Wanted: Dead review – fun action game with katana and ramen

There are games we play because of the story, mature dialogue or interesting characters. And games that are great to turn off. They can be distracting and reactive when a person has a balloon-like head due to work or school and cannot focus on something difficult. When he just wants to take a sharp katana in one hand and a karaoke microphone in the other and not think about it, then this combination does not make sense at all.

• Platform: PC (Steam, Epic), PS4, PS5 (Remastered), Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S
• Publication date: 02.14.2023
• Developer: Soley LLC.
• Publisher: 110 Industries S.A.
• Genre: Action
• Czech localization: No
• Multiplayer: No
• Data to download: 26 GB (PS5 version)
• Game time: from 15 to 20 hours
• Price: 1449 CZK

This is exactly what Wanted: Dead is about. A brand new Valentine’s Day combo of melee combat, shooting and quirky mini-games. The main character, Hannah Stone, lives in an alternate version of Hong Kong, which is controlled by the Dauer Synthetics Corporation. Fighting is raging around the world, with foreign prisoners imprisoned for terrorism, murder and other alleged crimes that suggest they were in fact agents or soldiers.

Until recently, imprisoned for this, Hanna finds herself in exchange for freedom as the commander of the Zombie squad, as she and a group of other unorthodox police officers call themselves. They are tasked with cleaning the streets of Hong Kong and not looking back on collateral damage. However, when Hannah, the extroverted Duke, the prudent Doc, and the deaf-mute sweet Cortez discover a plot involving the Dower Company, they begin to break even the few rules they’ve had so far.

In addition, the tattooed policewoman has strange blackouts, where memories come back to her as if from a past life. In some cases, the scenes are quite unpleasant and everything leads to a rather unexpected ending.

The central story is definitely not original or well thought out, which is a little scary, but he doesn’t want to be. Rather, it uses the cyberpunk genre and some of the clichés that go with it. The protagonist has a synthetic arm, and other supporting characters or enemies boast various body upgrades. Also, androids or giant mecha spiders will appear in the game. At the same time, however, in the police station, a sort of hub where heroes meet after separate missions, you’ll find arcade machines, a jukebox, and a grumpy, yelling boss that looks like it’s straight out of an ’80s crime drama. .

The old-school mood immediately catches the eye with the font of the titles, the visual design and the design of the individual levels. The main villain can be recognized at a glance: he is abnormal, with slicked back blond hair, a mustache and a black uniform, and lacks any charisma. The corridors are simple, the walls are bare, and the police station looks like something from a much older game. During the event, you have well-defined corridors that you can walk through. Is there a closed door on the right? A flower pot on the left that should be easy to jump over? Don’t even try, the path is definitely paved.

But, fortunately, appearance is not the main thing here, and no one even advises to love yourself – which is good, because the lack of details can sometimes be desperate. The main ones are fights and humor.

Gun and blade

The creators themselves call Wanted: Dead a hybrid of swordsmanship and a shooter, and the combination of weapons is really important in the combat system. Hanna mostly has a deadly katana which she uses for basic combos, blocking and parrying attacks. In addition, she has a pistol hanging from her waist, which she uses to shield her special attacks from enemies. And finally, it boasts a customizable assault rifle and grenades.

The game sometimes contains elements of hack’n’slash, but there’s no need to memorize a long tick-tick-tick-tick list. Rather, you need to follow the opponent and correctly react to his movements, which seems much more natural. There are enough types of enemies for more than 15 hours of play, and they gradually become faster and more difficult. For example, against nimble ninjas, parrying is indispensable, and against snipers with rifles, it is very effective to destabilize them with one shot from a pistol, and then cut them into pieces with blades.

When you master the game, you will become a katana ballerina.

The only disappointment for me were the moments when Hannah had to fight inhumanly large mini-bosses, or the mentioned giant robots. At this point, your mind wanders a bit, and you end up getting under the claws of a mecha spider and frantically throwing grenades. You’re running around, firing a grenade launcher in between and feeling clumsy.

Wanted: Dead is a challenging game that requires good reflexes. However, once you’ve mastered it, you’ll face “ordinary” enemies as a katana-wielding ballerina who also uses a very varied and bloody set of finishing moves. Don’t be afraid of difficulties – if you stop succeeding at any stage, the game will allow you to simplify everything in exchange for a little humiliation of the blue-eyed heroine.

Progress is saved on its own in well-defined places, which is sure to disappoint fans of manual saves. You have a range of stimulants at your disposal that can add a hefty dose of health as you unlock more advanced skills. If he’s on Doc’s team, he’ll quickly get you together and give you another chance. But when you exhaust all that, you are out of luck, you will return to the save point and have to go through this part of the level again. Sometimes shorter, sometimes longer.

Slot machine with cat paws

Luckily, each of these major fights ends in the aforementioned police station, where Hanna chats with colleagues, recalls important but strangely forgotten moments from her life, and reads scattered documents, from which the player learns a lot about individual characters.

And he also spends an absurd amount of time on mini-games. Who wouldn’t want to cook a bowl of ramen faster than the cocky Duke after a red-faced rage blows up a robot monster? And then pull the cat poop figurine out of the vending machine?

This style of lightness and “Japanese” humor may not be for everyone, but it does a great job of breaking up the frantic pace. Behind the game are the creators of Ninja Gaiden and Dead or Alive, including director Hiroaki Matsui, who boasts several installments from those series. Soleil Studios isn’t one of the biggest or best known, but you may have noticed last year’s RPG Valkyrie Elysium from them, which received slightly above average reviews.

I could count the drops of the game on the fingers of two hands.

In Wanted: Dead, some cutscenes are also made in the style of anime films with a unique atmosphere. They are being directed by Stephanie Joosten, who you may know as the voice of Sniper Quiet in Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain. He is increasingly involved in game development, and at Soleil Studios he is also responsible for the upcoming mechanical action Vengeance is Mine. In the case of “Wanted: Dead”, she also sang some catchy pop songs and portrayed retiring police officer Vivien, who, although she made videos about cooking, won a gold medal at the Olympics years ago and keeps 12 cats in the house. The station is also a leading weapons expert.

The fact that it’s a small studio is perhaps the biggest downside to Wanted: Dead for me. Technical condition. Although the game isn’t very long, I could count its crashes on the fingers of two hands – usually when trying to save. She also didn’t handle the larger, more complex boss scenes very well, where her frame rate would occasionally drop, causing (my) long curses and (the protagonist’s) unstoppable death.

Add color glitches or the inability to pick up ammunition from the ground at a crucial moment and you get an unpleasant cocktail. However, it should be added that the title was available to me long before that, and during this time no updates were released, so it is possible that the situation will improve significantly after the release itself.

It would only be good, because Wanted: Dead has its own charm. Of course, it will mostly suit fans of the genre and people who giggle like a child when sawing a bunch of ninjas. Don’t expect the colorful and colorful streets of Hong Kong in the style of Sleeping Dogs, but fun fights, hacking katana and sometimes exaggerated humor that will joyfully turn off your brain.