The game Wanted: Weapons of Fate, like the movie on which it’s based, straddles the line between merit and mediocrity but more often stumbling towards the latter. It’s not a terrible game, but it’s not up to the standard of many other shooters out there, and its flaws outweigh its pluses.

Following on from the movie, Wanted, the game places you in the shoes of Wesley Gibson, who, for those of you who haven’t seen the movie, has discovered he’s not a anxiety ridden geek, but the son of an assassin and all that comes with it; quick reflexes, the ability to curve bullets, and tougher than the average person. In the movie he is trained by the assassin’s guild to track and then kill someone called Cross, who it turns out *spoiler* his is father. Once he learns this, he then turns on his trainers, the Fraternity, and gets his revenge.

The game opens with Wesley, reflecting on his new life when his apartment is broken into. From here, you take him on a trip of discovery, visiting locations in the film as well as locations new for this story, trying to determine who is after Wesley and why. His journey also includes flashbacks of his father, Cross, and helps explain why he was also wanted, why he was killed, and why Wesley is so special. Unfortunately the story is very disjointed, jumping from area to area and principle character to principle character, and the story simply isn’t engrossing enough so it’s easy to forget what’s going on.

But story is not central to a videogame so much as say, a movie, and some of the best games have a poor story or none at all, and make up for it in awesome gameplay. Unfortunately Wanted: Weapons of choice lets us down here too. You’re slowly introduced to the main elements of game play – cover to cover fighting, slowing down time and bending bullets, but once you’re taught these, it’s the only thing you’ll do for the rest of the game.

Shooting controls are pretty standard, Right Trigger to shoot, left to aim down the sight, B Button to melee, but it’s the other gameplay ideas which offer a bit of variety from the everyday first/third person shooter. The cover to cover fighting mechanic is pretty simple and most of the time pretty effective. Press the A Button to go into cover, and then move the right stick to see where you can move to next. A diagram will appear on screen to tell you which way you can go, and you pres the A Button again to move to the next piece of cover. This system isn’t slow and methodical like Gears of War, but quick like Stranglehold. Sometimes the game frustrates you, being unable to find a path to cover, and other times you won’t stick to cover and end up getting just standing up during a fire fight getting hit.

A variant on this occurs when you blind fire buy pulling the trigger when in cover. The screen will turn white, and the rest of the world will slow down, and you can move quickly around enemies and expose them to your shots. You can chain your moves together and move quickly behind enemies you can’t otherwise hit. Again, sometimes you’ll find your route to the cover doesn’t pop up on screen, so you’ll come out of the bullet time and find yourself under fire.

Each enemy you kill gives you a bullet shell to indicate adrenalin, used to slow down time even more, and to bend bullets. Using adrenalin, as you dive from cover you can press the Y Button and go into super slow motion, releasing a hail of bullets towards an enemy. This is far more effective than blind shooting, as you can target more than one person in your line of sight. However, there are times where the camera angle in this fast mode obscures your view, making open shots against foes now impossible until you leave the mode.

I have to admit bending bullets is a bit of fun. Squeeze the Right Bumper and you see a red arc appear on screen between you and your victim. Moving the left stick changes the angle of the arc, and when it goes white letting go will send a bullet curving around to hit the hapless foe. Executed well, and you’ll see a cinematic play which follows the path of the bullet into the victim. However, there are times when the lock on won’t go to the person you want it to, and you have to change the camera angle to get a better feed onto them. Other times it will focus on canisters or mines which you can shoot and blow up, but when there’s no enemies near them it’s rather pointless.

Individually, the components are rather fun, but together as a whole combined with the repetitiveness of the incredibly linear levels, it all becomes a bit dull. For example, with bending bullets there are no special tricks to shoot something and make it fall, or bend bullets around a pole to distract an enemy, you only bend bullets to kill guys. And there are only a handful of enemies – those you can one shot with bendy bullets, and those who you can’t but will stumble around into the open so you can shoot them normally.

There are a few instances when you have to use the blind firing effect to get past a certain guy with a shield, but they can be superseded later in the game by exploding bullets (just like bendy ones but with a bang) or the super fast adrenalin slide. And the bosses are pretty much the same as any other enemy – use the bendy bullets to get them into the open, and shoot the crap out of them.

Then there’s the obligatory sniper mode, where you’re positioned with a sniper rifle at the end of a corridor and have to shoot guys before they get to you slash get to the person you’re protecting. There are also quick time events, which see you do all these cool acrobatic dives, then slow down time to shoot an enemy and a bullet flying at you. These help to break up the monotony, but once you do the first one and realise you have to shoot the bullet and the baddy, it’s easy to do them all.

And then there’s the big endless bulleted chain gun, which the game gives you absolutely no indication you’ll be using, so suddenly it will just pop up in your face and you have to guess you need to shoot the bad guys. Because there’s a big bloody gun in your face, you can’t see the bad guys, but if you blindly fire your head pops up and they will shoot you and you’ll die. It’s the single most frustrating aspect of the game.

The game looks ok, but suffers from the dreaded grey/brown equals realistic mentality of so many other games, and there is some slowdown at odd times which really disconnects you from the game. The locations, given their incredibly linear nature, all feel a bit samey after the first few levels. Sound wise the game has a forgettable soundtrack, but the characters are voiced by the people from the movie, and they put in reasonable effort considering, and the wizzing of the bendy bullets sounds great.

After about 6 to 8 hours of play, the game is over and there’s nothing else to do. You can replay with another character, but they share the animations of Wesley, and it’s Wesley in the cutscenes, so it’s a little pointless really. There’s collectables throughout the game which unlock the other characters as well as art and typical unlockable items, and other modes which involve you getting headshots or meleeing a certain number of enemies, but there just isn’t enough variation in the game to warrant another playthrough.

Conclusion:
Whilst it’s not a terrible game, and there is some fun to be found here, it gets repetitive fairly quickly. There’s not enough variation within levels, between levels and with the different types of enemies to kill. Luckily, the game is over quickly, but with no multi-player and no other incentive to play the game again, there just isn’t enough in Wanted: Weapons of Choice to warrant purchasing the game.

Pros:
Bending bullets is fun
Cover to cover fighting is quick and fun when it works
Decent voice acting

Cons:
Poor story that’s difficult to follow
Too linear with not enough variation in the action
Boss fights feel the same
Moving between cover and locking on to enemies can feel awkward
Mounted gun sections appear without warning leading to quick death
Average graphics with no real pizzazz to the world

65/100