Well yesterday the PSN got 2 demos that struck my interest. One for the somehow higly anticipated Wanted: Weapons of Fate, and one for the new downloadable game Watchmen: The End is Nigh. One being a clichéd Third Person Shooter, and the other being an arcade-style beat ‘em up. 

I played both demos a few times to get a good grasp of them, so let’s go with the impressions.

Wanted: Weapons of Fate

Wanted is a Third Person Shooter with a cover system. It’s also based on a kinda meh movie. What does it have going for it? Bullet curving. That’s really the only element of the game that I heard people really be excited about. Anyways, after playing through the tutorials and the demo itself a few times, I cam to the conclusion that the game… is not bad… but really nothing special, there’s better on both the PS3 and Xbox 360 in that aspect.

So game mechanics… well there’s a cover system that’s a bit annoying to use, with blind firing really not working well, but overall the system is good. There’s also 1-hit-kill moves… And they’re stupidly easy to do. Just get close to an enemy and press the Circle button. And the enemy AI is so stupid, you can easily do that without them realizing it. When you kill enemies icons light up (up to 2) and those give you one of 2 “powers”. You can use 1 of the icons to shoot a curved bullet. That’s done with R1, you hold it to adjust your angle until the bullet hits the enemy and not something else, and the game tells you if you’ll hit by making the line and target white instead of red. Sometimes you’ll get a slow motion to see the bullet hitting the enemy. The other “power” is bullet time. When going from one spot of cover to another, instead of pressing X you can press Triangle, and that initiates bullet time, giving you ample time to aim for enemies. This uses 2 icons.

Bullet curving is annoying, because you go out of cover to do it, and despite the tutorial making you think it’s really accurate, in the game itself, if the target is even thinking of moving, you probably won’t hit it. And when you shoot the camera goes haywire since you’re using the right stick to aim.

Overall the game seems average. Bullet curving is basically a lame replacement for grenades to hit people who are behind cover. The 1-hit-kills are kinda lame, the bullet time is sorta useless, the AI is quite stupid(come out of the other side of a pillar and they’ll never know you came out). And the graphics are pretty bad by today’s overly high standards. Definitely doesn’t live up to the hype, and I won’t be buying it. You can do much better than Wanted if you want a good Third Person Shooter, that’s for sure (Uncharted(and its upcoming sequel) on the PS3, the Gears of War games on the 360).

Watchmen: The End is Nigh

With the Watchmen movie coming today, a game tie-in is a must. I’m not incredibly familiar with the world of Watchmen, but the demo gave me a good idea of what the world there was like. So the game is set-up in an Arcade Beat ‘em up style, ALA Double Dragon/River City Ransom.

The controls are simple, with a few attacks and combos you learn on the way by finding tokens. Light attacks, strong attacks, throws, counters, all basic stuff. You can combine your attacks how you want, or use basic combos that you learn from tokens by pressing the buttons in the right timing. There are, sadly, some QTEs in the game, but they are relatively well done. They’re not intrusive in any way, there’s totally optional, and they can only be done when the enemy is close to dying anyways. The one annoying thing is opening doors and using switches… If you’re playing as Nite Owl, there’s one gate you open by button mashing, and, of course, that’s a horrible thing. And some switches you have to wait for your partner to activate his so that both switches are activated together and then something happens.

Otherwise, the game is pretty much just going from encounter to encounter, with minor puzzles on the way. It doesn’t over-complicated itself and it doesn’t really NEED to. The demo let’s you play as Rorschach or Nite Owl, but both characters are pretty similar. Nite Owl moves a bit faster, and I have no idea what Rage does so I can’t say if Rorschach is really different or anything other than the slight difference in walking speed, and maybe a bit stronger (?).

One thing that annoyed me in the demo was the lack of targeting. I was surrounded by multiple enemies multiple times, and each time, hitting the guy I wanted to wasn’t incredibly easy, as the targeting changed at total random, making it hard to concentrate on the enemies you want to.

There’s 1 feature in the demo that I couldn’t try since I didn’t learn it. Either Rage or Charge, I have no idea what those do since the L2 button didn’t do anything for either Rorschach or Nite Owl in the demo (so it’s probably something you learn later on).

Overall it doesn’t look like a bad game if you like Beat ‘em ups, but I think the 20$ pricetag is a bit steep, and that alone made me wait for a price drop or promotion on the game, or something. The graphics are fine for a downloadable game, the cinematics look awesome with a weird art style and non-moving lips when characters talk, the gameplay is simple but solid enough.

jobocan Games, impressions