Author Topic: Wet  (Read 4355 times)

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Offline GamerMan316

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Wet
« on: August 03, 2009, 06:51:15 AM »
Bethesda has announced that 360 & PS3 action game WET will be released on 18th September.

WET revolves around twin-pistol and katana toting heroine Rubi Malone, who leaps around levels like Jackie Chan, slowing time as she performs successful acrobatic manoeuvres.

There's a vague story about finding a man that left you for dead, but WET doesn't take itself to seriously, opting instead for a pacey and accessible action romp.

Eurogamer Hands On

We may not have written about it all that often over the past two years, but Artificial Mind and Movement's WET has actually been sloshing around the industry for quite some time, running through the fingers of various publishers and eventually trickling into a pail owned by Bethesda Softworks just a few months ago.

In those several years, A2M hasn't changed a lot. Look back to Ellie's August 2007 preview and many of the details remain intact: you're still a gun-for-hire called Rubi Malone, who manoeuvres acrobatically around each level firing twin pistols with independent targeting and hacking people up with swords. It's still aiming for a "unique retro film visual treatment" with grainy filters and seventies-inspired music. When Bethesda says A2M is working with 24's story editor Duppy Demetrius on the script, one assumes he filed a while ago, given that Vivendi was also bigging him up in 2007.

In other words, this is a case of publishers dragging their feet, and not one of those mid-life development rethinks that are so fashionable at the moment (I'm looking at you, Borderlands - and you're looking hot). But whatever it is, the important point is that we've never actually got round to playing it before. Not until today - and, appropriately enough, against a backdrop of thunder and lightning out the window.

The demo in question is the same as the one Christian described over someone's shoulder in April, and begins with Rubi perched on a statue peering down through the glass ceiling of a massive atrium, where a pair of unlikely criminals thrash out a deal for a donor organ in a snazzy briefcase. On the left, a burly man in a wheelchair with a mechanical larynx, and opposite him, a squirmy Asian gentleman in a leopard-print suit jacket. But it's a double-cross! Asian gentleman makes a run for it with money and goods, and wheelchair man crashes to the floor, followed shortly by Rubi, who hurls herself into action.

This bit is technically the tutorial, but it doesn't take long to catch the game's gist. Rubi has a pair of pistols, one of which automatically targets a nearby enemy with a star-shaped reticule, sending a stream of bullets his way as long as you hold the right trigger. Meanwhile, you can direct a second stream of bullets with a smaller, circular reticule, meaning that your gunplay focus is more on right-stick movement than your trigger finger, which is permanently clamped.

Rubi can jump with one button, slide along the ground on her knees with another and wall-run with left-trigger, and whenever she does any of these the action switches into Stranglehold-style slow motion (bear in mind Stranglehold came out after we first saw Wet in action), making it easier to target your enemies. Rubi's acrobatics can also be used to latch onto handily placed trapeze bars, and there are plenty of industrial pallets leaning against crates to form convenient ramps. At one stage I fall to Rubi's doom by prematurely grabbing for the A button as if to charge a jump in an ATV game, reflecting the game's speed of movement and assault-course level design.

Along with another face button for her katana, the idea is to combine the lot to move fluidly around environments dancing and floating between gunplay, swordplay and Lara Croft antics. There's also a combo meter and multiplier icons scattered about for further encouragement, with higher scores doled out for chaining kills before landing. In between the main sections, Rubi also goes through 'Rage' areas, where the combo meter becomes a kill counter similar to The Club, and the action is sped up - all the wall textures swapped out for blood red and bad guys reduced to Killer 7 cartoons.

The demo culminates in a QTE-driven highway shootout, which sees Rubi leaping between the rooftops of cars, trucks and lorries as you match A and X button prompts (or decelerating fatally along the tarmac as you don't), all the while you clamp the right trigger and wave the right stick around to dispatch enemies firing out of car windows. Eventually Rubi catches up with the Asian gentleman and relieves him of the goods, and his driver of his brains, before she's subjected to a few purple words by the bad guy, who's spilled out onto the floor in a puddle of petrol. Knocking an unlit cigarette out of his mouth, she tosses him a light anyway. Whoomph. Fade to black.

It's an interesting mix, although playing through it raises some concerns. There's a decent amount of flexibility in the combat, but it feels disjointed - particularly in the transition from gunplay to swordplay - while the sample sections are full of identikit enemies who do little to defend themselves, but whose hit-response is almost non-existent, so the twin pistols lack punch. As for the highway chase, which ends on the Golden Gate, it's heavily scripted, and one enemy leaning out of a car with a gun is much the same as the next 15.

Then again, it's a demo, and Bethesda assures us that higher difficulty levels will make more of the bad guys (driving Rubi to drink in the process - she tops up her health with whiskey she finds lying around). And, with apologies to Duppy Demetrius, the characters and dialogue are uniformly cheesy, and A2M isn't taking itself too seriously, sprinkling collectable clapping-cymbal-monkeys around the levels for no obvious reason. The voice acting shouldn't be terrible either, with Elisha Dushku on Rubi duties, and Malcolm McDowell and Alan Cumming also attached, while later levels will introduce different weapons and a visual filter for locating platforming points, among other things. There will also be a separate challenge mode.

The world certainly has enough third-person action-adventures already, and WET doesn't do a lot to distinguish it from other games in the genre. But after half an hour as Rubi Malone, at this stage it's an accessible, unselfconscious knockabout, and with a bit more polish to the combat the results should be nothing to sneer at.






Offline GamerMan316

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Re: Wet
« Reply #1 on: August 03, 2009, 06:53:39 AM »
WET voice actress Eliza DUSHKU reckons videogames now so cool people no longer need to lie about liking them.

"Videogames have almost become acceptable and cool for grown ups - not for people who are just in their teens," the Buffy actress told the BBC.

"I know so many people - friends, actors, directors - who are older and used to maybe play in private, but who can now say it loud and proud."

DUSHKU lends her voice to Rubi Malone, the heroine of upcoming action game WET. And she has previously voiced characters in Saints Row 2 and Yakuza.

But Oscar nominee Mickey Rourke, who plays Rogue Trooper protagonist Dick Marcinko, reckons videogames have a long way to go before actors will regard them as highly as films.

"I don't really think people yet are comparing the two, insofar as somebody's performance in a videogame as opposed to a feature film," he said.

"The fact is when I go out and see another actor we're not going to talk about videogames."

Rourke's comments echo what Joe Kucan - more commonly known as Kane from the Command & Conquer series - told us in early 2008: "I think there's still snobbery; I think there's still a massive misunderstanding about what the work actually is."

One actress not being a snob, however, is Maggie Q, whose role in Need For Speed Undercover was envied by her friends and colleagues.

"Everyone I've mentioned it to, honestly - actors, directors, producers, people I've worked with... I've just gotten back from a movie last week, and all the guys I worked with were like, 'Where you going?' And I told them I was doing this game and they were like, 'Coooool!'"


Offline GamerMan316

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Re: Wet
« Reply #2 on: August 03, 2009, 07:25:04 AM »
Just found this viral ad for Wet.


Offline nCogNeato

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Re: Wet
« Reply #3 on: August 03, 2009, 03:58:57 PM »
Just found this viral ad for Wet.

That was so stupid, it was great.


Offline GamerMan316

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Re: Wet
« Reply #4 on: August 25, 2009, 12:17:20 PM »
The demo for Bethesda and A2M's stylised action shooter, WET, is now available for download on the Xbox Live Marketplace.

WET throws you into the shoes of Rubi Malone, a wetworks assassin (thus the name) whose about to be knee deep in dead bad guys after a deal goes sour. The demo weighs in at 631.79 MBs.

WET is available September 15th and September 18th in North America and Europe respectively.


Offline nCogNeato

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Re: Wet
« Reply #5 on: August 25, 2009, 01:10:51 PM »
I'm interested to see how good this game is.  It has a ton of potential, but could so easily be a shite game.

Hopefully what Bethesda saw in the game comes through in the final product.


Offline Jaynestown

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Re: Wet
« Reply #6 on: August 26, 2009, 05:46:39 AM »
I'm really looking forward to this, especially now I know Eliza Dushku has done the voice for Rubi.


Thank god for the new Tomb Raider, helped me de-stress after a tough week! More of the same please

Offline RedMaster11

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Re: Wet
« Reply #7 on: August 26, 2009, 06:01:10 AM »
So has anyone played the demo yet?

Offline GamerMan316

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Re: Wet
« Reply #8 on: August 26, 2009, 06:33:48 AM »
So has anyone played the demo yet?

Forgot about it tbh, i'll download it now


Offline Jaynestown

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Re: Wet
« Reply #9 on: August 26, 2009, 07:38:35 AM »
I downloaded it last night but didn't get time to play it. I'll have a go tonight. I did watch the trailer this morning, it looks a bit like "Grindhouse", which I think is the "feel" they want for it.


Thank god for the new Tomb Raider, helped me de-stress after a tough week! More of the same please

Offline Failed

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Re: Wet
« Reply #10 on: August 26, 2009, 05:45:39 PM »
I downloaded Lost Planet 2 demo instead which is very good (if you liked the first).

Offline GamerMan316

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Re: Wet
« Reply #11 on: August 26, 2009, 06:20:38 PM »
I downloaded Lost Planet 2 demo instead which is very good (if you liked the first).

I'm gonna try that tomorrow, loved the first game.


Offline GamerMan316

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Re: Wet
« Reply #12 on: August 26, 2009, 07:05:09 PM »
Video Interview with Bethesda's Pete Hines.


Offline GamerMan316

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Re: Wet
« Reply #13 on: August 29, 2009, 06:52:26 AM »
I tried the demo the other day & thought it was pretty cool, it features Max Payne style slo-mo gunplay with some Kill Bill swordplay, the game has a distinct Tarantino/Rodriguez feel especially the way it's grainy look & of course the music.

The Rage moment, where the screen goes red & you go on a killing spree was very cool, no doubt theres an achievement for stringing together x number of kills, there was even a driving section where you leap from car to car while taking out enemies. 

The demo was fun but I can see the game becoming a bit repetitive, so hopefully there's a few more gameplay styles to keep things fresh, i guess we'll have to see.  Definitely worth a look though  :)


Offline Jaynestown

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Re: Wet
« Reply #14 on: August 29, 2009, 12:00:54 PM »


Thank god for the new Tomb Raider, helped me de-stress after a tough week! More of the same please

 

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