Wanted: Dead (2023)

A while ago @BMO shared this article that chronicles the absolute disaster that was the Skull & Bones development. Decades of mismanagement without any clear vision that delivered what, from the consensus, is a perfectly playable piece of soulless mediocrity. Wanted: Dead feels like the opposite: A labour of love from a dedicated ore group of developers without any oversight that was crafted in a weekend and published with minimal playtesting and QA. And the result is a strange, compelling but barely playable game.

It's hard to pin down what makes this game something special. It's not one thing; you cannot talk about each part of the game and understand what makes it so charming. It's the whole package, it's the vibes, the style, how it moves. Its nonsensical plot, it's attempt at over-the-top action, its weird non-sequiturs that go absolutely nowhere, its completely broken dialogue that goes over the place and makes no sense even though its technically correct English.

There's not a moment that doesn't leave you in disbelief at what you're seeing. Be it a Australian voice-over reading a paragraph about the history of ramen that is never to be heard again, a cringe-worthy karaoke rendition of 99 Luftballons, or the nonsensical checkpoint placement and the one-hit kill attacks during boss fights.

The truth is that, on paper, Wanted: Dead doesn't work. It shouldn't work. Combining stylish melee combat with cover-based shooting was a brave attempt, but it ends up failing both systems. The camera is too close to have good situational awareness to avoid enemies stabbing you from behind and grenades will blow you up without warning. Cover, on the other hand, is as unreliable as the predicted path of grenades and grenade launchers. Character moment is also stiff, without graceful transitions between attacks and with long recovery animations that can get you stun-locked to death. The finisher system, which lets you kill multiple enemies close to death is cool when it works, but is not balanced right and most of the time enemies just die from normal attacks. I could never use it reliably.

Those are foundational problems that are hard to solve for any game attempting to bridge the gap between close combat and long range shooting, but then there are the baffling microfailures. Like the aforementioned checkpoint system that prevents learning the patterns of new tough enemies by forcing you to dredge through 5 minutes of combat before each attempt. Or how both enemies and teammates are dresses in black and brown and are not only impossible to distinguish ta a glance, but very hard to see over the dark background of the first level. There is a incredible long list of design fuckups that makes you feel that no one actually playtested this game.

Enjoyment of this game is a fierce fight between the awful moment to moment experience of unfair difficulty and finicky controls, and the gestalt of a game that leaves you confused and bewildered at every turn. For me, the style and the weirdness won and in balance I'm glad I played this game. I have to admit that I loved it.

Combat only starts to work when getting a skill that guarantees a finisher move on enemies missing limbs. You could finish enemies for a brief seconds kind of randomly and you basically only see that by a faint white glow. So there was no reason not to finish each enemy off as soon as you could. But with this skill, they are permanently in this state and this is signalled by a very clear in-universe change. So now when to finish off enemies becomes part of the strategy, as you can get half a dozen enemies near death and then press a button and kill them all in a row in a very satisfying dance.

Of course, this is roughly when fire grenades are introduced, which are 100% a terrible addition. They explode instantly so you don't get any warning and your character stumbles slowly, taking damage for a long time and easily getting stun-locked.

Wanted: Dead is another game unfairly thrown under the bus or ignored by main stream videogame reviewers/Youtubers/streamers. Things have been like this for a long time now but it’s still sad to see and getting worse. Mainstream videogame reviews are hurting games, the gaming industry and gamers. The importance placed on game review scores and the metacritic number is not a good thing as it causes developers to create safe games that appeal to the mainstream game reviewers. And we all know how good the big game reviewers opinions are – weak, ignorant, shallow first impressions, pushed out quickly to get clicks, written by people that didn’t pay for it, didn’t have enough time to learn to play it properly, or didn’t care and are in a position where they can’t be too critical as it may affect their access to the industry, advertising spending and connections with their peers. So then along comes a game like Wanted: Dead that they can ‘safely’ s**t on or ignore or do a really bad job reviewing and most people won’t care but it hurts the game, the developers, the industry and gamers. (Obviously this is a generalisation and gamers aren’t much better. I hope no offense is taken as my problems with reviews are more systemic than individual).

Wanted: Dead is not a 4 out of 10 or worse. Wanted: Dead is lower budget and rough around the edges but it is a really solid action game with plenty of personality. I honestly think it is an enjoyable, charismatic game made by developers earnestly trying to make something fun and challenging in their own style.

First let’s get the bad out of the way. The two big negatives I see in reviews are low production values/ lack of polish and difficulty. There is plenty of truth to the first point. The graphics are not the best and the frame rate does drop at times. Objects and environments are not super detailed and the character models look dated. The enemies pass though surfaces they shouldn’t occasionally and the camera doesn’t always do a perfect job. During my second play through I had multiple crashes and I think one of the trophies may not be unlocking. However none of this is bad enough to make me stop playing or dislike the game but of course it does lower my opinion and I wish the experience was smoother and better looking. The difficulty on the other hand is a deliberate part of the game. If you don’t want to learn how to play and you don’t give yourself some time to get decent at it then you’re in for a frustrating time. Once you get the hang of things and unlock some skills the game becomes pretty great. Don’t get me wrong the game still throws some really hard sections your way, especially in the final stage, but the only part of the game that feels bulls**t hard is those damn minigames, which are generally optional.

The story and characters of Wanted: Dead was something I didn’t think I was going to care for at first but overtime I got more into it. Especially the quirky cast of characters, they grew on me so much and by the end I was left wanting more. What helps a lot is that the game doesn’t take itself too seriously and has you regularly changing from one thing to another. One minute you’re watching a cutscene, then some ultra violent gameplay, then to the crane game, then an anime cutscene, then karaoke, then live action cooking lessons, etc. It’s a fun, wild time but the humour and style won’t be for everyone. Wanted: Dead may not have a ‘good’ story or ‘deep’ characters but that isn’t a problem. It is totally fine to make something that is just kind of cool and fun.

Visually as I already said Wanted: Dead is not very technically impressive. I still like the look of it though because of the style, direction and character designs. The soundtrack was pretty cool and l liked the voice acting. It suited the characters and tone of the game.

Now we’re at the meat of the game, the excellent hack n slash/third person shooter hybrid combat. The problem with this is you don’t get the depth of a hack n slash or a TPS but you do gain the fun, interesting gameplay of mixing the two. Your main gun, second gun, grenades and cover work like a TPS. Your pistol is for counters, light hits and interrupting enemies. Your sword is for heavier hits, basic combos and charge attacks. You also have a block, parry, counter hit, side step, dodge roll, sprint, slide and sometimes a chainsaw. On top of that you have executions, slow mo and slow mo handgun attack all earned by playing well. You gain health back by hurting enemies too so it’s the type of game that rewards good play and encourages aggressive play. These elements mix so well together and once you get good and are in the zone it is a blast that looks so freaking cool. There is depth here or you can just get good enough to enjoy and finish it. Yeah it’s hard but worth it.

Wanted: Dead’s flaws are not enough to drag down the fun too much. I was swearing and laughing throughout and it will be a cult classic, if it’s not already. If it were slightly longer, had higher production values and was more highly polished it would be a game of the year contender for me. It is really important to support games like this. If people didn’t buy and appreciate King’s field, Lost kingdoms and Demon’s souls we wouldn’t have Elden Ring and Bloodborne. I would strongly recommend Wanted: Dead to anyone that enjoys Japanese action games.

7.4/10