Wanted: Weapons of Fate Preview

Wanted: Weapons of Fate kicks ass! There's nothing weak or meek about this game. It's got top shooter written all over it.

Wanted: Weapons of Fate

Run up on enemies and press the melee button to execute a one-hit gut kill

Angelina Jolie burned up the screen as a mysterious, sexy assassin in Wanted the movie. But it was James McAvoy with his Milquetoast-turned-badass hitman role as Wesley Gibson who stole the show. The movie featured an incredible visual style with remarkable special effects, camera work, and heavy-hitting action. And with a little luck, Warner Bros. jumped on the opportunity to make a game out of the movie's slow-motion, bullet-curving effects that translate to awesome gameplay better than you might think.

Wanted: Weapons of Fate

Run and slide into cover

Dead or Alive

The story of Wanted: Weapons of Fate picks up exactly where Wanted the movie left off, with Wesley Gibson awakening in the same chair he was sitting in when the movie ended. So the game is a direct sequel in essence (part prequel, too), and borrows certain cinematic scenes from the movie and takes those sequences to the next level. For example, one of the final segments in the movie is an over-the-top shootout on a high-speed train that derails and dramatically slips into a canyon. In the video game, developer GRIN has taken that same concept but applied it to an airplane. We bet even the movie director, the visionary Timur Bekmambetov, wished he'd have thought of that one.

In Wanted: Weapons of Fate, you play as Wesley Gibson (and daddy Cross, too), who is now a full-fledged assassin and possibly the best in the world. The core gameplay involves a lot of shooting, for which Wesley is well equipped with customized dual pistols, an advanced cover system that allows you to smoothly transition around sharp corners and dash to other cover points, and visceral one-hit melee combat.

And then there are Wesley's special assassin abilities that allow you to curve bullets around obstacles, smash bullets together in mid-stream to create an explosive shrapnel death trap, and slow time. The ability to curve bullets is one of the most satisfying skills in the game, and unlike anything we've ever seen in a shooter before. Curving a bullet is surprisingly simple, and boils down to holding a shoulder button, lining up your trajectory, then releasing the button to fire your curvy shot. But that's only the beginning.

Wanted: Weapons of Fate

Wesley's father, Cross, sports a pair of fancy, customized pistols

Adrenaline Junky

The gunplay is by far and away the best part of the game. While we only got to play with a set of bitchin' pistols in a recent hands-on demo, they felt extremely satisfying to shoot and we expect the same from the other weapons in the game. As for what it's like to control and play, cover is an essential part of survival. Taking and detaching from cover is as simple as a button press, as is traversing from cover point to cover point. In cover, you can lean around corners, pop and shoot, and blind fire just like in Gears of War 2.

Blind fire is not what you expect, though. In Gears 2, blind fire can be used to effectively kill enemies; in Wanted, blind fire is used to suppress enemies, forcing them behind cover so you can quickly sneak up for the kill. For example, in the demolished Fraternity level, I took cover at the end of a narrow corridor. Two enemies approached from the opposite end, took cover themselves, but continued to fire at me. I blind fired and the edges of the TV screen pulsed white to indicate that the enemies were keeping their heads down. This was my chance to run up on them and perform one of the coolest moves in the game. Pressing the melee button leapt my onscreen character over the cover position and I knifed the suppressed enemy in the neck. Blood squirted everywhere and I was left with a huge grin on my face.

Assassins Wanted

Wanted: Weapons of Fate seems to be one of the quieter titles in the media at the moment. But we're positive this action-packed shooter is going to blow up huge in the next coming months as the game ramps up to launch in spring of 2009. Based on our recent hands-on demo, the graphics are some of the best I've seen with super high-res normal mapped textures, a plethora of blood decals, and particle effects. The animations are pretty slick too, harkening back to the movie where every movement is aggressively over-the-top and highly dramatized by fancy camera work and speed alterations. The bullet-time effects and abilities push the envelope for all shooters. And the story is guaranteed to be an action thrill ride if it's anything like the movie.

And hey, get this - the PlayStation 3 version actually looked and played better than the Xbox 360 one. That could change, of course, but it was just one more surprise to come out of Wanted.

CLICK HERE to watch the official Wanted: Weapons of Fate video trailer.

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htown4life

StormKing wrote:

A movie game that actually looks good...will wonders ever cease.

Don't forget about that Riddick game, even tho I never played that game on XBOX

control_freak

the graphics are great but aren't the enemies in the game a bit generic?and what about the movie to game transition curse?

sbomb

I might check this out as well as the 50cent game we will see. on another note bring back dead to rights this time have pit bulls attack .

Flakundenga

The thing about some of this movie-game previews (bourne conspiracy, quantum of solace) is that whoever writes it makes it sound really good, but when the final game comes out they are like "this game is mediocre, controls are wonky, etc" which contradicts what the preview said. With that said I'll wait for the review of this game...

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