Wednesday 26 August 2009

First Blog and Wet Demo


Ok so this is my first blog so bare with me.
First things first, Hi my names Ash and welcome to my blog ‘Played to Death’.
 I’m currently a student studying Computer Games Design and I also work part time in a Game store so I have my fair share of experience with games. I have been an avid gamer for as long as I can remember way back to the glorious days of Atari right up to the modern behemoths from Sony and Microsoft. I have always felt passionate about games and gaming media so I thought it’s about time I put fingers to keyboard (cus im to much of a nerd for pen to paper) and share my opinions with the rest of the world.
I hope you enjoy my blog and work permitting I will try to keep things up to date.
Right, so now down to the nitty gritty. As this is my first blog I thought let’s keep things up to date and what’s more up to date than a game that hasn’t even been released yet. I’m talking about the game Wet.
Wet is due for release Sept 15th (US), Sept 18th (UK) and is produced by the guys and gals over at Bethesda Softworks, whose titles also include the award winning games Fallout 3 and Elder scrolls.
The game follows the exploits of its main character Rubi Malone, a gun-for-hire, as she goes about her business of snapping necks and cashing cheques.
Now as the game is not released yet I will be talking about my experience with the demo that was released on the Playstation network recently.
The title screen for the game reminded me a lot of a movie poster and the entire feel of the game is of a ‘grindhouse’ 70’s B movie.  If left long enough on the title screen there is an animation of an ‘end of film reel’ as if the game is being played from an old school film projector and the reel has just been chewed up by the machine.  The feel of the game reminded me a lot of ‘House of the dead: Overkill’ on the Wii which has a similar styling.
In the opening cinematic we see what appear to be two mob bosses making a deal. A case is exchanged but its contents are not revealed the only information we are given is that what is inside ‘doesn’t have a long shelf life’. As per usual in these situations one of the mobs gets screwed over and a gun fight ensues as the other boss escapes with the case. High above this fiasco we see our heroine Rubi watching the exchange and exclaiming ‘he has my case’ before making an epic entrance through the glass ceiling wielding dual guns.
As the demo begins there is a short tutorial for the controls of the game which are pretty standard for a third person shooter. Analogue sticks for the character and camera controls, shoulder buttons for shooting and face buttons for standard actions. The controls are responsive and easy to pickup. Within moments I was diving through the air scoring headshots and sliding across tables taking out 2-3 goons at a time. The game play felt akin to games such as ‘Stranglehold’ and ‘Max Payne’ utilizing the bullet time effect whenever Rubi fires her guns. Taking out an enemy also gives a score and adds to a bonus multiplier which I assume will be totalled at the end of a level for things such as upgrades to weapons or Rubi’s movements.  
After a few small fire fights and learning how to use Rubi’s sword attacks I got thrown into an area with constant spawning enemies. Here I was challenged with the task of destroying the spawn points and taking out the enemies in the most stylish way possible thus adding to the bonus multiplier. There are walls, bars and ledges for Rubi to spin, jump and flip from, add this to the arsenal of weapons she has in her possession and you are in for some mindless killing spree fun.  I got the sense of feeling that this would be the bulk of the main game, and if it is then I am more than happy to carry on playing.
Once I had dispatched of the bad guys and moved through the next door there is a short cut scene which shows Rubi shooting a man that was charging her. As she fires blood sprays across her face and the game turns the entire screen to a vibrant blood red and shades out all the character textures to black and white. In this mode Rubi is pissed, to emphasize this there are even alert sirens played over the music, she now fires her guns quicker and moves a lot faster around the level. The aim here is to chain together as many successive kills as possible and reach the next door way to trigger the next event. This mode is extremely visually pleasing enemies now spray blood up against the walls and floor but to really stand out from the shocking red background blood is now in white and looks very vibrant.
The final section of the demo has Rubi standing atop a speeding car shooting at the mob bosses getaway car. For her to keep up with the bad guy Rubi is able to jump from one car roof to another all the while shooting at bad guys in adjacent vehicles. There are also some quick time events as Rubi moves from one place to another.
Now here is where I got to a turning point in my thoughts for this game demo. As mad and as over the top the fire fights were it was still believable, but now we have Rubi jumping from one speeding car to another and it just seemed a little too farfetched for me, however it was tremendously fun. It was then I was jolted by a memory of another favourite of mine, the ‘Crank’ films. Now I know the films are COMPLETELY unbelievable and over the top but if they are watched as just mindless fun they are undeniably entertaining. So with this in mind I played through the demo a second time and had an absolute blast.
I have to say I did enjoy this demo and when the game is released I will be faced with a difficult decision whether or not to part with my cash for it. I would have like to have played a little more, maybe find out some more about the characters, but I suppose that is what a demo is for. To make you want more and it defiantly worked on me. Although the game isn’t really breaking new boundaries in gameplay what it does do is take the existing elements and add a bit more fun and quirkiness to it. I love the style of the old school B movies that the dev team have gone for with the film grain overlay and over the top action. I’m also hoping that they have brought to the full game some of the humour that the ‘House of the Dead’ team had brought to their game.  As I can quite confidently say that ‘House of the Dead: Overkill’ is one of the funniest games I have ever played. Anyway all things aside ‘Wet’ was a fun demo and I would recommend it to any fans of over the top action.
I hope you enjoyed my first blog and as I said I will try to keep things up to date with new posts when I can. If you would like to leave any comments please feel free to do so.
Ash