WET - first impressions

Holy. Shit.


It's fucking awesome so far, like playing one of those kick-ass low-budget 80's action movies, only on steroids. The game is pretty much Stranglehold and Kill Bill's illegitimate child. On crack. I love the fact that they not only put grain in the cutscenes, but use it to indicate damage in the same way Gears uses a reddening screen.

They also do Quicktime events extremely well. It's usually:

A) Put into a scene 30 seconds in, where nothing indicates it previously. The controller probably isn't even in your hands, and now you have to hit X-A-B-Y-LB-Down-Select to escape a rouge wheat thresher.

B) Completely unnecessary. Why did I have to hit X, twirl the right thumbstick, hit Y-B-RB, and X again to set up an explosive? Just X would have sufficed. I don't care if it's more realistic, I have people to shoot in the face.

Wet does commit crime B with the A-mash X thing to open locked doors, but it's more than made up for by the truly awesome parts. The highway level in the demo, which is the only one I've done so far, is completely badass. You're given a full 2-3 seconds to hit one button, which means you'll never have to end up restarting, and can instead enjoy the flow of the cutscene while feeling like you're involved.

There are a handful of things I don't like so far though. I don't know why I need to watch a 10-second scene every time I get more health, and I would really like a checkpoint right after the cutscenes where I watch a sweeping camera show all the baddies in the area. Instead of how they do it now, by giving you a checkpoint right before it and orchestrating it so you die almost immediately if you don't know exactly what you're doing, condemning you to watching the unskippable scene 5 more times.

Unskippable cutscenes in general annoy me, it's just the developers stuck up their own asses, without any regard to the fact that it may not be my first playthrough (WET requires at least 3, probably more) and I just want to focus on actually playing the game. Sure, WET's cutscenes are badass, but not after the first 15 times.

I also don't get how I pretty much need to be diving or sliding or something to shoot accurately. Sure, that's the point of the game, but there are points where I'd rather stand still and pick people off, just for the sake of not getting killed.

All in all, I'm pretty impressed with what I've seen so far. Looks like a solid 1000, requiring a good dose of time, effort, and skill, but not a stupid amount of any. Also, 360voice updated it's sandbox leaderboards, so it seems as good a time as any to break down my future gaming plans. Later.