Customer Reviews

Wanted: Weapons of Fate

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I never saw the movie this is an extension of but that's probably a good thing as I was genuinely interested in watching the cutscenes to learn what all this is about. This game is explosively fun and has a lot that reminds me of Stranglehold and even Metal Gear Solid 2 in the movement and just the feel of it.

STORY
Well I'm not going to go into it too much, regular loser who is actually a VIP and is ripped out of his loser life to an exciting and dangerous existence with sexy broads, lethal baddies and others. Typical brotherhood of assassins story that's been it's own genre for a while in many games and movies, nothing too original here. I have to say the dude is pretty ugly and contrasts nicely with the hottie bad girl and his sauve Frenchmen father you play in selected levels to help flesh out our hero's backstory.

GAMEPLAY
Well this is where the game shines, it is very action packed and has nice graphics. This is centered on a cover system started by Rainbow Six Vegas and then carried on to games like Gears of War, Brothers in Arms, Quantum Solace, GTA4, etc. It's most like GOW's system where you use the spacebar to grab onto cover and then either peek over and blind fire or look over and aim precisely and fire at the bad guys. To change cover position you simply use the WSAD directional key and push spacebar to move to an available new cover object. You can vault forward over a cover spot to another one or simply free yourself from the cover by pressing the spacebar key alone.

Another key move is the bullet arc in which you can fire a bullet around objects. It's pretty simple to pull off and the training is pretty effective. Simply hold down Lshift and then hold down the fire mouse button and a nifty preview of the curved trajectory to the target will pop up and from there you release the fire button when you deem a trajectory satisfactory. If it works you see a nice little mini-cutscene of a bullet killing the bad guy if it works partially he will stumble into the open for easier killing. All of this special moves stuff costs adrenaline which you must get when killing baddies and is generally refilled easily by simply progressing through the game, pretty standard stuff.

Other modes are slomo movement between covers to kill multiple bad guys in the open, after blind fire you can move quicker between cover to get a better shooting angle against fortified opponents, and my favorite the partial cinematic mode where you don't control your character other than shooting in slomo while timed to take out enemies and their bullets flying at you.

This is cool when you have a level on a going down airliner and you have to actually climb up the seats of the airliner while it's in the vertical position, kinda like Tomb Raider Underworlds level where a ship is sinking and thus vertical and you have to climb up its insides to escape the only difference being in WWOF you don't do any climbing yourself it's all a cutscene where you control the aiming of your gun only, it's a pretty neat looking sequence that you get to take part in though. Other modes are the close kill mode you push E for with a knife you brutally kill your nearby opponent and also at times you will use a turret as well as a sniper rifle.

TECHNICAL
It installed fine for me on XP and I run it all high at 1680x1050 on my q6600@2.4GHz, 4GB RAM, 8800GT512, very smooth. The camera movement in this very fluid and is on par with GOW, I enjoy the effortlessness in which it adds to the action. I've had no crashes or stuttering so far so it doesn't seem to need a patch at least for my system.

One of the stumbling blocks here is the annoying way that the latest games on release really only support the Xbox360 joypad, this is simply a pandering to Microsoft which is a real turnoff. This does support other gamepads but the default control scheme which cannot be changed is non-sensical and useless for gameplay, my Logitech Rumbelpad 2 is out for this one. Mouse/KB is really the way to go for this kind of game anyways and at startup it is pretty confusing. The menus are mouse based only, no using the directional keys on the keyboard or enter: the only key used is esc. In game is the only real use of the keyboard like spacebar, E, LShift, Tab, WSAD, etc as well as the mouse for aiming and firing purposes.

Controls seemed an afterthought and it's mind boggling to me how so many publishers don't seem to just stick with the popular standard interface regime used in the vast majority of games. It's like Microsoft ,instead of listening to their customers needs, decided to dictate things in Vista and consequently produced a stinker and now has to rebrand and refocus Vista SPx as Windows 7 towards what people want instead of the created needs in MS Corporations market strategy, not to mention to get back all those people who will not consider Vista under any circumstances. This seems to be the ethos with pushing everyone to buy a forty dollar 360 controller to play things properly on PC.

I have to say that the cutscenes are pretty ugly at times and this is one of the only games I've actually thought the in game play was better looking than a few of the cutscenes! You see the digital blocks in some of the scenes is what I mean primarily. Also the lighting on the character is pretty cool and his graphics are pretty nicely done. I'd say most of the environments are pretty standard graphically but have nice destructible elements. Even your cover can be shot apart so you have to move at times. I wouldn't say the explosions, a la the ubiquitous red barrels, are anything special.

WRAPUP
This is a wicked fun game that can be finished in less than 5 hours so it's not worth full retail prices by any means and should either be a rental only or wait till it comes down. It's like one of those Woo hyper action movies you take part in with much better scenes than the Stranglehold game a few years ago.

This game is short, which is probably a good thing since all the above is fun but it's pretty much the same thing over and over and gets repetitive after a while. This is a linear game so you are not really free-roaming or able to do anything but move from cover to cover and fire and move on to the next venue. I couldn't see myself wanting to play through more than twice since it's so short and linear. You can play through and unlock other characters and other things for the next playthrough but I'm not really into that stuff and what I did unlock or get the published codes to unlock didn't really add to the experience in any meaningful way.

Linear games are not bad but they need to be longer than this to be worth the typical retail price. You can't really do things in any different way other than what is described above.

In one of the best scenes of the movie, the hero (Gibson) smacks his double crossing "best friend" with a standard keyboard: certain keys come loose spelling, well "FU*K YOU" in the air. In the opening sequence of the game they spell instead..."UNIVERSAL". And the game goes downhill from there...

The graphics are up to date, with realistic shadows and shiny surfaces. Moreover, I liked to be able, once more, to use bullet-time (of MAX PAYNE fame). It is called "assassin time" here, but who are we kidding, right? Paired with a more or less working and visually impressive "curving the bullet", these are the highlights of the game.

Besides being short, WANTED suffers from both awkward and counter-intuitive controls and fickle commands. Crouching and moving from one cover the next gets old fast - especially since it is not always easy to go where you intend in one step. If I were to guess, I would bet on the PC version being a hasty port. I am sure it would be much more enjoyable with a gamepad.

Overall, this is a game that will appeal mostly to fans of the movie. I myself bought it to experience first hand...curving the bullet. That it delivered. But hardly anything more.

To be fair, when was the last time a based-on-a-movie game was above par?

Developed by ill-fated GRIN studios and released in 2009 by Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment, Wanted - Weapons of Fate is a 3rd person shooter directly following the events of the 2008 film. In "Wanted" you play primarily as Wesley Gibson (sometimes you play as his father, Cross) a newly trained assassin of the Fraternity determined to track down the mysterious Immortal and uncover the hidden past of his family. Here are my thoughts on Wanted - Weapons of Fate;

Pros

+ Decent graphics, especially character models.

+ Curving bullets is fun and never gets old.

+ Adult content

+ Adrenaline meter doesn't slowly deplete while not in combat or disappear when you get hit like in many games.

+ Some of the voice actors from the film such as Terence Stamp.

+ Crisp sound.

+ Solid controls.

+ Non-stop action.

Cons <Contains SPOILERS>

- No jumping, crouching or sprint options. Everything is based on the cover system.

- Plenty of bad guitar angst rock combat music.

- Cut scenes look worse than the in game graphics, normally it's the other way around.

- Linear and repetitive gameplay.

- Overuse of profanity (mainly the F word) to point where it loses its impact.

- Enemies lack variety. The knife fighters are especially redundant and tiresome.

- Bosses were all too similar and easy to kill, especially the final boss.

- The ending, wow. One of the worst and most ridiculous I've ever seen in a game.

Wanted - Weapons of Fate is perfect example of a movie/comic license translated into another mediocre game experience. Repetitious enemies, levels and snarky one-liners this game has a rather limited demographic. I can perhaps see a younger audience finding the game amusing but it failed to appeal to me. By the end of the game I became bored and was thankful for the finish, even if it was terribly ridiculous.

I have to start by saying that I knew it was a TPS (Third person shooter) before buying but the trailers looked so cool. I am a FPS player at heart. That's where the fun ended. I also have to join the group that complains of the shortness of this game. That being a major downfall in the game we can get to the nuts and bolts.
Cover to cover: There are games like Gears of War and some 007 games that are "cover-based" meaning you have to move from cover to cover to fight and take time to set up your shots. These games are just so slow moving and unentertaining to me. I hoped this could be played without being forced into cover but it just doesn't work that way.
TPS: It is possible to condition yourself to TPS firing if you are a FPS gamer and if you like both genre's, go for it.
Bullet Bending: This just wasn't as cool as it could have been. I hate to ref: other games but if you want a game that has cool bullet time or slow motion arcing of your shots, pick up the older Max Payne games (I or II) and even Dark Sector. Dark Sector had an awesome system for throwing your blade in slow motion and curving it to hit hidden enemies. It also had excellent graphics. Max Payne had limited graphics but a great story line.
Graphics: Not bad at all. For the time of the release of the game, they were pretty up to speed. They really needed to have Wesley wear the cool, black assassin suit he gets in the game in the movie. If I remember right, it was his fathers? If he was left everything his father owned in the movie, he would have had the suit right?
This is one of those games that had potential but fell short due to a short run time and lack-luster cover based gameplay.
If you are a fan of cover based games and TPS, I would recommend it but not for the FPS and run and gun types. Also, the price has dropped significantly so if you have the $$ to waste, it is a game that you can play through and not care too much for spending so little $$.

Wanted: Weapons of Fate

At first I thought nothing much of this game until a buddy mentioned it was a "sequel" to the movie. I really liked the movie based on its rather unique premise, and of course Angelina Jolie and a Dodge Viper were in the movie as well. It's a perfect formula for an action movie: you have guns, fast cars, and a sizzling actress.

The graphics and sound in Wanted are top notch. The controls are simple yet very intuitive. I had zero problems using my keyboard and mouse to beat the game. The boss strategies aren't difficult to figure out and the bullet curving was pretty simple to execute.

The problem with Wanted is that it becomes very repetitious. Take cover from point to point, play Whack-A-Mole, move from cover to cover, rinse, repeat, and lather. It's not unlike Gears of War or Brothers in Arms in that respect. But Wanted is also very short. I was able to beat it in about 3 days, spending 1 or 2 hours a day.

Some of the enemies don't make a lot of sense. For instance, the knife wielding assassin that starts screaming 3 floors above you as he runs down is hilarious. If you can't shoot him, then you enter some type of knife fight where you keep pushing 1 button until you kill him.

Pros: Modern graphics, excellent sound, overall a fun experience. The controls are simple and effective.

Cons: Too short, gets repetitious very quickly.

Overall: Watch the movie first if you want the background info on the plot. The movie stars James McAvoy, Angelina Jolie, and Morgan Freeman. I give it 4/5 stars.

The game leaves off from where the movie ended. You will learn more about the main character as well as his parents.

Pros: Curve bullets and pretty much every thing else that was great about the movie. Decent story. Graphics are well done for a game that was made for more XBox 360 and PS3. Controls aren't awkward on computer. Recommendable for anyone that likes shooters. Tables, chairs, concrete, will disintigrate the more it gets shot.

Cons: Learning curve for keeping cover and curving bullet paths correctly. Sometimes when curving bullets it will target ambiguous objects instead of the people shooting at you. Sniper mode hardly ever points to where you were looking when you go to the scope view. You have to do traning maps to receive skills the main character had in the movie, and you don't have them from the begining. Graphics glitch sometimes.

Notes: Health is handled basically the same as it is in the Call of Duty series.

Wanted: Weapons of Fate is a game based off the movie Wanted. You play most of the game as Wesley Gibson, a loser turned super-assassin whose really good at killing people. Also, you'll play as Wesley's father, Cross, in some flashback missions that have to do with Wesley's mother.

The gameplay is very fun and slick, using a take cover and shoot mechanic similar to Gears of War. When in cover, you can easily lean to one side of the cover and press a button and Wesley or Cross will run, slide, or jump to the next available piece of cover in that direction. Then you pop out of cover to fire some shots at the bad guys, rinse and repeat.

The main feature that this game has going for it is the ability to curve bullets, just like in the movie. By holding the shift key and the left mouse button (btw, you can also use an Xbox 360 controller), you will automatically target an enemy and a curved line will show up pointing at the enemy. When the line is red, the shot will not hit, but move the mouse around and when the line turns white, you release the mouse button and the bullet goes flying. It's not always an instant kill, but usually when it is, you'll be treated to a video sequence of the camera following the bullet as it curves into the bad guy, which I never got tired of watching.

Also, you can activate Assassin Time, where you move from cover to cover in slow motion, but can still pop off shots really quick. It's great if there are several bad guys out of cover at the same time. But the main reason for using it will be to take down bosses.

Graphic wise, the game is pretty decent. It's no Gears of War, but it's not a bad looking game. The only real problem I had with the graphics was the cutscenes, which seem like they were compressed the wrong way. I've heard another person complain of this problem, so I'm pretty sure it's not my computer.

The voice acting is good. Whoever they got to do the voice of Wesley did an excellent job (they don't use the same actor from the movie, or so I read anyhow). The game borrows a lot of music from the movie, which was fine to me.

The game uses a health regeneration system like Gears of War. So when you take too much damage, just take cover for a moment and you're good as new. There are three difficulty levels, and I've only played on the easiest so far, and it was indeed rather easy. So if you're a beginner to these type of shooting games, you shouldn't have too much trouble.

I will also say that the ending is rather lacking. The final cutscene is rather short and doesn't really give you the feeling like you've accomplished something.

In an interview somewhere, I read that the developers were going to be mixing in some stuff from the comic that the movie was loosely based on as well. I've read the comic recently, in preperation for the game coming out, and to be honest, I didn't really notice hardly anything from the comic. It seems the only thing they really pulled from the comic was the black assassin suit with the glowing eyes. So if you're a fan of the comic, don't expect to see too much from that in the game.

The game is also short, maybe about 5 hours long, if that. But I will say, being a fan of the movie and comic, I very much enjoyed playing the game. The game certaintly won't win any Game of The Year awards, but it was still good fun and I do plan on playing it again soon.

This is a warning to all you people who play PC games the true way, this game has no option to invert the y axis on the mouse. I can't even pass training if I can't play inverted, these people apparently don't want me playing this game and you shouldn't either.

Graphics are good, gameplay is alright, but the story line is boring. The game is too short.

This game is SOOOOO difficult to navigate on the PC. It tends to move extremely fast. For example, it took me fifteen minutes to get my player in line to shoot someone else! The camera moves too fast as well. I had to research how to get the game into windows mode. I played the game twice and never played it again.
It may be cool on Xbox 360, but DON'T buy for your PC!!!