Wanted: Weapons of Fate Review

The movie I don't really remember that well however I do recall playing the demo of Weapons of Fate many years ago and thought nothing of it, however I wanted to try out more random PS3 games and this game came back into my mind. I was mainly looking for a quick and breezy game to beat in a quick afternoon or night and the game provided me just that, it isn't going light the world on fire but if you are looking for a quick and short average game to play then you can do worse than this. Due to issues I will mention later, the short length felt like a blessing because if the game was any longer, I would've stopped playing after a point.

The game starts out extremely rough, it starts with a cover and flanking turtorials that never get explored that much in main campaign. Not only that but it's one of those games where there will be a cutscene, walk a few steps and then there will be another cutscene. The first level was basically a bunch of scripted set pieces and cover shooting. It's also easy to run up to enemies and use the insta kill melee attack. The only thing that carried me through the game was the over the top and crazy lines and delivery by Wesley. The sections with Cross don't do a whole to add extra context to the scenes and often derail the pace since an important plot moving part happens during Wesley's sections and then out of nowhere a flashback with Cross happens.

There are other things that are not so good with the game like the slo mo on rails borderline QTE sections where I was lucky to rarely die on since that is more unskippable cutscenes to watch. The turret sections are also really awful and since the health pool with either character is low on normal on top of being a stationary target meaning there will be lots of time hiding behind cover. This will become a bigger issue later.

This is where I start becoming positive on the game and say once Wesley gets his suit and signature gun, things just start to "click". First of all, Wesley's gun sounds awesome and is great to fire which is great since you will be using it a lot and won't get another weapon until later on. On top of all this, there is a decent gameplay groove where you use the curve bullet to get an enemy out of cover or just straight up kill him either way, you can finish him off with your gun and get a bullet time slot back or just get a kill anyway. You can't spam this either since you will eventually run out these slots since there is a 50-50 chance it will be a guranteed kill or get an enemy out of cover.

On top of this you also get melee kills and the ability to hold a hostage when approaching an enemy from behind. The enemy variety slows starts improving with knife wielding enemies and snipers. You eventually get Cross' dual SMGs and the special ability for this gun is that curve bullets is an explosive grenade sharpanel that works as splash damage. The cover to cover bullet time I only ever found useful on bosses however since there were often stationary enough and had enough health for the move to be useful.

Weapons of Fate is a game I got to give credit for, it has more going on in it's core gameplay and moveset than something Gears of War and Uncharted does.

There is just one major problem that holds the game back and it's a problem with many shooters that use it: the regenerating health. You can throw hitscan guns in there too but some games have managed to make hitscan and finite health work. Regen health is something I never really liked all that much since your only option is to wait for your health to regen and hope to god no enemy is coming or shooting at you while the regen is kicking in. That's pretty much my issue, your only option is to wait and that's it. So much of Weapons of Fate's challenge comes from having enemies in large number shoot at you, then wait for health to regen. Aim, shoot, get hit, wait for health to regen, the frustration even on normal difficulty is that you will repeatedly get shot at from so many directions except from behind, aim, shoot and waiting for health to regen.

The problem I have with regen health is that there is no agency, you are forced to wait for health to regen and waiting is all you got. You have no other options partner that with hitscan weapons and many of Wanted's late game shootouts is just waiting, shoot, get shot, more waiting. On top of all this, your base health on normal difficulty is pretty low which lead to some pretty frustrating deaths due to the above mentioned issues. The checkpoint system is at the very least forgiving and add the short length to it and it helps makes the game less frustrating.

Knife enemies also get annoying late game since you need to tap the circle button and press the left stick in a random direction, fail this and it's a game over, if you don't kill them with gunfire and the left stick isn't pushed in time and are a slow button tapper could lead to more cheap deaths

Overall, okay game game, it's short and very flawed, but if you want something quick to beat, you can do worse.