Wet is a unique game, with some smart visuals and a solid sountrack, but not much more.
On the sheer base of game design, Wet is a pretty typical modern third person shooter. Things like slow motion, automatic targeting, and the ability to chain together kills into a score boosting combo have become a complete and utter norm for the genre. Some acrobatic skills such as wall running, sliding, and jumping off of and against objects (including villains) are in the game, nothing revolutionary, but the whole thing comes together quite nicely. Of course, the game also does have the obligatory quick time events that every single game has nowadays. The developers went a little overboard with the concept, making pretty much every door necessitate a QTE to open, but given that it seems to be the in thing to do nowadays to pace the game and, or hide loading times (Batman: Arkham Asylum famously does this with ventilation grates) I can't fault the developers for it. Notable, however, is the inclusion of QTE situations when they are not expected. Sure, the game has tons of QTEs. In the reference of Wet, it completely makes sense to have them during highway chases or combat situations in cutscenes. However, there were at least two segments where I put down the controller to check on something during otherwise safe and wound up dead because I didn't complete a QTE. Things like long intermission dialogue with a seemingly unarmed character and ziplining across a street are atypical of needing user input. It does jive with the theme, but winds up a bit annoying nonetheless. As the storyline of Wet bobs and weaves through exceedingly and blessedly cliché environments, it becomes apparent that there's a formula. Enter a level, explore a bit, get thrown into a giant arena deathmatch out of nowhere, and maybe have a highway chase or a highly stylized black/red/white bloodlust mode segment to tie everything together. Later levels do a little to change the formula with some combinations of aforementioned formula. Regardless of said formula, A2M does well in utilizing the handful of different gimmicks to make a decent, if not forgettable campaign.
Style wise is where Wet shines. A2M have made the game a tribute to corny drive in flicks from front to back. If the developers merely stopped at a woman seeking violent revenge plotline with a film grain filter over it, the whole thing would have been pretty average. Instead, A2M went the extra mile and threw in every single grindhouse cinema cliché: missing reels, loud music, gory strikes against the patriarchy, midgets, torture, backstabs left and right, fanciful characters that come and go as they please with no real explanation, and even the showcase of a terrible band that was probably either cheap or friends with the film crew. It helps to reinforce the gimmick even further and proves to be a rather nerdy experience for any B Movie lover. When put into perspective, Wet isn't a revolutionary marvel of gameplay. The same sort of elements seen in practice have been in several other games already to varying degrees of success. Artistically, however, the game is one of the most interesting and most well done games of the past decade. While other games have taken on the idea of a game emulating a certain type of film, Wet is the first to truly embrace it.
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+ Good gameplay and slow motion sections
+ Great, snappy visuals
+ Solid soundtrack
- Very repeative
- Some visual problems
- Really annoying voie acting