After wrapping up Bayonetta and before starting the next game I just had to come back to Wanted: Dead. I love it and wanted to try it out again now that it has been updated.

At first I needed to re-adjust to this game, as I kept hitting the wrong buttons for dodge and reload and was playing kind of awkwardly, but after a bit of time it was clicking again. Quickly sprinting and rolling around as Hannah Stone while ripping, shooting and parrying your way through enemies is so much fun. The charm and characters of this game are still great too. So what’s new or different?

First of all are the fixes and improvements. I played through the game on PS5, on normal difficulty. Then I got the itch to keep playing this again and did Hard and Japanese Hard, which takes me up to 8 play throughs now. I had fewer issues and no crashes but there were still performance problems, particularly during Kowloon Street. So it’s a smoother experience but still needs a little more work and of course this game still has its bit of jank.

There is a big change to difficulty. The first ninja now has three Stimpacks right in front of him and all the tougher enemies drop them too. I don’t know how I feel about this. The game already has an easy mode, which is now easier to access. It feels like the game lost its edge a bit and like the creators have compromised their vision. It seems a bit late too, all the reviews are out and the game has been on shelves for over a year. Is this really going to pull in more people? I almost managed a no death run first go despite not playing it since last year and not trying for it. During the last chapter there were just a lot health drops that I was leaving behind. The game just feels quite a bit easier. At first I thought no problem normal difficulty has been made more accessible, which is fine, but new players will be missing something. However these changes were made to hard and Japanese hard as well. Holy crap why did they lower the difficulty of the entire game? Now if I want to play the game as the developers originally intended and how I enjoyed it I need to not install the update, which means playing a buggier version that likes to crash. It’s still an incredibly fun game and I know many will prefer it now but it has really lost something. I liked that it demanded you learn how to play, it was rewarding and the journey to getting better was one of Wanted: Dead’s highlights. I liked that you had to be on your game or get punished. I liked the tension and palm sweats the difficulty and checkpoint system created. I liked that it made you learn to get through strings of encounters rather than just one encounter at a time with heaps of health or checkpoints in between. I want more people to play Wanted: Dead so maybe this is going to be good in the long run but I don’t like that it’s been toned down either, it does negatively impact the experience and there was no reason to change the higher difficulties. Surely there was a better way to get new people on board.

They added player stats so you can track your progress for some trophies. The severance pays trophy has been fixed as well and I unlocked it. I’m never getting that Platinum trophy though because of how damn hard it is to do really well at the mini games, seriously why is the ramen game harder than beating the game on Japanese Hard mode? They also added the ability to toggle in and out of cover with a button press. I’m not a fan of it and changed it back straight away. I want to move around quickly in this game and snapping in and out of cover just feels better.

I’d love to see more improvements and content added to this game like an even harder difficulty that changes up enemy placement, a boss run mode, chapter select and a ranking system. As much as I’m really happy this game got an update, it feels like two steps forward and one step back, when the game needed to be taken four steps forward.

The reviews and how they have almost certainly impacted this game’s sales and how it will be remembered by many (if remembered at all) really sucks. Some of the bad reviews I have read gave me God Hand 3/10 flashbacks, hopefully this game get’s some of the recognition I think it deserves one day. Overall Wanted: Dead is an amazing, addictive game. It’s hard to describe just how good this game feels. I’ve played it 8 times now and have it down to about 2 hours and no deaths, if I’m careful, and I’m still keen on playing it more. It’s just such a special game and I think if I were to review it again now I’d put it in the 8 out of 10 range, which for me makes it a must own and play game.

Added more after another update in April:

I had to go back to Wanted: Dead again after another big update released and this now brings me to ten playthroughs. It’s been further improved but also comes with the cost of difficulty being nerfed even more.

There’s actually quite a long list of changes. First up is an expanded skill tree with some new skills and some changes to previous skills. The biggest changes here are a quick little grenade toss, sliding attack makes enemies drop shields and adrenaline rush, which gives you slow mo after bullet time and you are more powerful during it. On top of this there’s been rebalancing to damage and stun and adrenaline seems to build quicker. The additions are nice but the changes are taking things too far. They simply make you more powerful and make the game easier.

There are additional fixes for bugs and improvements have been made to visuals and performance which is always very welcome but some performance issues still remain. You can now transfer your save from PS4 to PS5 as well.

The Space Runaway minigame has been made easier and one of the trophies for the Ramen minigame has been made easier too.

Wanted: Dead is fantastic and it is wonderful to see the game getting this much attention and improvement I just wish it didn’t come with the cost of lowering the game’s difficulty. It is especially frustrating when a lot these changes could have only been made to Neko and maybe Normal mode while Hard and Japanese Hard could have been left as they were. It is still an incredibly fun game but it has lost some of its edge and the experience has been negatively impacted. Tension is reduced and it no longer has the same good balance between challenging and rewarding. It is highly likely that new players won’t be pushed to learn to play. This means newer players may not discover what this game has to offer and that the rewarding journey of getting better will often be missed. This is really important as one of Wanted: Dead’s strengths is how good it is at making you feel good. It is disappointing that Soleil hasn’t been able make it more accessible without impacting how challenging and rewarding it was.

If you were put off by or dropped Wanted: Dead because of bugs, issues and/or difficulty then now is the time to jump in or jump back in. It is in a better state now (at least on PS5) and is quite a bit easier to play through. You will be missing something due to the easier difficulty of the whole game but I know a lot of people won’t care about this.

Wanted: Dead has become my favourite PS5 game, that isn’t some kind of re-release. I very, very rarely have wanted to come back and replay a game so much or so often since the early PS3 days, which is now around 15 years ago. If gaming is not doing well right now then games like Wanted: Dead is the medicine, even with the all the issues that were present in the game at launch.

I’m kind of surprised there isn’t a bit more discussion around the story, world and characters too but I guess not many people played it. I feel bad about how much I initially glossed over and didn’t think about it. It’s actually really good. This world is really cool, I love the characters and I’m really hoping for a sequel.




STOP READING HERE IF YOU DON'T WANT SPOILERS




It’s a cyber punk, alternate version of our world, set in Hong Kong but with a very international cast of characters. Meat is rare and there seems to be clear separation of the different classes of people. It is about a corporation convincing the public that they have made synths (= working class) but really they haven’t. The corporation literally owns people, has their own security force and seems to have a lot of control over politics and the police. Then there is the whole ending with the reveals and the anime cut scenes. I didn’t expect the game to hit this much and have a story this good after that opening diner cut scene. I was just expecting stylish, irreverent fun. There’s so many interesting deliberate choices as well, like the voice actors, only one karaoke song and it’s 99 Luftballons, Stone’s police car is a Maserati from the early 90s and there is one random Nems song. There’s just too much to list. I have so many questions as well, like how did this game even get made? Why is the technology the way it is in this world? Why are there live action cooking segments? Will Hannah/Emma find peace and/or resolution?

O sentimento de se jogar Wanted:Dead é de que o jogo estava pronto a anos, mas não viu a luz do dia até ano passado, sua estrutura, sua estética, seu combate, são muito semelhantes ao que se veria num jogo base da sétima geração de consoles, e vejo isso com muito bons olhos e um sorriso no rosto.

Imaginem que Suda51 e SWERY estão trabalhando num projeto e o melhor de dois mundo se juntam (espero que Hotel Barcelona seja foda, ok?) essa é meio a ideia que eu tenho desse jogo, o combate é muito divertido, serio, e a primeira vista talvez soe estranho, mas serio, é muito daora, e por se tratar de um jogo com tanta personalidade, é o que adiciona ainda mais gosto em tudo.

Apesar das atuações de voz super blasé e fps cair durante cutscenes (igual Deadly Premonition, quem diria) o jogo se segura pelo seu carisma, partes em anime, momentos rítmicos, os diálogos ala Tarantino ou até mesmo, a galhofa pela galhofa são algumas das coisas que tornaram a minha experiencia com Wanted:Dead agradável.

De certa forma, dentro de um contexto aonde cada vez mais os jogos se parecem uns com os outros por causa da reprodução das tendências (leiam Walter Benjamin) é muito interessante ver um jogo ir contra a maré, usando de técnicas e forma do passado agora com estética, o que me faz pensar em Wanted:Dead com um jogo anômalo para o seu momento dentro da indústria.

Esse jogo quer ser muita coisa, as inspirações estão claramente visíveis em todos os lugares, é ao mesmo tempo Metal Gear, Max Payne, Ninja Gaiden, Sekiro, Esquadrão Suicida, Cover Shooters, jogos de arcade... e no fim, é apenas Wanted: Dead. No meio dessa bagunça de ideias, existe uma unidade fascinante por si só que vai muito além de apenas uma experiência derivativa de outras obras, e quando você olha para esse jogo se desprendendo das pré-concepções que essas inspirações podem ter criado, tudo fica bem mais interessante e divertido. Em questão de mecânicas é argumentável que, apesar de problemas de polimento, são genuinamente funcionais, mas quando vai para outros aspectos e o jogo inteiro é colocado em evidência... eu não sei, eu realmente não sei o que eu acho, eu terminei o jogo e ainda não entendi o que me atrai tanto aqui, eu ainda não entendi nada do que aconteceu na história, o que posso falar é que é definitivamente interessante.

como que alguém solta o projeto mais inspirado, interessante e apaixonado que eu tive o prazer de jogar no ano de lançamento de 2023 assim como quem não quer nada.
jogo intenso em todos os aspectos - ele não vai te pedir pra você engajar com os mini games de ramen, arcade, cantar 99 luftballons com a joosten (o melhor karaoke, yakuza sonha), nem com os flashbacks de anime, ou os checkpoints de 40 minutos que tem uns 5 mini chefes pra voce enfrentar com recursos limitados. ele vai jogar tudo isso na sua cara. isso com uma confiança infinita, chega a ser de invejar, os audaciosos responsáveis por criarem essas fases com vários momentos que diversas analises chamariam de injustos, essas coreografias de lutas lindas (eu adoro quando a hannah finaliza um segundo inimigo com um tiro na cabeça dele), ou o fato desse ser o jogo de ação-espadinha que mais se disfarça de tiro em terceira pessoa. não senti que os artistas responsáveis por isso fraquejaram uma vez sequer.
é bastante intrusivo, similar as memórias (implantadas? apagadas?) da protagonista. mas wanted:dead é uma obra que também te acalenta, lembrando que mesmo sendo uma policial, policiais de verdade não vestiriam sneakers.

From a glance it's an exciting action throwback to the PS2/PS3 era of janky Japanese hack n slash.

The actual product is a clumsy, clunky often tortuous experience in either bad or just plain stupid game design. Frustrating in ways that feel incongruous to the propulsive momentum the gameplay promises, with no real intrinsic reward other than relief from not having to battle the same nauseating wave of enemies again and again for an hour.

Still. The wrapping is okay and every few minutes I'd exclaim, "that's sick" to my lonely room.

Soleil Studios is made of former Team Ninja member. You probably know Team Ninja for Ninja Gaiden and/or Dead or Alive. Their way to do games is the following one : go all in a CQC combat system, mix it up with great chara design, spicy mise en scène, not so good technique and hardecoreness at every level of the game. Honestly, even finishing one of these games is hard. They know it : I unlocked the "Hard japanese" difficulty mode when I finished Wanted Dead.

In my opinion, Team Ninja is misunderstood in the western world. Most people simply see DDDDD breasts and stop it there. But what's behind those breasts is a deep combat system, actually deeper than most combat systems.

You've understood that I like Team Ninja. That's why I follow Soleil's work with attention since its birth. I was offered Valkyrie Elysium by my sister and didn't take the time to play it (my lover finished it and she's fond of action RPGs so I guess it's quite good). Then, my lover offered me Wanted Dead. I didn't want to let it unplayed for long: that's a question of respect at this point.

So I played it. And oh pal what a game! A very controversial one at least. Why is that? Well, it's actually a very good game. But nowaday, people tend to, quite rightly, seriously dislike technical issues. This and difficulty spikes. And old school linear structure. Wanted Dead has all the three of them.

So why do I consider Wanted Dead a good game? Let's have a look at its 3Cs.
- Camera : Nothing special here. Camera is never an issue. The game uses genres standards to counter the camera's weaknesses: it zooms when you look at something and your character automatically choose a target when attacking with your sword, wether or not this target is out of frame.
- Character : A military police lieutenant expert in both gunfights and swordfights.
- Controls : A clever assignation, in which shooting gameplay relies on sticks + circle + triggers + RB and fighting gameplay relies on sticks + LB + cross + square + triangle. Really, the only thing wrong with controls is you pickup items with R3.

That's it. The game is BOTH a TPS and an Hack-n-slash. And none of these aspects are neglected. Now don't get me wrong : the shooting part isn't as good as Gears of War and the hack-n-slash part isn't as good as Bayonetta. But both parts are good, and more important : they're smartly articulated together. For instance : long range enemies are weak to katana whereas CQC enemies are weak to bullets. This leads to a constant high-risk-high-reward decision making, in which you have to choose between charging and exposing yourself to enemy fire or force retreating the best you can to create space between you and the short range enemies.

This high-risk-high-reward mentality of design is applicated to every aspect of the game. Upgrading your weapon is much more about personalizing your weapon. Each thing you buff in a hand leads to another thing nerfed in the other hand: increasing your clip size decreases your reload time. Healing yourself is also a high-risk-high-reward move, considering it slows you hard making you ultra vulnerable, and can be interrupted.

Ammo managment is also high-risk-high-reward based. Basically, you have... Very few clips for both your main weapon and your secondary one. This forces you to switch between your main weapon and the other one, because enemies drop weapons for one or the other, not for both. Considering you can change your secondary weapon for more funky weapons, like greandes launcher or shotguns, considering the higher damages a weapons deals, the less ammo it has, this lead to interessting gunfights, in which switching weapons is common and the order in which you switch weapon is essential.

A parry system similar to the souls' one is implemented. It works very well, provinding you either a low-risk-low-reward permanent protection in the detriment of your speed either a high-risk-high-reward timing parry system. Unfortunately, mastering this system, paired with the counter attack binded on triangle, is necessary (I mean it: NECESSARY) to finish the game. This would not have been an issue if this system was necessary as well to reach the final boss, which it isn't.

Wonderful transition to bosses, characters and narration. In ne word for each of them: unequal, nice and surprising. Bosses are overall interessting, with many patterns and a good variety in their move set and the one you have to assume to deal with them. Some of them even have very clever design, like the rain one, vanishing into invisibility, which lead to a stressful deadly hide and seek game, or Tom Cruise, or should I say Tom CruiseS because there are two of them, which double the patterns you have to watch for and leads to interessting decision making about whom to down first. Unfortunately, there are the second boss and the last one, whom are very harsh difficulty spike, forcing you to learn things you didn't had to learn before (like perfect parrying), and relying and what can be seen as unfair design: insta-kill moves and arenas flooded with henchmen.

Characters rely on objections. Herzog is both popular and upopular, is both an ass and a nice dude. Doc does surgery while being drunk. Cortez is silent, which makes you over attentive to his moves and animation. Gunsmith is -you get it- a gunsmith, but also a former idol fan of cats. Captain lectures you and your team, but eventually asks for a kiss at the end of the meeting to forgive you (the meeting was about how many people you killed and how much it cost). Bad guys are really cool : I talked earlier of the invisible girl and Tom ruise, but Richter and the club owner are wonderful too. Eventually, Hannah, the main character, is a brutal yet soft abandonned mother, very empathic, whilst being a true killing machine, hurt by wars that aren't her's.

All these people are brilliantly mise-en-scène in a Kojima's way. There a huge attention to futile details, like how gelly is their gelly (spoiler: anti-gravity tiers). The switch between art style is wonderful and well-thought: outside the club is realistic, inside it's anime. Shoutout to this level by the way, which is by far the best one featuring the best enemies and level design.

The world and story told are a post-80 pro capitalist society that killed public services and destroyed many lives in its insatiable appetice for profit. Pretty much our world, just a little bit more fascist. Private armies tend to destroy police to conquier this last market. Girls with no family and a kid have no futur: there are no social services to help them. They'll, as shown in a cutscene, marry a douch that'll eventually come home drunk and kill them. Not gonna lie, it can be harsh. This is very nicely constrasted to the colorful sound and visual design, which is based on the 80s culture, quite happy-go-lucky and egocentric.

Wanted Dead isn't a perfect game in any way. But, as the other Team Ninja (in this case, their child Soleil) games, it focuses on things it considers important and delivers a 20/20 game on these things. If you want a well told anticaptilistic game, based on mixed combat system, featuring great sword AND gun fights, Wanted Dead is for you. If you want a game that runs perfectly on a PS4, that has no difficulty spikes nor linear level design, this isn't for you.

é meio complicado falar sobre esse jogo, de certo modo, ele é o jogo mais nota 6 existente, não é taaaao bom em maior parte do que se propõe a fazer, mas da pra relevar alguns dos problemas, por que ainda assim, me diverti bastante com ele.

começando pelo lado ruim, o jogo não tem muito polimento, a gameplay é sim bem divertida porem existem alguns erros impossiveis de ignorar. A câmera é meio truncada e de vez em quando pode te atrapalhar a mirar ou dar parry, um sistema de lock-on faz falta apesar de não ser exatamente necessário, o jogo parece que esquece que seu personagem não consegue pular e o design das fases acaba te atrapalhando bastante por isso e em vários momentos parece que só esqueceram de balancear certas coisas do combate, além de faltar um pouquinho mais de variedade, entretanto, o jogo é curto então isso não incomoda muito. A questão é, o jogo é MUITO curto, a história não faz sentido nenhum pq parece q ela é só 1/3 de uma narrativa completa, não acontece quase nada, e o que acontece não tem muito desenvolvimento nem impacto.

Agora, onde o o jogo sucede de fato é na sua apresentação, o estilo visual, a estética retro futurista, os finalizadores durante o combate, o jogo tem estilo e charme de sobra. Além dos design dos personagens e de todo o visual do jogo, entre as missões de ação dignas de uma série policial ou filme de ação dos anos 80(com direito a uma missão dentro de uma balada e uma cutscene tocando maniac), temos minigames, jogo de ritmo de comer ramen, karaokê cantando uma musica alemã que eu amo, retro shooter em um arcade. Esses detalhes ajudam muito no carisma da obra toda. Além disso, apesar de ter dito que a história não faz muito sentido, ainda assim toda a apresentação dela é ótima, ênfase nas cutscenes em anime mostrando o passado da personagem principal.

no geral, é um jogo com um potencial enorme, porém segurado por um orçamento médio e ideias de mais, ainda assim com todo o estilo e charme que ele tem, se tivesse uma história maior com certeza conseguiria ver wanted: dead sendo cultuado assim como jogos do suda51. É uma pena realmente, gostaria de ver uma versão mais realizada desse jogo.

I feel like I can either write pages about this or nothing, it's such a weird collection of ideas packed into such a short time and most of them get a response of "what". John Wick's been brought up a few times in relation to this as if it's sort of a knockoff but I did like that it captured that first film's weird tone which I missed in the sequels. It's really difficult to tell, in some areas, what the creators think is genuinely cool and what is played ironically, there's little nudging to the audience and it makes you ask "what" even more. Too tired to write more, see me in a day when this turns into an essay longer than war and peace.

Bafflingly compelling.

Why does the gameplay feel like it stepped out a 2000's bargain bin, complete with explosive barrels and hilariously conspicuous invisible walls?

Why is the protagonist 7 feet tall?

Who though casting all the characters in central Europe was a good idea?

Who thought it a good idea to cast a lead whose English makes her sound like she's basically doing a female Tommy Wiseau?

Why does every cutscene end in the most abrupt fashion and seemingly half way through?

Why do they show your character taking a shower after every mission.

Why does this have the goofiest cutscene blood splatter carryover since Dragon Age: Origins.

Why is there a single East Asian character in HONG KONG?

Why is said character introduced in an early cutscene and then vanishes outside some dialogue in the Hub?

Why does said character have a Sex Slave that is mentioned in files and in dialogue that never actually appears?

Why are there 80s covers?

Why bother with highly compressed FMVs in 2023?

Why are Australians narrating about Ramen?

Who thought a crane game with no shadow casting was a good idea?

Why does only the Ramen game have unlockable additional modes?

Were the people who agreed to fund this on all the drugs?

Why am I giving this a positive score despite it not being something I would ever recommend except to other weirdos like me?

Conversando com alguns amigos, cheguei a conclusão que Wanted Dead, é um jogo irritante. Nesse mesmo dia, um amigo que participou dessa conversa, citou casualmente Evil Within, mesmo sendo contextos diferentes, o sentimento que tenho por ambos é de estresse.

Refletindo melhor sobre as proximidades de ambos, entendo que eles, mesmo sendo jogos diferentes, compartilham de elementos similares e são essas semelhanças, que me irritam.

Conceitualmente, Wanted Dead, pode até ser interessante, como alguns amigos defenderam suas escolhas de design absurdas, respeito, mas os acho malucos. E é isso que me pegou negativamente, são conceitos interessantes, mas tão pouco polidos e aplicados, muitas vezes, de uma forma tão irritante, como a utilização do checkpoint, que no instante que eu morria no game, a diversão1 acabava.

Evil Within, é meio que isso também: ideias interessantes, que no conjunto, até faz sentido e funciona, mas tem tão pouco tato ao mesmo tempo, que só me irrita. Não acho que ideias salvem alguma obra, Wanted Dead é cheio de ideias legais, executadas, hora de forma boa, noutras do pior jeito possível.

Wanted Dead, é um jogo que tem personalidades, não nego, mas, ao mesmo tempo, é tão perdido no que quer, que parece tá tentando repetir um estilo de jogo (que nessa altura do campeonato, no mínimo, podemos chamar de tendência.), que gerou vários dos clássicos cults da era do PS3. Uma amiga, muito mais sabida que eu sobre videogame, comentou sobre isso também e concordo com tudo que ela disse, menos na parte disso ser positivo.

Esses jogos, que saiam tudo atrapalhado e que acabaram por fomentar uma legião de fãs ao decorrer do tempo, é algo muito mais acidental e difícil de emular essa estética. Eles foram tipo Acossados, que originalmente era pra ser de um jeito, mas por questões externas, o filme foi todo picotado e acabou saindo muito melhor que o que era pretendido. Sinto que é a mesma coisa pra esses jogos clássicos cult.

Wanted Dead, só tenta ir nessa onda, mas não consegue. Tem personalidade, mas não é único e não consegue fazer a soma de tudo, ser marcante. É um jogo que rapidamente você esquece que jogou e mesmo seus melhores momentos, não seguram.

E seus melhores momentos, são o combate meele, que mesmo tendo outra forma de jogar, que soa até mais planejado, não foi introduzido e sinceramente, não é um game que me interesso pra sequer aprender a jogá-lo desse jeito. De qualquer forma, mesmo no combate corpo-a-corpo, a existência de esponjas de danos e o contra-ataque dos inimigos, arrancarem muita vida, deixa o duelo monótono e pouco satisfatório. Satisfação essa, que mais surge nos momentos de execução, do que lutando de fato.

Mas sinceramente, onde ele mais peca é em juntar tudo isso, em um level design que só não funciona. É um caminho apenas, não tem expressão, não tem nada, é vazio e ignorável; pode apagar tudo e deixar um corredor sem textura, o resultado seria bizarramente, o mesmo.

Contudo, ainda gosto de algumas coisinhas aqui e ali, mesmo as cutscene sendo todas, agora falando cinematograficamente, erradas, ainda são legais de assistir e gosto como ele trabalha seus personagens, dando um charme divertido. Pena que isso não vale pro jogo todo...

Enfim, eu abandonei na reta final, porque eu cansei de ser morto por inimigos que me matam em um combo idiota e que se recusam a morrer. Quem sabe na próxima, eu mato o chefe final e talvez, mude de opinião.

1. Não tenho nenhuma vontade em debater se o termo: “diversão”, faz sentido quando se fala de arte, então pra resolver, entenda diversão como interesse.

Pure unadulterated 6th gen zoomer filter

Wait, this was released just this year? How could this be?

In all seriousness though, I’m never trusting a journalist’s review ever again. I had interest in Wanted: Dead until I saw IGN’s 4/10 review calling it a bad game. I know not to trust these publications positive reviews, but usually when reviews are this low, there’s something very wrong. That’s not the case with Wanted: Dead.

Wanted: Dead is not only good, but it’s great; A beautiful seamless blend of cover shooting and hack n slash. The shooting is responsive and features great feedback. The melee combat is simple, yet engaging and challenging. Mixing these together could result in a mess, but the enemy variety, balancing and health system makes it harmonious.

Staying in cover blasting away results in running out of ammo and health. Much like Doom (2016) and Eternal, running away and hiding will get you killed. You heal from preforming the melee takedown animations and regular melee attacks. You can still use the cover shooting mechanics in an attempt to take out enemies at long range or thin out the horde, but the melee combat is what allows the player to regain health and build adrenalin. Adrenalin is basically your devil trigger or god hand, activating it shoots nearby enemies with your handgun leaving them open for a “glory kill”.

As for the melee combat itself, the only comparison I can make is Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice. Parry enemies’ basic strings and then use the handgun counter on the moves that flash red. It’s simple and it could have used a few more types of enemies. At least there are bosses that have unique strings and abilities.

My biggest complaint with Wanted: Dead is that it doesn’t evolve much. The game doesn’t change much past the first level. Sure, there’s new enemies and a skill tree that unlocks new moves, but the lack of any real level design, platforming, or puzzles makes it more paced like a beat ‘em up than a traditional 6th gen character action game like Devil May Cry or Ninja Gaiden. Still, I didn’t find myself getting bored. It throws waves and waves of enemies at you with new combinations.

The checkpoints are stretched really far apart. It can be frustrating (especially a certain one of level 4) but overall I think it ties in well with the design they were going for. Wanted: Dead also has some jank but who cares? I don’t know why people get so upset about this. I glitched out of bounds twice, some of the animations froze during the glory kills, the chainsaw can miss right through enemies, a few times I couldn’t pickup a med kit, but if you’re gonna let that get in your way you’re not playing video games for the right reasons.

Wanted: Dead’s world is bursting with personality. There’s multiple goofy mini games and strange yet compelling voice acting.
Lieutenant Stone’s VA specifically is strange. Theres a few lines delivered poorly, but her unique tone makes it memorable. With all the extra side content I barely touched, I’m surprised how short the game was. It’s set up like a much longer game, complete with an HQ area and challenge arena, but it only lasted 7 hours for me. The story starts as a confusing mess without any structure, but eventually in the penultimate level, the twists and turns make sense of most of it without spelling it all out.

The devs of Wanted: Dead proclaimed it to be a “love letter to the 6th generation of games” and that’s absolutely what it is, warts and all. I cannot fathom someone playing this game and legitimately thinking it’s “bad”. It’s straightforward challenging fun. Get filtered.

8/10

A guy wakes up, massive hangover

So, massive hangover

He's about to throw up and shit

He notices that he's naked, like no jeans, no undies. He reaches his dick and finds out he has four balls

So, he immediately grabs his phone and dials his old man

Dad, dad, I woke up the morning after and suddenly I have four balls!

His dad goes: get out of there, son, you're being fucked!

Written and directed by Quentin Tarantino

Wanted: Dead is another game unfairly thrown under the bus or ignored by main stream videogame reviewers. Things have been like this for a long time now but it’s still sad to see and getting worse. Mainstream videogame reviews are hurting games, the gaming industry and gamers. The importance placed on game review scores and the metacritic number is not a good thing as it causes developers to create safe games that appeal to the mainstream game reviewers. And we all know how good the big game reviewers opinions are – weak, ignorant, shallow first impressions, pushed out quickly to get clicks, written by people that didn’t pay for it, didn’t have enough time to learn to play it properly, or didn’t care and are in a position where they can’t be too critical as it may affect their access to the industry, advertising spending and connections with their peers. So then along comes a game like Wanted: Dead that they can ‘safely’ shit on or ignore or do a really bad job reviewing and most people won’t care but it hurts the game, the developers, the industry and gamers. (Obviously this is a generalisation and gamers aren’t much better.)

Wanted: Dead is not a 4 out of 10 or worse. Wanted: Dead is lower budget and rough around the edges but it is a really solid action game with plenty of personality. I honestly think it is an enjoyable, charismatic game made by developers earnestly trying to make something fun and challenging in their own style.

First let’s get the bad out of the way. The two big negatives I see in reviews are low production values/ lack of polish and difficulty. There is plenty of truth to the first point. The graphics are not the best and the frame rate does drop at times. Objects and environments are not super detailed and the character models look dated. The enemies pass though surfaces they shouldn’t occasionally and the camera doesn’t always do a perfect job. During my second play through I had multiple crashes and I think one of the trophies may not be unlocking. However none of this is bad enough to make me stop playing or dislike the game but of course it does lower my opinion and I wish the experience was smoother and better looking. The difficulty on the other hand is a deliberate part of the game. If you don’t want to learn how to play and you don’t give yourself some time to get decent at it then you’re in for a frustrating time. Once you get the hang of things and unlock some skills the game becomes pretty great. Don’t get me wrong the game still throws some really hard sections your way, especially in the final stage, but the only part of the game that feels bulls**t hard is those damn minigames, which are generally optional.

The story and characters of Wanted: Dead was something I didn’t think I was going to care for at first but overtime I got more into it. Especially the quirky cast of characters, they grew on me so much and by the end I was left wanting more. What helps a lot is that the game doesn’t take itself too seriously and has you regularly changing from one thing to another. One minute you’re watching a cutscene, then some ultra violent gameplay, then to the crane game, then an anime cutscene, then karaoke, then live action cooking lessons, etc. It’s a fun, wild time but the humour and style won’t be for everyone. Wanted: Dead may not have a ‘good’ story or ‘deep’ characters but that isn’t a problem. It is totally fine to make something that is just kind of cool and fun.

Visually as I already said Wanted: Dead is not very technically impressive. I still like the look of it though because of the style, direction and character designs. The soundtrack was pretty cool and l liked the voice acting. It suited the characters and tone of the game.

Now we’re at the meat of the game, the excellent hack n slash/third person shooter hybrid combat. The problem with this is you don’t get the depth of a hack n slash or a TPS but you do gain the fun, interesting gameplay of mixing the two. Your main gun, second gun, grenades and cover work like a TPS. Your pistol is for counters, light hits and interrupting enemies. Your sword is for heavier hits, basic combos and charge attacks. You also have a block, parry, counter hit, side step, dodge roll, sprint, slide and sometimes a chainsaw. On top of that you have executions, slow mo and slow mo handgun attack all earned by playing well. You gain health back by hurting enemies too so it’s the type of game that rewards good play and encourages aggressive play. These elements mix so well together and once you get good and are in the zone it is a blast that looks so freaking cool. There is depth here or you can just get good enough to enjoy and finish it. Yeah it’s hard but worth it.

Wanted: Dead’s flaws are not enough to drag down the fun too much. I was swearing and laughing throughout and it will be a cult classic, if it’s not already. If it were slightly longer, had higher production values and was more highly polished it would be a game of the year contender for me. It is really important to support games like this. If people didn’t buy and appreciate King’s field, Lost kingdoms and Demon’s souls we wouldn’t have Elden Ring and Bloodborne. I would strongly recommend Wanted: Dead to anyone that enjoys Japanese action games.

7.4/10

Just wanted to add a little extra to this:

Since I first typed up this review I have played it two more times, including on Japanese hard mode and I fell more in love with it. I also didn’t give the story enough credit in my review. It’s still not something super deep or anything but there are obviously very deliberate choices that went into the this and are there for a reason. I’ll have to pull things apart or just get lazy and look for a good YouTube video on it. Part of me wants to raise this score even higher but I can’t ignore those flaws.

This game is really weird.
The story is super strangely paced and the dialogue often feels Lynchian. And occasionally there are the strange minigames. It's very weird but honestly really enjoyable.
The combat is less enjoyable, mixing a cover shooter where the enemies are damage spongy and your ammo runs out immediatly with a hack and slash game and it doesn't really work. Also the game is way too hard, even on easy mode, but that difficulty mostly comes from atrition which as I said before is not something I like.

surprising amount of heart
the combat is very reactive with a heavy emphasis on the two types of parries over combos while mixing in third person shooter gameplay. It can be a challenge to get the hang of at first, but use the built-in combat practice to get the hang of it. The story is almost hitting on some legit themes about dehumanizing ourselves to corporations for money though it's not quite at the forefront enough to fully land but I'm surprised it was aiming that high. it does feel like it could have used one or two more levels before the endgame though

The following is a transcript of a video review which can be viewed here: https://youtu.be/-qajdeYdJdA

Wanted: Dead is an anomaly within the modern video game market. The game wasn’t created to dazzle people with a phenomenal presentation, it isn’t some avant-garde break from typical action gameplay, and the narrative doesn’t go anywhere a video game hasn’t dared to go before. Instead, what makes Wanted: Dead stand out is Soleil’s unique game development philosophy. Similar to games like Axiom Verge, Dusk, and Disco Elysium, Soleil made a game in a style that is no longer catching the attention of the money-men who control the big studios. Wanted: Dead adheres closely to Soleil’s signature style: it is an over-the-top action game with elements that would be right at home on the Playstation 2. I can imagine that description alone can be enough to convince some players to go out and give the game a shot, but I can also understand the concerns this could raise in others. “Looks like a PS2 game” is a frequently used pejorative term nowadays so it’d take something really special to convince those people not to immediately write Wanted: Dead off. Soleil has used many modern game development techniques to deliver an experience that wouldn’t have been possible on that old hardware, while still holding true to a lot of the conventions from the time - which I think is a good way to summarise this game. The player uses swords and guns and grenades and chainsaws, they roll around and parry enemy attacks - which makes it a soulslike - there are boss fights, long, linear levels, tons of stylish kill animations, 80s music, minigames, weird character designs, and a lot of funny cutscenes. It might share many of these features with other games, but the combination is distinctly Soleil’s own. Wanted: Dead is basically an Extermination redux which is exactly what the world needs right now. But, since this game wouldn’t be filled with purchasable cosmetics or offer the publisher some means of selling the players’ personal information, Wanted: Dead’s budget was remarkably small, and that lack of funding is very apparent throughout the game. There are a slew of technical issues that are detrimental to the experience, then there are a few gameplay segments that would probably have been left out had the studio been playtesting more thoroughly, and then the game’s difficulty balancing could have benefitted from some extra time for refinement. With all that said, however, I don’t think this is a bad game, and the air of negativity surrounding it is completely unearned.

A while back I played Devil’s Third, the infamous WiiU game that was brutalised by professional reviewers at the time. I liked it quite a lot - the cutscenes made me laugh, the gameplay is solid, and Ivan is a character who deserved the trilogy that the developers had been dreaming of, but it was far from flawless. The developers’ inability to secure a publisher and target hardware put a big dent in Devil’s Third that I’m happy to overlook. I definitely attributed far more of Devil’s Third to Valhalla Game Studios than to Soleil which has ultimately proven to be incorrect. Devil’s Third and Wanted: Dead are very similar games but Valhalla had no hand in the latter. And now I’m questioning what Itagaki and co even did. Both games feature similar third person hack-n-slash elements, cover-shooting, party mechanics, a war criminal main character, and ambiguous world-ending stakes that are kind of trans-humany. In one game there’s synthetic humanoids, in the other there’s Joe Rogan clones. I think the mechanical differences favour Wanted: Dead overall, but I laughed a lot less. Whether this was due to having played Devil’s Third first and thus I was ready for the kind of wacky nonsense Wanted: Dead contained, or if the humour just doesn’t quite land as well is something I can’t really pin down. But at least the parry-counter system is cool.

As the player makes their way through Wanted: Dead’s linear levels they’ll frequently be presented with a new batch of enemies to fight. Pretty much all of these enemies are some form of humanoid, but the variety of guns and armour values they have force the player to interact with different enemy types in different ways. When entering the first level the player is shown the two guns Stone has been issued; not so subtly prompting them to try both out during the upcoming battle, which demonstrates to the player how the rifle and the handgun will be used. The rifle facilitates a cover-shooter gameplay style where the player can post up behind chest-high walls and play whack-a-mole with the enemies that are also hiding in cover. It’s the same cover-shooting we’ve all seen before but I was more than content to click on dudes throughout both playthroughs. If you wanna get spicy there is a range of other guns to grab from defeated enemies that include things like grenade launchers, shotguns, and LMGs. The selection isn’t gigantic, but I think every forageable weapon fulfilled a unique role, which is great. The handgun is more a component of the hack-n-slash gameplay. It’s mostly used as a parry: whenever an enemy’s attack shines a red danger indicator, pressing the handgun button interrupts the attack and stuns the enemy for a short period. There’s also a super the player can use to stun a bunch of enemies simultaneously and then watch as Stone dashes around to each stunned enemy, performing a brutal kill animation each time. The super is charged by landing melee swings with the sword, which was the primary weapon I used throughout the game. Stone only ever learned 2 combos when she was taught how to swing that sword, resulting in a melee combat system that is extremely simple. The sword has its own parry too, though, activating the parry can be done by simply mashing the block button until the parry triggers; no additional complexity or skill requirement is added. I don’t think the melee combat being simple is necessarily bad, but it means relying a lot on the enemies to offer interesting and exciting gameplay moments. Enemies that also need to be engaging to shoot at from across the room. It’s a fine line to be walking and I think Soleil just about pulls through in the end, but not without some severe compromises.

The enemies in Wanted: Dead belong to one of three factions, though the synthetics are exclusive to a single level, and the gangsters show up once more after their level concludes. The vast majority of the enemies belong to a mysterious private army or police force (?), they’re equipped with a wide range of guns, and generally have enough armour to take a few hits. The standard gunner enemies are surprisingly active: they move from cover to cover while attempting to flank, and if the player is close by they might charge in and have a kick. They’re solid at the very least, which also applies to the ninja enemies. These come in three colours and all of them have a lot of health. And the white ones have way too much health. Stone is also horrendously ill equipped to face off against another sword wielder and gets absolutely destroyed by a single mistake. Their inflated health pools also caused every battle that mixed gunners and ninjas to inevitably end with a handful of ninjas refusing to go down, which did get tiresome through the last few levels. There’s one section in a series of alleyways with like four white ninjas back to back that ends with a miniboss encounter against two black ninjas with no breaks or checkpoints at all. The runback to these final ninjas can take up to 10 full minutes because Stone refuses to open the door to their arena if any other enemy in the previous alleyway is still alive. The number of enemies in this alley doesn’t even change if the player chooses normal or “Japanese hard” difficulty, and “Japanese hard” difficulty isn’t even selectable until after the player finishes the game at least once. Putting aside the strange name, I couldn’t really figure out what about the game was altered by selecting this difficulty level. There’s still a black ninja in one of the earliest rooms in the first level, enemies with grenade launchers can still kill the player in a single hit, even the bosses seem to be around the same level of challenge. I hit a few troublesome areas on my first normal mode playthrough that I didn’t struggle with at all on the harder difficulty. Clearly I had learned how to play the game and understood how it wanted me to approach these challenges, but I went from spending minutes bashing my head against what seemed like a brick wall to breezing through effortlessly the second time around. The only real stopping point during my Japanese Hard playthrough was that ridiculous alleyway I mentioned before, and a couple of the boss fights.

There are five boss enemies in Wanted: Dead, with the spider tank making a repeat appearance toward the end of the game. The tank is the only boss that isn’t a melee only encounter so its reuse isn’t egregious or anything, and the rematch has a whole second tank skittering around. Unfortunately, it’s the weakest of a fairly disappointing showing of bosses overall. All the player really needs to do is kill the human enemies, take their explosives, and shoot them at the tank until it dies. They roam around the arena and shoot at the player almost lazily. The main cannon deals enough damage to kill Stone in one hit, and if the player happens to be standing in the tank’s path when it charges they can expect to die instantly too. So the fight is extremely easy but sometimes you get vaporised or flattened and have to start over. I like the tank’s visual design, though, and the battles against it are a cathartic flurry of audiovisual effects that manage to make the boss seem exciting in the moment. The rest of the fights are all against humanoids with a unique capability, almost exactly like Devil’s Third bosses. The first of these is the rebellious synthetic leader August, whose three phase encounter is gruelling when compared to the spider tanks. This fight takes place in an empty public swimming pool, which I think is a cool concept for a boss arena, and August’s first method of attack is to stand on a ledge above the pool and shoot a grenade launcher at the player while some regular synth enemies try to tie the player down. Killing most of the regular enemies or shooting August enough will cause the fight to transition into the second phase. I like that the fight is adaptable in this way since the player gets to decide whether they want to clear the synths out of the pool before August hops in himself. The second phase sees August switch to an assault rifle while patrolling the arena, which isn’t quite as interesting as the first phase, and his pinpoint accuracy is probably a bit much considering how long this fight can go on for. Eventually he puts the gun away and resorts to hand-to-hand attacks which would be trivial to overcome if the player had any bullets left. Things get weaker when it’s time to fight Kolchak. I’m a massive fan of invisible enemies that the player tracks via some environmental detail, so fighting this cloaking sniper on a rainy rooftop should’ve been awesome. Sadly, the fight is easily won by just waiting for Kolchak’s red warning trigger to appear and stunning her with the handgun. And she spends a lot of time cloaked looking for an opening to attack, but it’s possible to track her and land hits while she won’t fight back, pushing the fight to the second phase where the cloak starts to malfunction. Kolchak tries some new moves after this point but they aren’t any more effective than before. Then there’s the Mr. Holiday encounter. This guy has appeared a couple of times during the ending movies of some of the previous levels but I don’t really know him or get much of a sense of what he wants. He seems to be Richter’s second in command but what that means is difficult to discern. So it's a huge surprise that when the boss encounter begins there are two Mr. Holidays in the room. During the first phase both Holidays share a single health bar, and they play off of each other very well. One takes the melee role and the other hangs back and shoots. It’s a shockingly well-balanced encounter, but I have no idea what Holiday achieves by killing Stone. I do not understand what he’s talking about or why he “feels nothing”. The second phase is also a solid duel against an opponent with similar moves to the player. Holiday isn’t as flashy as the other bosses, but all in all I think this fight is pretty good. The final boss is Richter, who I guess is the main brain trying to take down Stone and her squad. He has a weird lightsaber and the power to summon a rainstorm, and he can heal too, but Richter isn’t an especially active boss. I found plenty of opportunities to slash at him a lot and he’d just sit there and take the hits. I also discovered that spamming the sword parry whenever he started his standard combo would give me a lot of successful parries which would drain Richter’s invisible posture bar. It isn’t an easy encounter and there wasn’t anything offensive going on or whatever, but the moment Richter fell into the darkness was hugely anticlimactic.

So that might have seemed like a spoiler but it definitely isn’t - the truly interesting part of Wanted: Dead’s narrative is trying to decipher what’s actually happening - which is why I’m going to talk about the game’s presentation first before we get stuck into the real meat here. Wanted: Dead looks counterintuitively cheap and expensive. The character models and textures are impressively detailed but the animation work doesn’t maintain the level of quality. The combat animations are great, and sometimes the movie animations are just as good, but other times the arm movements are strangely jerky and the faces seem overly wooden. I also think the lack of particles and screen effects cause a lot of the movies to look empty, like the characters are in some kind of vacuum. Fee Marie Zimmerman’s performance as Stone is mostly solid, but a lot of lines could’ve used another read. It’s tough to have so many different accents converge in a language that isn’t the writers’ first so some of the things Zimmerman has to say aren’t exactly friendly to her Swiss accent. The sound overall is genuinely really well done - there’s just these occasional hiccups in direction and implementation that stick out. Like, why are the gangster’s voice lines so strangely mixed? Why does the karaoke singing go on for the entirety of 99 Red Balloons? And the tonal whiplash I got from the karaoke segment had me in the ER. But then Herzog tells an awful joke in the elevator and the performance is perfect.

The game opens with blonde Hannah Stone in a tiny cell being recruited to the team by a mysterious red light. Things flash forward to the crew eating at a diner where the nearby TV reports on Dauer Synthetics’ stock price decline, as well as a report on Dauer’s violent response to protests in Baghdad. The footage on the TV during the protest report looks just like the Dauer building the crew are sent to at the end of the scene, so I initially thought the team were being sent to Baghdad, but they actually never leave Hong Kong. The whole opening scene is really strangely written. Lots of awkward lines back to back. The Dauer building the first level takes place in is being attacked by a mysterious force who are there to steal American bills. Why would they want this currency when they’re already equipped with unmarked guns and high end armour? And according to Doc, the soldiers sent in to steal the cash are untraceable. Who are these guys? What are they doing? It’s an intriguing premise - despite being kind of difficult to follow - but these questions are never answered. Instead, the crew are sent down to a park to deal with some troublesome Synthetics who are refusing to comply. This is where August is introduced, and instead of capturing or killing him, he manages to escape on a helicopter - with a little help from another Synthetic named October. The team takes October to be interrogated and learn a few things from her, and Doc makes his own discovery as well. October says her memories begin when she woke up in a bodybag, and the implants she has covering her body are primarily used as a means to punish insubordination. Stone had heard this “woke up in a bodybag” phrase before, and I think it’s probably the most pivotal part of the narrative overall. Dauer Synthetics’ business has been either reanimating corpses to be used as their “synthetic” workers, or they’ve been kidnapping and memory-wiping people instead. Stone seems to also be affected by whichever thing Dauer is doing which is shown in the 2D animated movies. These scenes don’t add much to the game for me; the artstyle shift is completely inconsequential and the stuff about Stone’s lost family doesn’t expand her motivation meaningfully - people don’t just do war crimes for no reason. If Dauer is reanimating dead people and selling them as “synthetic workers” secretly, then it would make sense to me that Richter and Mr. Holiday have been employed to stop Stone from figuring out what Dauer is doing, by force. The company is clearly powerful enough to do this - they run the police force that Stone and her crew of war criminal officers work for - but then how can the company’s stock price be in decline? If they are law enforcement, with a private army and private police forces and literal zombie slaves, wouldn’t they just subsume all other governments into the company and be the de facto authority? Why are they playing by the rules? And why would it matter if their police force discover the origins of Dauer’s synthetic workforce? This is like everybody’s dystopia. Nobody wins, not the company, not the public, not even the children.

When I decided what the thesis of this video was going to be, I did what I always do: I started writing and cutting and rewriting and recutting and hoping that eventually through persistence I’d be able to come to a satisfying conclusion. But this time I never had the epiphany that I was expecting to have. I created this document back in November, after first playing through the game in October. It’s now almost January as I finish writing this script and I have only just come to the realisation that I’ve been searching for. I had just finished editing out the stammering and poor line reads from the voiceover when I realised I had never read the About page on Soleil’s official website. Part way through the segment titled “Message”, below a picture of who I presume is Takayuki Kikuchi, there’s a smoking gun that answers all. “We… develop action games especially focused on the "good feeling when you press buttons" and the touch and feel sensation that is the primal appeal of computer games.” Wanted: Dead was designed to have good buttons. The player is primarily supposed to enjoy making their character do stuff, and the rest of the game is made to reinforce that philosophy. It’s so simple, and it’s so extremely obvious now. All the screen effects during combat that are totally absent during the movies, all the weird lines back to back, the narrative’s lack of coherence or a clear point, even the way some of the bosses are designed, it’s all secondary to ensuring that the player gets to enjoy doing cool stuff. And I’m here for it.

It’s nice to finally have an answer for why this game is the way it is, and while I enjoy the game for it’s quirkiness and fun gameplay, Wanted: Dead still has problems. The rhythm game sections are much longer than I think anyone would care for, that one alleyway is way more demanding than the rest of the game, and the narrative makes next to no sense at all. But it’s honest. And I’m happy to see that the Steam reviews have recognised the honesty. Soleil just likes PS2 games, and so do I. I like them so much, I’m going to be playing a real one for the next video.

Once you're in on the bit you'll get what Wanted Dead is, a wild game that absolutely deserves a look if you like weird kooky third person action, period. Sorry, but all the half star reviews and "worst game of 2023" videos I've seen are a total joke. This isn't a "triple A god tier" title but a little jank never hurt anybody, especially when it's done this stylish and zany. You can slice dudes into several pieces and pull off gun-fu finishing moves, this is a GOOD game people.

It's hard as hell sometimes, the checkpoints get brutally spaced out in the later levels, resulting in some cheap deaths from tough enemies and repetitively playing the same sections over and over that make you want to rage quit. This was my main problem with the game, but it's hard to say when difficulty should be a factor when criticizing a game - FromSoftware get away with it all the time. But when you do get through, you feel so fucking badass. I can't count how many times I was getting my ass handed to me by squads of goons and ninjas, but then tried again and sliced and shot my way through like a combat master, perfectly dodging and countering attacks with ease. When the combat clicks, it fucking goes hard.

In between the Metal Gear-ass strange plot you have arcade cabinets, claw machines, karaoke and ramen eating minigames like you're in a Yakuza game suddenly, and it's just so cool and silly. You don't like a game that lets you sing "99 Luftballons"? Bite me!

More games like this, please, always

This game has it all.

Story? Nonsense
Voice acting? “the Room” levels of dedication
Gameplay? Broken
Stability? Also broken
Mini games? Plenty? But also broken
Pacing? Nonexistent, especially the difficulty spike in the last chapter

It’s like if the deadly premonition team wanted to make ninja gaiden meets dead to rights.

I cannot recommend anyone buy this game, but they should definitely play it.

I appreciate a AA game with jank if the core gameplay is good and refined and a mess everywhere else but Wanted: Dead is a mess everywhere from top to bottom.

I can not even remotely see why some like this gameplay. It feels stiff and restrictive. There is little combo variety and feels like a complete chore to play. I love the idea of a character action game mixed with third person shooter gameplay but the game doesn't do any of these two elements well.

Guns seem to be the easiest way to dispatch enemies. The problem is that, the zoom in so so bad in that you can't even see what your aiming at as the game moves so fast. Then when i get the cursor to be where i want the damn auto aim refuses to let me move to aim for a headshot. Fine I'll turn it off. Now it's incredibly hard to just move the reticle as it either moves too fast or super slow. Then to top it off enemies take an insane amount of bullets to take down. Some will take over two damn clips. So you would think you would have a massive amount of ammo but i constantly ran out when leaning on the shooting side of combat. And this is just the shooting mechanics, the sword combat isn't any better.

When engaging in sword combat. You instinctly want to go in to the enemy and slash away. This is counter intuitive to Wanted: Dead wants you to play it. Enemies take many slashes to take down. Almost comical levels. What the game wants you to do is stand next to an enemy and wait for him to attack and then counter it with either your sword or handgun depending on the attack. Then the enemy will instantly stagger where you can kill them instantly. This isn't very exciting or satisfying to pull off. Even when I successfuly parry and land a stun the follow up will just not register my button press and I'll just stand there. I'm a person who loves counter heavy games like Onimusha or Sekiro but there is a balance to it which Wanted does not get. Regualar attacks in those games are not worthless. Also the whole time there are a million enemies that are constantly spray and praying bullets that make many encounters feel like the cheaply chip away at my health little by little without much i can do. If you pull of a finisher you can regain some chip damage health back but again, the game is forcing me to play in this one style. It's bad.

Speaking of bad this game is badly optimized. Wanted: Dead crashed on me constantly on my PS5. Granted the game auto saves on checkpoints but it still doen't excuse it. Plus the game is quite tough and checkpoints are rather spaced out so going back to a previous one becuase the game crashed sucks big time. It's not even a preformance things. Even with a ton of enemies and slowdown a peak preformance it doesn't crash. It seems to just crash entirely randomly. Like in a cutscene or when your just standing there. It's weird.

As for the story and presentation of the game it might be even jankier than the gameplay. The voice acting is bad, like holy shit this is worse than RE1 or house of the dead bad. Heck I said Daymare was bad this might be just as bad if not worse. I swear some scenes, acting and lines are so muted and stiff with little sense it feels like a scene out of samurai cop. The main character is so bad with a voice so deep and dead pan it doesn't jive with the character at all. Is this intentional? I don't know but it's not good and not in so bad it's good kinda way. It's like the line reads were all one take and no one wanted to be there.

Scenes come and go with what seems like no connection to each other. I can't even tell what I'm supposed to be doing in missions or what my damn goal even is. Then after a stage it's like it never happened and the game moves on to something else that has little context or meaning. There are so many pointless scenes that do nothing. Add nothing to the characters or what's going on. The game has a certain style to it I'll give it that but they do not pull it off in anyway whatsoever. Like for example sometimes the cutscens will shit to straight up animation for no reason. Like there was a animated scene of a character staring at a mirror and looking around a room for like a minute and then it cuts to something else completly unrelated with in game visuals. WTF why put the effort in, I just don't understand. I did not finish this game but from what I read it doesn't get any better. I remember before I bought this game there was this mini trailer/short movie about the waitress in the diner the characters go to and I thought it was pretty charming but context or even this scene isn't even in the game as far as i know and the character was only in like one scene for a brief moment. I just don't get it.

The game also has a bunch of side minigames you can play inbetween stages to break up the tedium of the combat. They are actually decent with games like a crane game full of collectibles, a space shooter arcade game, kareoke and target practice and so forth. The kinda feel good with a decent amount of effort put into them. I wouldn't play them ever outside the game but it does help brake the pace and set the mood it's going for. Side note though FUCK that ramen eating music ddr style minigame. That shit is so hard and you tie an achievment to it that you can't miss a single beat. Shit a song is like 6-7 min long and not easy. I could never do that and it's really annoying to me becuase even if I loved this game to tie a trophy to perfecting guitar hero on the hard mode when the gameplay of the main game is a whole different genre is extremely grating. Rant over.

I struggle real hard to see want some people say about this game. The game didn't get great reviews but there was a small minority that said this game was a hidden gem and had great combat and that to me is as baffling of a thing is as crazy as this game thinks it is but is not. To think this launched at 50 bucks lol.