Slip-Slidin' Away
We paint the town red in a little hands-on time with WET.
Published: August 30, 2009
First impressions are an odd thing. We've been casually watching the progress of WET since it first poked its head into the limelight a couple years ago, but never really thought anything of it. Swap out Inspector Tequila, the lead from the similarly gravity-defying shooter Stranglehold with a fire-tongued lead that's all curves and curses and you have pretty much the same game, just done by a different developer.
Or so we thought.
In truth, there's plenty of a similarities between Stranglehold and WET, but that's neither a bad thing nor the whole truth behind Canadian developer Artificial Mind and Movement's first big original IP. See, A2M has been, classically, something of a licensed game factory, churning out all manner of kid-friendly, cartoony titles based on shows like Kim Possible, Loony Toons, Scooby-Doo! and so on. Perhaps that's why WET's leading lady, Rubi Malone, is so ready to drop f-bombs and spill endless streams of lead; it's meant to be a marked departure from the dev house's usual fare, and, fortunately, it's actually rather promising.
It wasn't a smooth ride for A2M or their home-grown action game, though; originally shown off as a series of videos meant to hook a publisher, they finally found one in the waiting arms of Sierra, and the project was properly shown off in Leipzig, Germany at Games Convention way back in 2007. When the Activision/Blizzard merger occurred and projects started getting hewn from the bosom of Sierra left and right, WET was rather unceremoniously dropped and A2M was back to square one. Rather than letting the project die, however, Artificial Mind and Movement kept toiling away on the project as they searched for a new publisher and finally, after more than nine months, they found one in Bethesda Softworks.
The whole affair is rather inspiring; rather than giving up on a game that could help put the dev house on the map as a source of more than just brain-numbing licensed game dreck, they kept soldering on, and the results, while a little rough, are nonetheless promising enough to put the game squarely on our radar. We got the chance to play around with the PS3 version of the game and spent a good hour learning the ropes.
The first section of the game, taking place in San Francisco's Chinatown (or an interesting version of it, at least), serves as the game's tutorial, and is actually playable in the demo that's up on the PlayStation Network. We actually ended up spending plenty of time with this first stage, not only because there's more to Rubi's moveset than just running on walls and gunning down baddies, but because the intro level itself is incredibly meaty, culminating in a freeway chase that'll get to in a bit. All told, we'd poured well over a half hour into learning how to stylistically off dozens of enemies before finally arriving at the game's opening credit sequence.
Or so we thought.
In truth, there's plenty of a similarities between Stranglehold and WET, but that's neither a bad thing nor the whole truth behind Canadian developer Artificial Mind and Movement's first big original IP. See, A2M has been, classically, something of a licensed game factory, churning out all manner of kid-friendly, cartoony titles based on shows like Kim Possible, Loony Toons, Scooby-Doo! and so on. Perhaps that's why WET's leading lady, Rubi Malone, is so ready to drop f-bombs and spill endless streams of lead; it's meant to be a marked departure from the dev house's usual fare, and, fortunately, it's actually rather promising.
It wasn't a smooth ride for A2M or their home-grown action game, though; originally shown off as a series of videos meant to hook a publisher, they finally found one in the waiting arms of Sierra, and the project was properly shown off in Leipzig, Germany at Games Convention way back in 2007. When the Activision/Blizzard merger occurred and projects started getting hewn from the bosom of Sierra left and right, WET was rather unceremoniously dropped and A2M was back to square one. Rather than letting the project die, however, Artificial Mind and Movement kept toiling away on the project as they searched for a new publisher and finally, after more than nine months, they found one in Bethesda Softworks.
The whole affair is rather inspiring; rather than giving up on a game that could help put the dev house on the map as a source of more than just brain-numbing licensed game dreck, they kept soldering on, and the results, while a little rough, are nonetheless promising enough to put the game squarely on our radar. We got the chance to play around with the PS3 version of the game and spent a good hour learning the ropes.
The first section of the game, taking place in San Francisco's Chinatown (or an interesting version of it, at least), serves as the game's tutorial, and is actually playable in the demo that's up on the PlayStation Network. We actually ended up spending plenty of time with this first stage, not only because there's more to Rubi's moveset than just running on walls and gunning down baddies, but because the intro level itself is incredibly meaty, culminating in a freeway chase that'll get to in a bit. All told, we'd poured well over a half hour into learning how to stylistically off dozens of enemies before finally arriving at the game's opening credit sequence.
