Wet

There comes a time in a gamer's life when they must consider their loves, their priorities, what games truly mean to them. An electronic crossroads, if you will. Playing Wet, a new shooter made by the people who brought us the Elder Scrolls series and Fallout 3, brought me to mine.

I'm all for artistic masterpieces of videogames, magnum (opuses? opi?) of truly epic caliber that provoke thought and help to further the legitimacy of the medium. I'm a fan of excellent stories, of gripping character development, of clever gameplay. I feel games need to be taken forward as technology advances and gamer tastes change.

However, sometimes I just wanna shoot people in the face and look awesome while I do it.

Wet isn't going to wow generations of gamers with a unique control scheme and gimmick, or a fresh take on its genre as a whole. Wet rips stuff off wholesale that worked in other action games before it, and revels in it. Bullet time? Check. Acrobatic, physics defying stunts? Check. Impossibly cool guns that never run out of ammo, hell, never need to be reloaded? Check and double-friggin' check.

I should probably explain the game's premise, because it does give the little bit of unique feel that it does have. Like the movie Grindhouse as directed by Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino and the game The House of the Dead: Overkill on the Wii, Wet is itself a parody of the grindhouse movies of the 70's. The entire game is shot in a grainy, 70's style filter that gives the impression that it's a movie running on a damaged film reel. When you die, you're treated to a quick cutscene of film strip breaking as the "movie" grinds to a halt. Cheesy old style rock blares throughout the stages that have music, and (my favorite part) occasionally between levels the player is treated to video of anything from trailers of classic movies to clips urging you to go to the snack bar.

Protagonist Rubi Malone's personality fits the pace of the game well; she's a ruthless, uncaring mercenary who wants jobs done, and of course, doesn't take crap. Her usual method of problem-solving is to squeeze off a couple rounds with her matched pair of revolvers or cut it apart with her elaborately decorated sword. The game gives the player a plethora of moves to complete these tasks, from the classic "leap through the air in slow-motion while shooting everything" to more interesting ones, like the ability to slide on her knees while, of course, shooting everything. You're given style points for chaining together kills in as elaborate and acrobatic ways as you can, and in turn you can use these style points to purchase new moves and upgrade Rubi's life bar and weaponry. The plot involves something about being sent in to grab the son of a crime boss you saved by stealing a donor heart in the first section, but again, it's not really important. For one thing, it's based on grindhouse films, which weren't known for being much more than a thin rope meant to tie together a bunch of gratuitous violence and action scenes, and for another, it's not really meant for the player to care, at least I think.

Let's get one thing straight. This game isn't breaking down barriers. It isn't pushing the graphical limits of anything, it isn't bringing anything new to the table. It's just....fun. Not worrying about stats, or where I go to push the script forward, or how much pushing little Timmy over and stealing his money pushes my arbitrary karma meter down is refreshing. Sometimes knowing you're only going in a straight line and all you need to do is kill everything is relaxing. Sometimes I don't want choices, or things to even think about.

The game has faults, but that's to be expected from a game that knew what it wanted to do, and for all intents and purposes unapologetically did it.

The graphics, even keeping in mind the 70's filter on the action, isn't the greatest. Memorably at one point I died near the camera, and it clipped clean through Rubi's face to give me a nightmarish glimpse of the inside of her skull. All the mooks of course look the same after awhile, but hey, they're supposed to be faceless so you can shoot them by the dozen. I don't need to know the backstory and sympathetic leanings of "That Guy I Shot, Number 252". And hey, Rage mode, where certain points of the game see Rubi go into a murderous, bloodthirsty, well, rage, annoys the crap out of me, as it makes everything hard to see with the blood-red filter it drops over everything, and looks almost like a rejected graphic design for Killer 7. And no doubt, once this game's worn out it's welcome, I'll find it repetitive and will have no more reason to own the disc than as a drink coaster.

Until then, I'll enjoy it. Until then, I've got blood to spill, mooks to kill, and death to bring.

I say Try It. This kind of game isn't everyone's thing, probably isn't a lot of people's thing, but if you want some good, mindless action with an occasional laugh, a rental wouldn't hurt.