Played: September 2023
A masterwork in its singularity, I'm giving it 4.5 stars despite itself. I'm openly allowing the way my brain has romanticized this game since the nearly 4 months I've played it to influence my thoughts now.
Rhythm binds the experience of Wanted: Dead together, but only if you can dance with it. There are times jank is a proper, if charming, obstacle, and there are times when it's another way to refer to an unorthodox tempo. This is 10% the former, and 90% the latter. I loved mastering the offbeat sword and gunplay. The repetitions rarely got old. The arcade syncopation was funky. And while it's not as inviting a cadence as something like Metal Gear Rising, it became almost equally worth my time.
Likewise, the wildly out of sync storytelling added up towards a game that wants to do its own thing, my comprehension be damned. The off-kilter voice acting rules. The abruptness of the plotting managed to draw my attention further in. And I find it all to be effective for one simple reason: it's so confident about all these choices. I never felt this was "funny ha ha" bizarre but actually strange. And it's fine if I never fully figure out why I'm surely making excuses for it. Sometimes a person is just attractive because they are who they are unashamedly and fun to be around. Wanted: Dead is her.
Maybe my hypnosis towards it can be explained by the fact that while the game purports to have a karaoke minigame, it actually only has a "99 Luftballons" minigame. And the only song I can karaoke in real life just so happens to be "99 Red Balloons".
The three 2023 games I played in full are this, Spider-Man 2 (a nice game), and Final Fantasy XVI (a genuinely frustrating game). That makes Wanded: Dead... my GOTY 2023?
A masterwork in its singularity, I'm giving it 4.5 stars despite itself. I'm openly allowing the way my brain has romanticized this game since the nearly 4 months I've played it to influence my thoughts now.
Rhythm binds the experience of Wanted: Dead together, but only if you can dance with it. There are times jank is a proper, if charming, obstacle, and there are times when it's another way to refer to an unorthodox tempo. This is 10% the former, and 90% the latter. I loved mastering the offbeat sword and gunplay. The repetitions rarely got old. The arcade syncopation was funky. And while it's not as inviting a cadence as something like Metal Gear Rising, it became almost equally worth my time.
Likewise, the wildly out of sync storytelling added up towards a game that wants to do its own thing, my comprehension be damned. The off-kilter voice acting rules. The abruptness of the plotting managed to draw my attention further in. And I find it all to be effective for one simple reason: it's so confident about all these choices. I never felt this was "funny ha ha" bizarre but actually strange. And it's fine if I never fully figure out why I'm surely making excuses for it. Sometimes a person is just attractive because they are who they are unashamedly and fun to be around. Wanted: Dead is her.
Maybe my hypnosis towards it can be explained by the fact that while the game purports to have a karaoke minigame, it actually only has a "99 Luftballons" minigame. And the only song I can karaoke in real life just so happens to be "99 Red Balloons".
The three 2023 games I played in full are this, Spider-Man 2 (a nice game), and Final Fantasy XVI (a genuinely frustrating game). That makes Wanded: Dead... my GOTY 2023?