Review: Dragon Ball Z – Ultimate Tenkaichi (PS3)

Wanted: Weapons of Fate takes is source from a comic book and movie of the same name.  In both of these source mediums, you can see many ideas that seem like a video game would be a natural evolution in the series.  And while Wanted: Weapons of Fate does have some great production values and a few new gameplay mechanics, it never lives up to expectations, or the source material it was spawned from.

Wanted: Weapons of Fate takes place in two different time frames, with the first following Wesley, our young hero from the movie, as he tries to find out what happened to his mother, and what happened to the rest of The Fraternity.  In the other time frame, we go into the past, and play as Wesley’s father, Cross, as he also plays out some of the events that lead into what happened to Wesley’s mother.  As the story goes, it sets up the action sequences nicely, but it is ho-hum at best and could have been substituted with just about anything and it would have worked.  It doesn’t help that the narrative just becomes confusing at times, to the point of wanting to check out skip forward just to get to the game.

Wanted: Weapons of Fate is a standard cover shooter that mixes in a few new design elements to the genre, that help it fit into the Wanted lore.   The cover mechanic is very smooth, with your character snapping to cover if he is near a cover object with the press of a button.  You can also string together cover movement, which, if done properly, will confuse your enemies, leaving them looking at your last known location.  Also, being one of the Fraternity, you also have the ability to curve bullets.  Curving bullets is a rather easy button mechanic, and you have to earn the ability to curve bullets, which is mentioned rather humorously by our main character Wesley.  The biggest problem with the curve mechanic is that while it is cool to watch, it defeats the very purpose of a cover game.  Anyone that uses cover is stupid for doing so, because curving a bullet will hit them anyways.  To defeat this problem, some enemies take more than one or two bullets to go down, but does this really matter, when ammo is plenty, and earning curving bullets is as simple as killing an enemy with one.

Wanted: Weapons of Fate does get some of the main actors back for voice work, but the voiceovers are dull and uninspired at best, and criminally bad at worst.  Wesley is especially guilty of sounding bored out of his mind as he explains things to you in the most graphically obscene way as possible.  I mean, trying to tell me that whether a girl is alive or dead, she still went out with her feet up in the air can be funny, but not when it is said with the emotion of a brick wall.

The visual features of the main characters in Wanted: Weapons of Fate does stand out, with each having a lot of details put into them.  Wesley, Cross and Pekwarsky look very similar to their movie counterparts, and the new characters we are introduced to are very solid as well.  The Immortal in particular is a sight to behold, especially when you see what kind of stuff has happened to his face.   The rest of the game is very average at best, with room after room looking similar.  It is like each level received about a dozen objects and then used cut and paste to litter them through each level.  For some it makes sense, like a floor or office cubicles, but for an apartment building or The Fraternity building, I expect a little more variance in my background details, especially with a game that is suppose to have a lot of production muscle behind it.

While some of the problems above can be looked past when you are having fun shooting people up, the length of this game cannot.  At most, Wanted: Weapons of Fate will only take most about four hours to complete from start to finish.  My game ended at the 4:07 mark by my clock, and that was playing on normal mode, while casually looking for secret items.   For achievement and trophy hunters, you may get a little more out of it, as it will take a couple of plays to get all of them, but at the time of launch, this game was in no way, shape or form worth a $60 price tag.  An average single player mode, mixed in with absolutely no multiplayer and no replay value beyond wanted to hunt for achievements and trophies are the biggest buzz kill for this title.

With Wanted: Weapons of Fate, GRIN Interactive have brought forth some great ideas from the movies and comics, like curved bullets, and rapid movements, but none of these really show any real care for the license that was used.  Maybe with some more development time, multiplayer and story, a solid title could have been had, but at this time, even with the game running $20, it is a far better rental than actual purchase.  Wanted: Weapons of Fate gets 2 out of 5 Aeropausonauts.

After reading this review, check out the X-Play video review of Wanted: Weapon of Fate over at X-Play on G4TV.com, and see if our opinion meets up with Adam Sessler and Morgan Webb, or becomes a case of irreconcilable differences.

X-Play