Wanted: Dead is a hybrid shooter/slasher by Soleil Ltd. and 110 Industries intentionally made to evoke the feeling of playing games from the 6th generation of consoles. You slice your way through hordes of enemies to advance through the game’s stages. The action is over the top, and the story, cutscenes, and mini-games that take place in between them are even more off the wall. Sergei Kolobashkin, founder of 110 Industries said in an interview “The audience might love it, they might hate it. What’s important to me and the team is that they’re not indifferent.”
I have to give it to Sergei, he was certainly correct. I can’t imagine anybody playing this game and being indifferent. Wanted: Dead stands unapologetically firm in its design. Unfortunately, for most of my time with Wanted: Dead I fall into the camp that doesn’t vibe with its design.
The Story In Wanted: Dead
In Wanted: Dead you play as Hannah Stone, a member of the Hong Kong Police Force and leader of the elite Zombie Unit. Zombie Unit is comprised of Stone, Herzog, Doc, and Cortez: criminals who are given a second chance to do good on the force. Together you get thrown into the midst of a major corporate conspiracy in a dystopian Hong Kong where banks hold most of the power. I think…
Honestly, the narrative in Wanted: Dead is all over the place. I didn’t know that the game was set in Hong Kong, or that the main characters were War Criminals until I watched the story overview trailer on Twitter. I anticipate you could deduce this from police files that you can collect around the Police Station, which acts as the hub between linear levels, but I had no motivation to seek them out. By the end of my time with Wanted: Dead I was skipping most cutscenes to get back into the action.
Speaking of cutscenes, there are a lot of them in this game. The voice acting is very B-tier, the animations are stiff as a board, and the rate at which they are dolled out is confusing. In one particularly baffling sequence, I was at the diner with my squad yelling at them to keep it down, fade to black, and return and I’m in a karaoke mini-game with the gunsmith from the station with no explanation. Yet in a previous cutscene, we spent almost a full minute as Stone had terrible cafeteria food. There is no rhyme or reason to the pacing of these scenes. At the end of the day though, none of this matters as it’s just a distraction from the main attraction: the gory, challenging combat which can be fun at times.
Gameplay In Wanted: Dead
Wanted: Dead is fast, bloody, and challenging. Stone can slice enemies up with her katana, stagger them with her handgun, or engage in standard 3rd person cover shootouts with her custom rifle. You can dodge out of harm’s way, block melee attacks, or counter them with a well-timed parry. When all of this is working, the combat has a certain flow that I enjoyed quite a bit. Slicing off enemy limbs before pulling out your handgun for a perfectly timed stagger can feel really satisfying.
Dealing enough damage or a follow-up strike after a parry opens up enemies to one of the game’s many brutal finishers. These are extremely gory, and surprisingly well-animated, and I never tired of seeing them throughout my playtime. In fact, I almost wish there weren’t any guns in Wanted: Dead.
While the melee combat is stylish and fun, the gunplay is subpar. All the guns feel weak compared to melee combat, especially the weapons found on the ground. I eventually stopped picking anything up but the shotgun and relied mostly on dealing out damage with my katana and handgun. The cover system in the game engages when you are close to waist-high cover or wall corners. I found the system particularly finicky to use and would’ve much preferred a traditional button press to get in or out of the cover.
Ultimately, after the first chapter, combat never evolves and feels much the same for the remainder of the game, so my enjoyment of the combat slowly faded throughout
In keeping with the games that inspired it, Wanted: Dead provides plenty of challenges. It throws nonstop waves of enemies at you, employs a brutal checkpoint system, and spikes the difficulty with each boss encounter. Luckily the game gives you plenty of options to try to push the odds in your favor through a trio of extensive skill trees. They are split between Offensive, Defensive, and Utility skills, with each providing a variety of ways to improve Stone. A few of my favorites allowed an instant finisher when an arm or leg was lopped off, or an increased parry window. The major downside is that I often found myself upgrading before a big battle, only to die repeatedly and have to buy all of my upgrades again each time.
Other small things keep adding up to sour the experience. In the 3rd chapter of the game, the game throws waves of weak enemies at you, and it can be fun to slice your way through them, but they constantly repeat the same 3 quips over and over at different times creating an endless loop of the same sentence that was so overwhelming I couldn’t even hear the music. Herzog from your squad is a straight-up creep with antics that are shameful and made me despise him anytime he was on screen. The camera can become confused after finishers leave you swinging into nothing as you try to chain your attacks to the next bad guy. The list goes on and on. Luckily, performance on PC was relatively stable, aside from a few stutters as new enemies or areas loaded in.
Final thoughts
I respect Soleil and 110 Industries for sticking to their vision so fully. Unfortunately, I just don’t think that in 2023 this game design holds up. I fondly remember action games from the PS2 era, but that is just how I want them to stay, a memory. I hope that there is an audience who really gels with this game, as the developers are very passionate about it, I just think they will be a small percentage of the players who pick up this game.
