izigame.me

Wanted; Dead is clearly made for a very specific and niche audience.
If you enjoyed the era of third person games Army of Two, Max Payne, Lollipop Chainsaw, Vanquish, Wet, maybe with a tiny splash of hack/slash elements from MGS Rising or DMC, this game might be for you.
Just remember alongside all those elements, it's packaged with all the shovelware copycat games of that era, despite a vibrant and well marketed world.
NARRATIVE
The narrative premise is simple, but unfortunately goes nowhere. You are a war criminal turned enforcer for the HK Police, working for a company mainly known for creating synthetic android factory workers. And from there, a bunch of different and definitely not connecting plot threads are made chapter by chapter, but go nowhere. Apparently there is some corporate conspiracy, but let’s just say the story is not important at all. All of this is presented in full anime style cutscenes, and in game engine ones. The medium switch is interesting, but doesn’t help its writing and awful voice acting.
GAMEPLAY
Wanted; Dead revels in itself being bad like an older era gaming. If that was its intention it did it in spades. Looped enemy dialogue, bullet sponges, bad enemy AI, and extremely punishing checkpointing system. I cannot remember the amount of times I were to die and be sent so far back in the level, just to go through the same mob waves all over again.
Trust me, the majority of the more casual player base of this game might not even be able to finish Wanted; Dead. It’s very punishing, and not until later in the game when you unlock more of what feel like key skills from the skill tree to open up the game, does it all start to come together.
And that's about all that Wanted; Dead has merit wise. A somewhat fun but tough gameplay loop of gun-kata, with emphasis on the melee aspect, despite it being very limiting even with all unlocks. I enjoyed doing flashy executions, cutting through a crowd of enemies, and it did what it set out to do; emulate that era of gaming, riddled with third person shooters with minor melee elements. For better or worse, like I mentioned before, it takes with it all the same frustrating problems.

PC OPTIMIZATION
I played this on PC, and let’s just say the controls take a lot of time getting used to and rebinding, and a key element of perfect parrying melee attacks often feels like I’m getting punished for doing so. And the enemy AI and teammate’s AI are both horrendous. To put it simply, Wanted is an epitome of jank in 2023 for a game like this.
BOSS FIGHTS
Insult to injury, the first boss you fight, you fight again later on, except guess what, it’s two of them. Two Spider tanks.. Every boss fight is a bullet sponge minus the last one, where the devs kinda tell you, “Ayo you cheesed every fight with infinite pistol ammo? This guys will dodge every shot, gotta finally put those melee combat practice in”
SETTING
Another thing that irked me is that it’s set in an alternate present dayish Hong Kong. As a Hong Kong native, this game literally has nothing to do with Hong Kong. There is a single character that is Chinese, and the rest of the world beyond random Chinese signs, has nothing to do with HK. Mind you the police station which is in inbetween level base is riddled with non-Chinese NPC’s with thick British accents, despite the game just introducing itself as post handover HK. It’s very strange, and near the end of the game you literally run through an equivalent of a North American Chinatown rather than Hong Kong. There are a few little nods to Hong Kong like a parody of Watson’s, the metal fence apartment doors, and one single public transit Xiao Ba. everything else just screams “I’ve never been to Hong Kong, but sounds Cybeprunk.” Even if this is supposed to be a 80’s version of HK, nah man. This could have been anywhere but HK.
ANYTHING GOOD?
Despite all this, I can’t help but be charmed by a lot of the little things. Be it the awkward rhythm games of eating ramen at a street vendor japanese ramen shop (out of place for HK) and karaoke (not so out of place), the crane machines, the fully made bullet hell arcade game, the very dumb interactions between the characters of the main Zombie Unit that you are part of, the fact when you go afk, each character has their own full idle animations. In addition, the very 80’s and fun soundtrack strums my die hard synth heart.
It’s all nice touches, and very Yakuza-esque with a touch of Cyberpunk.
It’s a shame cause, when I saw the perfectly put together holiday trailer, I was very excited and looking forward to its release. Both being from HK, a big fan of these types of games in my PS3 days, I was quite disappointed in the end result. Someone told me they felt like this game was a “Uncharted game without any soul, set pieces and polish” and it definitely felt like that. Wanted; Dead tried to shove so many different third person game elements together without any compromises, and it shows. It really felt like given a bit more time, the game could have been something more. There are very few elements of it screaming “Ninja Gaiden” Or Dead or Alive, beyond maybe the same sound bite from the ninja enemies.
At the end of it all, I cannot recommend this game at 60 bucks, especially with something as good as Hi-Fi-Rush at 30. Maybe if it came out in 2011 in a bargain bin, it wouldn’t be so bad. But with a play time of 8-12 hours, and if you wanted to, subsequent playthroughs on ‘Japanese Hard’ of the same game, with its mediocre package, I’d recommend waiting for it to go on sale.