Wet Review
A stylish third person shooter that does enough things right to warrant a recommendation
Issues do exist though – in particular the difficulty spikes in later levels, resulting in many deaths and requiring tons of bullets to put down even the basic enemies. There’s also no way to dodge or block attacks of any kind, so the only option is to find a hiding spot on the level and hope that health will regenerate. The game also heavily relies on acrobatic maneuvers to evade enemies and perform creative kills – which causes some frustration due to the spotty platforming (mentioned below). Though AI is basic and sometimes has too much health – to its credit, the enemies constantly dodge and attempt to block player attacks.
In between the shootouts, Rubi is often tasked with finding a path through a level by jumping, wall running, and climbing around the environment. It all works at a basic level, as the progression through the game is quite linear. There are some problems though, as platforming sometimes simply doesn’t work well – missed jumps, awkward vertical wallruns and other annoyances often creep in. While it never gets too unbearable, it’s still an annoyance that haunts the experience all the way through.
All of the action in the game translates into a score-based experience, with a prominent multiplier that plays a key role. When killing enemies, Rubi earns points – the more creative her acrobatics, or when hitting specific enemy body parts, the higher the score earned per kill. All kills also add to the multiplier – so stringing kills together brings incrementally greater rewards. An additional function of the multiplier is to determine how fast (if at all) Rubi can regenerate health.
The points earned in the game can then be spent on two categories of upgrades – weapons and abilities. The abilities range from being able to shoot while swinging and wall running to increasing your overall health. Some abilities have multiple tiers while others are one-time unlocks. Weapon upgrades act in a similar fashion, allowing you to increase the damage output, firing rate, and ammo carrying capacity for the various guns in the game. The system is well balanced, and players will be able to upgrade most of Rubi’s abilities through playing the campaign. Unfortunately, even with fully upgraded weapons, the enemies towards the end of the game take a ton of damage to kill, making the whole upgrade system feel futile.
The game’s overall progression is linear. Levels don’t have any alternate paths, but there are some decently large areas to run around in. The usual shooting and platforming combination is often broken up by arena areas. These areas are a locked environment, where Rubi must destroy 3 or more entrances from which enemies consistently appear. Various multiplier powerups are also scattered around, promoting vertical exploration and acrobatic moves. To the game’s credit, the enemies do stop spawning after a few minutes, allowing the player to close the doors afterwards.
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