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Wanted: Weapons of Fate "Shoot that mofo" Preview

• By Travis Moses
• February 10, 2009 16:27 PM PST
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Become the ultimate bullet-bending assassin in this slick shooter.

I immediately jumped on the first available PlayStation 3 and assassinated my way through the short demo when the latest preview build of Wanted: Weapons of Fate rolled into the GamePro offices. What came unlocked in the demo were tutorial stages that taught me how to take cover, curve bullets, and utilize suppressing blind fire. But that's not all. The demo also came with not-quite-complete glimpses of the second, third, and fourth levels. Here are my enthusiastic impressions on what makes Wanted: Weapons of Fate one of the most stylish shooters since Max Payne.

Face Melter

Fans of Wanted are going to cream over Weapons of Fate. The game focuses on the more iconic elements of the film, such as edge-of-your-seat shootouts, bullet bending, and high-tech weapons. It's presented as a straightforward sequel to the film (with some prequel elements), which means you won't be guiding lead character Wesley Gibson's through his hum-drum life before his assassin initiation. Speaking of which, if you haven't seen the Wanted movie by now, shame on you. Go rent it right now for a face-melting experience that hearkens to the slick shootouts of The Matrix and Equilibrium. In the universe of Wanted, certain individuals boast hyperactive adrenaline glands that are triggered in life-or-death situations. Translation? These lucky few are able to perform superhuman feats that would make Neo jealous: curving bullets around obstacles, shooting the wings off flies, the works. That's what makes Wanted the game so much fun: your character has almost godlike powers that breathe new life into the third-person action.

Here is the best bullet-curving screen shot example. As you can see, the bullet's trajectory is outlined in a white chalk, which means there are no blockades between the bullet and the target. A red trajectory will surely miss.

Adrenal Gun

Wanted: Weapons of Fate plays similarly to Gears of War 2, in that it's a third-person shooter with an emphasis on taking cover from enemy fire. However, enemies that take cover in Wanted are not completely safe. If you've built up enough adrenaline reserves, you can lock onto an enemy and let fly a bullet that follows a curved trajectory. When the trajectory turns white, you can release the Right Bumper to fire the zig-zagging bullet and knock the enemy out of cover, where he's easy pickings.

Later in the game, you will be able to build up more adrenaline to initiate slow-motion "Assassin Time" and pull off other nifty stunts, such as slamming a barrage of curved bullets into each other to trigger an explosive shrapnel storm. To earn adrenaline, you'll need to kill enemies. A bullet kill gives you one adrenaline point; a melee kill gives you two.

Now it may sound as though the play style is nothing but shooting curved bullet after curved bullet, which would get mind-numbingly monotonous after a couple levels. That is not the case, however. The gameplay is constantly flowing into different territory - nothing too radical or new by shooter standards, but refreshing breaks from the already innovative elements. Mounted chaingun shootouts, for example, and slow-motion quicktime moments that require you to shoot incoming bullets like a lightgun game are interspersed throughout each level.

Here is another awesome bullet-bending screen shot.

Like Father, Like Son

From what I've seen, the levels chronicle both Wesley in his post-Wanted movie rampage to uncover the deeper truth about the Fraternity and Wesley's father Cross in his pre-Wanted movie defection from the Fraternity. Recent demos of the game include levels that show Cross raiding and demolishing the Chicago fraternity (just like Wesley), Wesley flying miles high in an airplane shootout, and most recently Wesley shooting up a mountainous region on a gondola (speculatively in Moravia, Czech Republic where the original base of Fraternity operations lie).

It's easy to see from the screen shots and trailers that Wanted: Weapons of Fate has impressive graphics, and producer Pete Wanat tells us that each level mimics the visual style of the Wanted film by using similar color filters. For example, levels that take place in the Chicago Fraternity are browner with warmer tones while the airplane shootout level is inspired by the movie's final train sequence and utilizes cooler colors like blue and white.

With an easy difficulty mode called "Pussy," and levels titled "Shoot that mofo [explicit edit]," Wanted: Weapons of Fate is the ultimate unflinching shooter with balls of steel. And after reading this preview you know everything I do about the game. Oh wait, I nearly forgot to mention producer Wanat confirmed that there will not be a multiplayer mode due to high-production costs and the team's dedication to making a high-impact single-player experience. So just sit back and wait out the release date with a little Gears of War 2 and Call of Duty: World at War like I'm doing. Wanted: Weapons of Fate is coming in March.

Did You Know?

The Wanted comic book is radically different than its cinematic counterpart. While the movie is grounded in a somewhat believable reality, the comic book is a far cry from anything close to that. For example, The Fraternity of assassins from the film is actually a fraternity of supervillains who secretly slaughtered all superheros in 1986 and have been the world's supreme superpower ever since. One supervillain in particular, called Sh*t-Head, is a walking, talking deformity of human excrement, formed from the fecal samples of 666 of the world's most vile human beings, including Adolf Hitler and Jeffrey Dahmer. The list of differences goes on and on, including alternate universes and flying villains, but you'll just have to read it yourself to see how different it really is.

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