Wanted: Weapons of Fate

Some games are touted for their superior story and immersive worlds. Others are praised for innovative controls and fantastic visuals. Wanted: Weapons of Fate, on the other hand, is in a whole separate category: games that aspire to be nothing but pure, unadulterated awesome.

Picking up where the movie left off, Wanted follows Wesley’s journey to learn more about his family and hunt down the Immortal, a French assassin who killed his mother. Divided between Wesley missions and flashbacks where you play as Cross (his father), the game acts as a sequel to the movie, and it keeps the continuity intact. Yes, that means no Angelina Jolie. Sorry, guys.

As to be expected, playing as the master assassin comes with certain sensational perks. You retain the (some may say) entirely ridiculous ability to curve bullets, and tend to do so at every opportunity. Kill an enemy, get your Adrenaline meter flowing, hit RB, and let those bullets loop everywhere. Dropping enemies while they cower behind cover never gets old, but sometimes it does feel like you’re cheating a little bit. If the ability wasn’t so readily available all the time, mowing down dozens of foes would feel more like a challenge.

While you won’t be shooting the wings off flies, Wesley’s ability to harness his adrenaline to slow down time also plays a major role in bringing down the Immortal. Diving from cover to cover while taking out multiple opponents is fun, but it doesn’t really feel useful outside of boss fights. This “Assassin Time” doesn’t get interesting until the game’s pseudo quick-time events, which are a blast. In our favorite, Cross has to climb through the cabin of a nose-diving 747 so he can drive a sports car out the back, all the while slowing down time to kill his enemies and shoot their bullets out of the air. Awesome.

Of course, Wanted isn’t without problems. The cover system tends to be kinda sticky and temperamental, which is a problem when you’re trying to flank adversaries without being seen. Also, the game is very much on the easy side overall, which left us wondering how an entire squadron of supposedly trained assassins couldn’t take down a single individual. And to top it off, it’s almost shockingly short: for a full-priced game, we expected more than four hours of gameplay with no multiplayer in sight. If it cost $40 or less, we’d be singing a different tune…