"Wet" is a perfect example of style over substance.
In Wet, you'll be playing as Rubi, a beautiful, tough, badass gun-for-hire that gets dragged into a situation that she didn't ask to get dragged into. The story itself, as well as the protagonist, isn't great but serviceable enough. Wet actually has a pretty cool theme going for it, however, of which is a grindhouse one that will instantly remind players of older Tarantino or Rodriguez flicks. It has exploitative violence, gratuitous language, a dirty rock n' roll soundtrack, and some oddball, albeit unmemorable characters. The game's intro perfectly sets the tone for whole thing. Unfortunately, not much else of Wet is all that interesting.
The game controls like a typical twitch-based third-person shooter. You can do things like jump, slide, and run up and across walls. Whenever you're performing these moves and you shoot your guns, the game automatically goes into slo-mo, which is how you will be killing most of you foes. You also get a sword for your basic melee attacks. And really, that's about it. The gameplay is largely unoriginal, but that might have been forgiving had it at least been solid in the first place. There's something about the combat in this game that feels very unsatisfying. It's also incredibly repetitive. You'll be performing the same handful of moves for the entire game - diving, sliding, and running in slo-mo - which grows stale pretty quick. Even though you can unlock more moves later on by spending style points that you earn from defeating enemies, they don't really add much to the combat, but are rather minor things that feel like something you should've been able to do from the start. The combat just doesn't flow as smoothly as it feels like it should. You start out with a couple of revolvers, which have infinite ammo. You later get access to pairs of shotguns, SMGs, and explosive crossbows, which have a finite amount of ammo, and all of which can be upgraded for things like ammo capacity, firing rate, and damage. Oddly, ammo for these weapons can become scarce at particular points. There are also several platforming sequences throughout the game. Surprisingly, given how the rest of the game feels, these usually work quite well with a few exceptions. Overall, Wet's gameplay is as shallow as it is dodgy and is a collection of elements that many other games have done so much better in the past, though Wet does it with a bit more style. Swinging from pole to pole and blasting enemies in between each one is admittedly quite fun.
Level design is pretty average, though richly detailed. Interaction is fairly limited, as well. You won't find much to destroy besides explosive barrels and wooden crates, but this is to be expected. Those who have played Prince of Persia or the most recent Tomb Raider games will be familiar with Wet's platforming sections. There is an abundance of sections called Arenas, where enemies will infinitely respawn until you destroy all of their spawn points. Having played on the Medium difficulty setting, most of these were fairly easy, with one or two that were infuriatingly and needless hard. These are also the game's best way to earn style points. Wet comes with few cool set-piece scenes that serve as the most memorable moments of the game. There are a couple of deliciously over-the-top car chases that has Rubi leaping from vehicle to vehicle on a busy highway, but they're more cool to watch than play. There's also an equally over-the-top but infinitely more frustrating segment where you are free-falling from a plane you just blew up and are forced to avoid the resulting debris in order to reach a parachute. These sequences are a nice break in the action and fit the game well. On a lower note, Wet has one of the most disappointing and anti-climactic endings I've seen in awhile, both story and gameplay wise. Certainly not a good way to end what is already a lackluster experience.
Wet has some technical problems that deserve mentioning. The first thing you will notice is that the graphics are way below average for a game of this generation. While the grindhouse film-grain effect looks cool, it's not a strong enough deterrent to keep you from noticing that this game is not too pretty. A lot of the in-game animations are choppy, too, which adds some awkwardness to the whole experience. It's strange because there are a few nicely-animated cut-scenes in Wet, which begs the question, "why couldn't everything have moved this smooth?". The sound department is a different story, however. As mentioned, this game has a great soundtrack, which is accompanied by some nice gun sound effects and pretty good voice acting by Eliza Dushku and Malcom McDowell.
I cannot recommend in any way making a full purchase of Wet. Other than it not being a top quality product, its campaign is over in 5 to 6 hours, and besides some different difficulty levels and challenges, there's not really much else to do here. It's worth a rent at most, but only if you're really into this genre and are willing to look past a myriad of glaring flaws. It's not a broken game, but had it spent a few more months under development, it could've reached its potential. Wet is a perfect example of style over substance. Some flashy moves and fancy gunplay do not hide how limited this game really is. Proceed with caution.
6/10