Wet

If anything can be said about Wet, it's that it oozes style from every corner of the game. From the presentation to the gameplay, I imagine when creating this game, the developers sat around brainstorming ideas and went off on a John Woo-esque tangent (minus the doves) and decided to stuff every visual flourish they could in the game. Unfortunately, in focusing so sharply on style, substance was left somewhere on the cutting room floor.

Style vs substance is an age old debate that can be argued from a near infinite number of positions. But can we all agree that there needs to be a little substance? In the case of a videogame, wouldn't substance be translated as gameplay? And in the case of Wet, the gameplay is satisfying for about five minutes... and those five minutes are repeated over and over again for about 8 hours. The game relies heavily on the slowdown and multiple targeting mechanic. Every time you perform an acrobatic maneuver (wall run, slide, jump), as soon as you fire your weapons, time slows down. During this excruciating slowdown, one of your weapons auto-targets an enemy while you're free to target your other weapon wherever you want. Roughly 75% of the game is played in slow mo and I would have rather played the game at full speed so it'd be over sooner.

There are parts of the game that deviate from the normal slow motion acrobatics, namely the platforming and on-rails chase sequences. The platforming isn't anything you haven't seen before, although there are a couple flashes of inspiration with a few of those sections because of the incorporation of the slow motion and multiple targeting mechanic. I would have liked to see the platforming and the core game mechanic integrated more, but I'm not sure what else you'd be able to do with that one trick pony. The chase sequences are kind of frustrating. On the one hand, I think the developers did accurately depict how hard it is to target a gun from on top of a moving car... on the other hand, I don't really like dying over and over again.

But if you can get over the lack of substance in Wet, the game is fun to watch. The plot isn't much to write home about... you play as Rubi Malone, mercenary extraordinaire. You're hired to retrieve a wealthy man's prodigal son except that the only checks that Rubi cares about are the ones dealing with money and not background checks so in accepting the job she's unintentionally thrusting herself into something of a mob war. (And the amount of time I spent crafting the previous sentence is about equivalent to the time that's spent in the game focused on the plot.)

You do get a few big name actors lending their voices to the game and they are perfectly cast. I can't imagine anyone other than Eliza Dushku (of Buffy and Dollhouse fame) voicing Rubi Malone with her raspy voice and rebellious attitude. Malcolm McDowell and Alan Cumming round out the voice cast as a mob boss and the apparent sidekick, respectively. But both of those actors don't get a lot of voice time since the game follows Rubi for most of the time. It almost makes me wonder why they're in the game at all when other voice actors could have done pretty much the same thing for probably less money...

Rating

It's funny... I was originally considering giving this game a rent, but as I started writing the review, the more I thought about it, the more I thought it would be a disservice to recommend to anyone to actually rent the game. But if you guys want to recommend to your friends to rent the game so you can watch, I wholeheartedly agree with that. But at least be a good friend and chip in for the rental cost.

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