Wanted: Dead

2023 | Soleil Ltd | Playstation 5

Wanted: Dead is a game that’s been on my radar since it was first announced over a year ago, with the delightfully goofy Vivienne’s Late Night Chow trailers. In these trailers Vivienne, played by Stefanie Joosten, cooks up various dishes interspliced with footage from what, at the time, felt like a spiritual successor of the 3D Ninja Gaiden games with a bit of Binary Domain seasoned through it. It reminded me a lot of those parody shows at the start of Metal Gear Solid 4, and with a game that seemingly caters to my exact niche of enjoying these hyper action titles from the seventh generation of gaming, this felt like a match made in heaven. Fast-forward to the game’s release, and Wanted: Dead was nowhere to be found on any store shelves. I think only one store had the game in stock, and it was a beat up second hand copy for a lot more than the retail value. Luckily a few months later we stumbled upon a pretty good deal for the game and a few days later it was finally ready to be consumed. Was it worth the effort?

Absolutely!

Wanted: Dead is developed by Soleil, who broke into the gaming industry with the illustrious and critically acclaimed Wii-U title, Devil’s Third. It had a bit of a rough start, but an interesting kick-off point nonetheless. At the start of 2023 they released the spin-off to the masterful Valkyrie Profile series; Valkyrie Elysium, which is a whole other beast to unravel at some point. It showed that, while they had great ideas, they didn’t always manage to fully realize them. Wanted: Dead sits in an odd position, where it immediately becomes apparent that the game is meant to be a tribute to the style of action and hack ‘n slash games that were sprinkled throughout the Playstation 3’s lifecycle, specifically ranging from 2009 all the way to 2012. It comfortably nestles itself alongside Lollipop Chainsaw, No More Heroes, Ninja Gaiden and WET (for better or worse) and this makes it feel incredibly out of place in the current gaming ecosystem. Don’t get me wrong though, I absolutely adore this game for going out of its way to recreate an incredibly hard to describe and specific type of game that I’ve been missing dearly.

Wanted: Dead follows the blood splattering adventures of Hannah Stone and her zombie squad; a group of convicted former soldiers and war criminals working for the Hong Kong Police Department. Alongside the bad ass super-cop, we’re joined by Herzog, a passionate womanizer that has an arsenal of bad jokes, Cortez, probably the most sane dude on the squad, Doc, a socially awkward doctor and medical backbone of the team, and Gunsmith, Stefanie Joosten with a bunch of cats. In a sort of “Week in the life of a Zombie Squad member” fashion, we immediately get thrown into a bloody hostile takeover of Dauer Synthetics, where an unknown group has barricaded itself inside of Dauer’s headquarters. As we slice and shoot our way through hordes of faceless enemies and a massive spider tank, the zombie squad finds themselves framed by a private security organization attempting to plummet the mega corporations stock value, to overtake government law enforcement. The plot then continues to spiral into a seeming robot revolution, after a worker revolt at a major construction site. Upon interrogating the companion of the leader of the revolution, it is revealed that the robots may be more human than we initially thought. So off to the nightclub we go to find some answers (cause naturally) and at this point the game hit me with an absolutely jaw dropping transition. The game has flashbacks that are 2D animated, which look fantastic, that serve as the backbone for the story. Here we learn more about Stone through scattered fragments of memories. However, the game flips this on its head by making an absolutely seamless transition from 3D to 2D as the zombie squad enters the club dancefloor. It’s just incredible to see. In the nightclub we get some red herring side story about the club owner having history with Stone and some vague hints at the why behind the robot revolution. There’s no time to explain further, because Richter and his private security goons are here to arrest the Zombie Squad for reasons undisclosed. Back at the Police HQ there isn’t a moment of downtime to recover from the nightclub festivities, since the door is getting kicked in by private security. The tail end of the game is a very long and arduous escape from the police station, into the alleyways, and onto the rooftops of Kowloon Streets. This eventually culminates into a final confrontation with Richter in a rain soaked, neon lit construction area.

As I’m going through my notes trying to make sense of the story, I’m slowly starting to realize just how disjointed the entire experience is. It’s not as noticeable when you’re actually playing through it, as the action takes center stage at all times, but thinking about it leaves a lot of blanks to fill. There is an absolutely brilliant concept hidden underneath a hastily and sloppily developed narrative, with tons of threads to unravel that are left out in the cold. During the downtime segments where you can explore the station, we get a bit more background on Stone as she occasionally gets bouts of migraine, which leads to flashbacks of a younger version of herself trying to find a way to afford medication for her daughter. In a post credits sequence we learn that she sold herself to a corporation, essentially selling a year of her life to the company, during which her memories would be altered. This puts an incredibly bleak twist on the entire narrative that is completely lost in the game, and got me chewing up my hand. There is so much good underneath the surface of Wanted: Dead that is left to choke to death in a few inches of water. It may sound harsh, but it’s genuinely frustrating to see a scene like that unfold, and the game instead decides to dangle some keys in front of you to distract you. At its heart Wanted: Dead may be a tribute to the Playstation 3’s hack ‘n slash era, but at its deepest core also presents a beautiful love-letter to the cyberpunk genre at its bleakest and most vulnerable. Only the letter itself got left out in the rain and there’s a bit of mud on the corners, and the writing is a bit smudged. For me, this could’ve been the next Binary Domain, yet I’m almost afraid that this title might be lost to time as some kind of fodder for the bargain bin. And though I sound pretty harsh from this, there is a lot to love as well.

Wanted: Dead manages to distill the fundamental elements of what I love about Ninja Gaiden into a fairly straightforward, yet tad unfocused, hybridization of hack ‘n slash and third person shooter. You can rush enemies with your sword and use combinations of your handgun and sword to do long combos, or take a safer approach by grabbing your automatic rifle and slowly trim the enemy numbers down from the safety of cover. It creates a dynamic battlefield where, in theory, you’re weaving in and out of cover, quickly tearing through patches of enemies before diving back into safety. In practice however, you’re mostly running face first into a hailstorm of lead in a chaotic moshpit of bullets and blades, with limbs flying all over the place. Despite feeling exceptionally chaotic, it’s incredible to just tear hordes of enemies apart, sprinting from room to room. Every once in a while the onslaught of faceless grunts gets interrupted by ninja’s and big dudes carrying large guns, and the game starts to reveal its Ninja Gaiden roots. While the game primarily tries to sell itself as a third person shooter with hack ‘n slash elements, the reality is that it’s much more focused on the smaller duels in between the gunfire. Learning enemy patterns and parrying said patterns is a fundamental mechanic that you’ll need to stand a chance against the tougher enemies. Melee damage does a significant amount more damage to your health than a bullet does, so to prevent this you can either block and take the chip damage, or learn the patterns of the moves and parry them at the last second. This results in a window of opportunity to inflict massive amounts of damage. Every once in a while an enemy will briefly flash red, indicating an attack that can only be countered by using your hand gun. With some of the later upgrades this will allow you to mow down hordes of enemies in rapid succession, as limbs are severed and attacks are cancelled into one of the many incredibly stylistic finishers. Whenever an enemy flashes white, you can press a combination of buttons to finish them instantly, this is an incredibly rewarding experience and also feels super satisfying to pull off. Alongside combat moves, there’s also a fairly rudimentary skill tree in which you can invest points to extend basic combo’s, get more health, more defense etc. While this isn’t really a special or new thing, it quickly becomes clear that if you want to remain standing after a single blow in the late game, you’ll want to max these out as fast as possible.

The game feels structured almost like something straight out of the arcade, with unforgiving checkpoints scarcely decorating the landscapes. Wanted: Dead is a steep and unforgiving mountain to climb, in which pattern memorization, enemy placement and strategizing your approach is going to drastically improve your success at completing missions. To a certain degree this is really frustrating to deal with, as your first runs through a part of a mission will blindside you with enemies hidden around corners, and tough groups inhabiting the areas right before the next checkpoint. It’s in part discouraging, but it also feeds a hunger to improve with each attempt at reaching the next milestone. I went from a bumbling idiot trying to do my best not to get shot down when entering a room, to being able to manage large groups of grunts and several ninja’s at the same time. The improvement is tangible and incredibly satisfying and is a large part of why I enjoyed the game as much as I did. That said though, this is not a game for everyone. The vibes may be immaculate, the voice acting may be hilarious and the soundtrack may be incredible at times, but Wanted: Dead is very much a game misplaced in time. It doesn’t look, feel or play like anything you’d expect in 2023, but rather something you’d pick up from the dusty parts of a 2012 game store shelf. For me this isn’t a bad thing, I adore the unapologetic jank of it like a warm nostalgic blanket that occasionally kicks me in the head. In a way it reminds me a lot of No More Heroes, both in charm and execution. There is a part of me that wishes the game had a bit more focus though. As stated earlier, Wanted: Dead is conceptual brilliance, but only in concept. Much like earlier Soleil titles like Devil’s Third and Valkyrie Elysium, there is a noticeable lack of cohesion to the entire experience, that hints at great ideas on the drawing board, but a potential lack of experience to execute upon. It has so much character to it and the weird minigames that are scattered throughout the downtime sections are a straight up riot. To go from slaughtering a complex of faceless enemies to singing 99 Luftballons with the convincing falsetto of the seventeenth beer of the evening is such a delight. With a bit more focus and a bit more time and experience I feel like Soleil will end up making some of the greatest 7th gen games for the current generation, and you can take that as a compliment. Wanted: Dead is certainly not for everyone, but if you’re a connoisseur of seventh gen hack ‘n slash and don’t mind your games with a bit of extra crust, then this game comes with the highest recommendation!

4 BALLS/10