moves so fast. Then when i get the cursor to be where i want the damn auto aim refuses to let me move to aim for a headshot. Fine I'll turn it off. Now it's incredibly hard to just move the reticle as it either moves too fast or super slow. Then to top it off enemies take an insane amount of bullets to take down. Some will take over two damn clips. So you would think you would have a massive amount of ammo but i constantly ran out when leaning on the shooting side of combat. And this is just the shooting mechanics, the sword combat isn't any better.
When engaging in sword combat. You instinctly want to go in to the enemy and slash away. This is counter intuitive to Wanted: Dead wants you to play it. Enemies take many slashes to take down. Almost comical levels. What the game wants you to do is stand next to an enemy and wait for him to attack and then counter it with either your sword or handgun depending on the attack. Then the enemy will instantly stagger where you can kill them instantly. This isn't very exciting or satisfying to pull off. Even when I successfuly parry and land a stun the follow up will just not register my button press and I'll just stand there. I'm a person who loves counter heavy games like Onimusha or Sekiro but there is a balance to it which Wanted does not get. Regualar attacks in those games are not worthless. Also the whole time there are a million enemies that are constantly spray and praying bullets that make many encounters feel like the cheaply chip away at my health little by little without much i can do. If you pull of a finisher you can regain some chip damage health back but again, the game is forcing me to play in this one style. It's bad.
Speaking of bad this game is badly optimized. Wanted: Dead crashed on me constantly on my PS5. Granted the game auto saves on checkpoints but it still doen't excuse it. Plus the game is quite tough and checkpoints are rather spaced out so going back to a previous one becuase the game crashed sucks big time. It's not even a preformance things. Even with a ton of enemies and slowdown a peak preformance it doesn't crash. It seems to just crash entirely randomly. Like in a cutscene or when your just standing there. It's weird.
As for the story and presentation of the game it might be even jankier than the gameplay. The voice acting is bad, like holy shit this is worse than RE1 or house of the dead bad. Heck I said Daymare was bad this might be just as bad if not worse. I swear some scenes, acting and lines are so muted and stiff with little sense it feels like a scene out of samurai cop. The main character is so bad with a voice so deep and dead pan it doesn't jive with the character at all. Is this intentional? I don't know but it's not good and not in so bad it's good kinda way. It's like the line reads were all one take and no one wanted to be there.
Scenes come and go with what seems like no connection to each other. I can't even tell what I'm supposed to be doing in missions or what my damn goal even is. Then after a stage it's like it never happened and the game moves on to something else that has little context or meaning. There are so many pointless scenes that do nothing. Add nothing to the characters or what's going on. The game has a certain style to it I'll give it that but they do not pull it off in anyway whatsoever. Like for example sometimes the cutscens will shit to straight up animation for no reason. Like there was a animated scene of a character staring at a mirror and looking around a room for like a minute and then it cuts to something else completly unrelated with in game visuals. WTF why put the effort in, I just don't understand. I did not finish this game but from what I read it doesn't get any better. I remember before I bought this game there was this mini trailer/short movie about the waitress in the diner the characters go to and I thought it was pretty charming but context or even this scene isn't even in the game as far as i know and the character was only in like one scene for a brief moment. I just don't get it.
The game also has a bunch of side minigames you can play inbetween stages to break up the tedium of the combat. They are actually decent with games like a crane game full of collectibles, a space shooter arcade game, kareoke and target practice and so forth. The kinda feel good with a decent amount of effort put into them. I wouldn't play them ever outside the game but it does help brake the pace and set the mood it's going for. Side note though FUCK that ramen eating music ddr style minigame. That shit is so hard and you tie an achievment to it that you can't miss a single beat. Shit a song is like 6-7 min long and not easy. I could never do that and it's really annoying to me becuase even if I loved this game to tie a trophy to perfecting guitar hero on the hard mode when the gameplay of the main game is a whole different genre is extremely grating. Rant over.
I struggle real hard to see want some people say about this game. The game didn't get great reviews but there was a small minority that said this game was a hidden gem and had great combat and that to me is as baffling of a thing is as crazy as this game thinks it is but is not. To think this launched at 50 bucks lol.