Wanted: Dead [Xbox]
A hybrid slasher/shooter that follows a week in the life of an elite police squad known as the Zombie Unit, Wanted: Dead sees you take on the role of Lieutenant Hannah Stone. The newest title from Soleil Ltd, a game development company built from various ex-Ninja Gaiden and Dead or Alive devs, the influence here is clear - though admittedly, it does fall down in some areas. In a nutshell, it’s fun, but flawed - and had us feeling a mix of emotions ranging from love to hate and everything in between.
Your squad’s title of Zombie Unit is fitting, as Wanted: Dead almost feels like a zombie of the games that came before it. It’s a resurrection of the genre, easily blending in with titles released generations before - though it does need a fair bit of tweaking and a slew of bug-fixes, even if it does still manage to be fun. Just like a zombie, the skeleton and all of the moving parts are there, but it’s not quite 100%… and it smells a little off. As with many Japanese hack and slash titles, it’s a challenging game - even on the lower difficulties. There’s a ‘Nekochan’ mode that allows you to drop the difficulty to its lowest setting after you’ve died too many times - forcing you to wear kitty ears for the rest of your playthrough as a reminder of just how much you suck.
Slicing and dicing melee combat takes precedence over your guns - with many of the enemies being complete bullet sponges, leaving you open to more potential danger if you don’t dispatch them quickly. It can feel a little awkward to begin with, but as you unlock more techniques via the Skill Tree, and get to grips with everything, it does become much more enjoyable and flowing. Chaining finishers together for a super satisfying combo is fantastic, and seeing Hannah end up absolutely drenched in blood by the end of a level almost adds a pinch of humour to it.
Stone’s Rifle can be customised at the start of missions, allowing you to improve stats such as handling or reload speed, as well as giving it alternate skins; her handgun, known as Taker, can also be adjusted to give you different stopping power, etc. Within levels you can pick up weapons to use, even sometimes getting access to a chainsaw (though this sadly isn’t as fun as it should have been). At points throughout the levels you’ll come across Gunsmith’s Drones to allow you to adjust your weaponry, which can come in handy. New parts can be unlocked as you complete further missions, allowing these improvements to get better over time.
The visuals of Wanted: Dead are a bit hit or miss, with character designs being really cool - but often negated by the frequent pop-in textures, and somewhat bland, repetitive environments. What it does do well is the human interactions, small gestures and movements from the characters that really seem to ground them in reality, despite the somewhat bonkers setting. Seeing the characters bond over their breakfast, having girl talk and doing other very human things, such as getting showered and changed after a bloody battle, is a nice little insight that you don’t typically see in games. One of the Zombie Unit, Cortez, communicates using sign language, which is another uncommon sight in games - and a very appreciated one at that.
The sound design is similarly mixed, with voice acting sometimes feeling very awkward - at first it felt like this was down to the range of accents, however, I think it actually just comes down to all of the voice lines being recorded indepedently of one another, so inflections and tone feel a little all over the place. The soundtrack is absolutely fantastic though - with a mix of brilliant tracks such as Maniac, I Touch Myself, and 99 Red Balloons as well as the energetic tracks within each of the levels.
In between levels you’ll return to the Police HQ, where you can relax and unwind for a bit. There’s arcade machines with an awesome little game to play, two crane games that you can play to nab unlockables for various mini-games as well as to gain skill points; and you’ve also got access to two rhythm-based games once unlocked in the story, that see you singing along (horrifically) to Karaoke, and competing in a Ramen eating challenge. The whole rhythm element is right up my street - however it is super buggy at present, with massive frame rate dips that cause you to miss beats at no fault of your own. Similarly, in the karaoke game, the loud claps and jingles when hitting a beat ruin the music, and this again is very laggy with the animations both for the characters and for the beats moving along the track. You also have access to a Training Area where you can learn and perfect your combat, as well as a Shooting Range where you can take part in Time Attacks, Score Attacks and Practice modes in order to increase your proficiency with your weapons.
There are a variety of collectibles to be found in the levels (as well as by using the crane games), and these give you some reason to go back and replay the levels - after all, it’s a relatively short story. Some segments do end up dragged out fairly long due to massive gaps between checkpoints, so if you die (and you will), it can feel like a bit of a slog. You can view all of the collectibles in the main menu’s ‘Collections’ tab, with lots for you to find. You can also rewatch ‘Memories’, which covers any cutscenes you’ve already unlocked - many of which have the group interacting with each other in some way, or learning information about their missions - but some, in which Hannah has passed out, are anime-styled segments that are absolutely beautifully animated.
Priced at £49.99 on Xbox, Wanted: Dead is a rather expensive title given its current state. As I said above, it’s fun but flawed, and could really be doing with a massive patch to deal with a bunch of the bugs that are hampering things. It’s got a great variety of gameplay to keep things feeling fresh and exciting, switching between fast-paced, intense combat and some relaxing down-time in HQ singing Karaoke and winning prizes from the crane game - it’s just a shame that the bugs make these rather frustrating in their current state. Once a patch goes live to deal with these issues, I can imagine it being a much better time.
In the end, we decided to give Wanted Dead the Collecting Asylum rating of 6.5/10.
Are you interested in Wanted Dead? What do you think of it?
Let us know in the comments below!
- V x
Thank you to Plan of Attack for the Wanted Dead Xbox review code!
