Review

WET (PS3)

By Cameron Lewis
October 30, 2009 14:01 PM PST
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Life is cheap, and so are bullets.

Guns, grindhouse violence, car-hopping, and Eliza Dushku. Outside of a few gameplay quirks, it's pretty hard to go wrong.

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Video games have long borrowed liberally from Hollywood, but they typically look no further than glossy big budget film productions for inspiration. WET goes in another direction, drawing its strength from the grit and grime of a 1970's martial arts drive-in flick. The results are sometimes rocky, but WET 's idiosyncratic style and intense action makes it unlike anything else you'll play this year.

Death from Above

As the lights go down, our curvy protagonist keeps watch over a meeting of what pass for criminal minds in San Francisco's Chinatown. Rubi Malone's one of the underworld's great Fixers: violent all-purpose problem-solvers who don't catch the vapors when the blood starts to spray. When the deal inevitably goes sideways, Rubi dives from her perch, and injects herself into a convoluted tale involving a syndicate leader's wayward son, warring drug smuggling syndicates, and a pasty white goth chick with the ominous name "Tarantula."

Despite the vocal talents of Eliza Dushku, Malcolm McDowell, and Alan Cumming, I never found a reason to care about the narrative's blur of absurd villainy, but I immediately loved WET 's self-consciously affected lo-fi style. Simulated grain and projector scratches spot and streak the screen, the image itself jumps a little as if the "film" can barely stay on its sprocketed track as you take damage, and even the music strays from the beaten path with an array of obscure but energetic psychobilly bands. It's a coarse grindhouse aesthetic that owes more to Quentin Tarantino than Roger Corman, and makes for a welcome change from the usual generic spit and polish.