I've heard it mentioned that demos can raise false hopes but really, it depends on the game being demoed; sometimes the demo can tell you all you need to know about the full version. The WET demo, for instance, tells me...nay shouts at me in no uncertain terms that Bethesda is completely and utterly past it and needs to close its doors! Why? I'll explain:
1st and foremost, WET doesn't strike me so much as a game but the grotesque result of at least 4 games I can think of having been chucked in a blender.
Story-wise, here's the rundown: It starts off with 2 blokes sat at a table doing some sort of business deal - the one having to hold that voice synthesiser thing to his throat presumably being a gang leader judging by the way he's flanked by half a dozen armed thugs watching the other bloke like hawks - whilst the protagonist, Ruby, sits perched on the roof spying on them, for what reason I have no idea but anyway, the bloke with a fully functional voice box then suddenly pulls out a pistol hidden in his brief case which everyone had assumed 'til now contained money, shoots Mr No Voice of His Own right between the eyes, grabs the other case containing the goods (your guess is as good as mine on that 1) and legs it, gunning down half the thugs on the way out. Meanwhile, Ruby then declares that that case is hers, draws her pistols, shoots the glass roof and jumps down through it thinking she's Batman, killing 2 thugs in the process, cutscene over.
I was reminded of Mirrors Edge the instant I started controlling Ruby because this combat tutorial has you follow very specific instructions and if you cock up - which is highly likely since the game takes player input as merely helpful suggestions - then you're instantly warped back to the start of that tutorial section and said instructions consist of 'jump off table and shoot dude in bullet time', 'run along wall (no Ruby, you're not the Prince of Persia either!) and shoot dude in bullet time' and finally 'slide along floor and shoot dude in bullet time'. This led me to believe that Enter the Matrix was another 1 of the unfortunate blender victims (no sympathy for Mirrors Edge just to be clear), since that too is a 3rd person shooter with bullet time but MILES better because it was still perfectly possible to win gunfights without it; using it gave you that extra edge, whereas in WET bullet time is your ONLY hope of winning a gunfight because Bethesda have forgotten that console shooters need smoother aiming to compensate for the lack of a mouse! Oh, they were at least kind enough to include auto-aim but for some stupid reason, it's only ever activated during a bullet time acrobatic move and for yet another retarded reason, Ruby refuses to bloody draw her other pistol unless it's during bullet time, so unless you use it you're just going to end up running round the room like a loony, endlessly shooting the furniture slower than a fucking bolt-action rifle from Call of Duty! Honestly, it's like playing CoD4 and none of the guns will shoot straight until you jump, it's just stupid! The difficulty contrast couldn't be any harsher; while fighting without bullet time is an un-winnable chore, fighting with it turns the game into a shooting gallery. So I decided instead to slice everyone up with the sword but the game wouldn't let me yet!
Moving on, so after that rather tedious fight, I then run off in pursuit of the mysterious brief case, going through various rooms using all 3 moves from my acrobatic arsenal as well as some more mandatory bunny-hopping bullet time shoot outs, picking up a wind-up monkey along the way, this being the games bonus-unlocking collectable. So yes, here we have a shitty Mirrors Edge rip off, which is a mind-boggling shock to me because to make a shitty rip off of something that's already shitty, the shitty rip off has to be even shittier than the shit it's ripping off!! And bloody hell, I never thought I'd resort to tongue twisters! Actually the running jumping and climbing, whilst somewhat jerky compared to the Prince of Persia series or Assassins Creed, is better than Mirrors Edge despite the limited repertoire, purely because it's 3rd person, so all the better to properly time your jumps and avoid a million splatter deaths per hour. It was at this stage that the game saw fit to let me use the sword and I found the animations for that to be the jerkiest of the jerky, no surprise considering this seems to be Bethesda's specialty. It's rather ironic that Bethesda would use draw animations for Oblivion that take just long enough to let you take a fair few hits before you were combat ready and not use any draw or sheath animations at all for WET. Melee combat is nothing like the smooth, flawless flowing choreography of Batman: Arkham Asylum; it consists of nothing more than the sword instantly teleporting into Ruby's hand for a spazzy 3 hit combo before teleporting back into the scabbard and doing it all over again if there're still some enemies left. And of course, there's the door opening quick time events. Thank you God of War.
And now onto the part that reminded me of No More Heroes: Ruby walks through a door, sees a bloke charging towards her. He gets to within 4 feet of her before she remembers how to use a gun and shoots him in the head, causing a lot of blood to splatter on her face, she then gets an evil look on her face, as if she was a vampire in disguise all along and when I took control of Ruby, I suddenly found that that bloke somehow had enough blood to repaint the entire fucking corridor, the sword now instantly turns enemies into a bloody mist and the pistols had turned into submachine guns! Utterly stupid! Ok, In No More Heroes, killing an enemy makes a fruit machine appear on screen and 3 matching symbols would result in Travis shouting things like "STRAWBERRY ON THE SHORTCAKE!!" and gaining temporary superpowers similarly over the top as the aforementioned blood splatter corridor scenario but what makes No More Heroes HUNDREDS of miles better than WET, besides there being actual context to superpower activations, is the fact that the game is self-aware and satirical in nature, which only makes elements like that funny. On the other hand, a game lacking self-awareness that takes itself seriously and activates crazy over the top player superpowers by ACCIDENT at RANDOM during a CUTSCENE can only hope to roll eyes! It's like if S.T.A.L.K.E.R randomly threw the occasional circus clown or cute wittle bunny wabbit at you as well as flesh-eating mutants.
After I went through the door at the end of the corridor, Ruby had snapped out of her blood frenzy, the camera showed the dude with the brief case still running, going past a couple of vans and into a car that swiftly leaves, then the vans block the way after him. The cam then showed another van smashing through a nearby mesh fence and unloading some thugs. Then came the moment where I nearly broke my controller: The camera then highlighted 3 infinite enemy respawning doors - marked with glowing red skull and crossbones for my convenience - which I had to destroy before I could proceed with the chase. I'd destroyed the 1st 2, not realising zat zhere is only von vay to proceed to ze 3rd, which was right above the door I'd come out of, so I tried jumping onto some nearby crates and jumping from there...nope! I then tried climbing onto the van in the mesh fence and wall running to it...NIEN!! Turns out the only way to the 3rd door was via a zip line placed on the platform of the 2nd, which I'd somehow missed earlier and took me 10 minutes and 100 bullshit bunny-hopping bullet time shoot outs to realise!
Then after the IERD's were dealt with came the climactic car chase scene...ripped from Enter the Matrix! This basically involves Ruby standing on top of a car, shooting at armed thugs sticking their heads out of other cars or rather - since you can't activate bullet time until SHE decides to jump onto another car - MISSING!!! Once again comes the God of War comparison because when Ruby does start to change cars, it's a case of 'press x to make fight winnable and not get run over' and the indicators are small enough that I missed them a couple of times and watched Ruby meet her bone-crunching end on the road, which was actually the only time I enjoyed the demo...take that *****! This took me another 15 tedious frustrating repetitive minutes to finish and then the demo ended.
So, would I buy the full version of this broken mess? Absolutely...when Satan becomes the snowboarding champion of hell!
1st and foremost, WET doesn't strike me so much as a game but the grotesque result of at least 4 games I can think of having been chucked in a blender.
Story-wise, here's the rundown: It starts off with 2 blokes sat at a table doing some sort of business deal - the one having to hold that voice synthesiser thing to his throat presumably being a gang leader judging by the way he's flanked by half a dozen armed thugs watching the other bloke like hawks - whilst the protagonist, Ruby, sits perched on the roof spying on them, for what reason I have no idea but anyway, the bloke with a fully functional voice box then suddenly pulls out a pistol hidden in his brief case which everyone had assumed 'til now contained money, shoots Mr No Voice of His Own right between the eyes, grabs the other case containing the goods (your guess is as good as mine on that 1) and legs it, gunning down half the thugs on the way out. Meanwhile, Ruby then declares that that case is hers, draws her pistols, shoots the glass roof and jumps down through it thinking she's Batman, killing 2 thugs in the process, cutscene over.
I was reminded of Mirrors Edge the instant I started controlling Ruby because this combat tutorial has you follow very specific instructions and if you cock up - which is highly likely since the game takes player input as merely helpful suggestions - then you're instantly warped back to the start of that tutorial section and said instructions consist of 'jump off table and shoot dude in bullet time', 'run along wall (no Ruby, you're not the Prince of Persia either!) and shoot dude in bullet time' and finally 'slide along floor and shoot dude in bullet time'. This led me to believe that Enter the Matrix was another 1 of the unfortunate blender victims (no sympathy for Mirrors Edge just to be clear), since that too is a 3rd person shooter with bullet time but MILES better because it was still perfectly possible to win gunfights without it; using it gave you that extra edge, whereas in WET bullet time is your ONLY hope of winning a gunfight because Bethesda have forgotten that console shooters need smoother aiming to compensate for the lack of a mouse! Oh, they were at least kind enough to include auto-aim but for some stupid reason, it's only ever activated during a bullet time acrobatic move and for yet another retarded reason, Ruby refuses to bloody draw her other pistol unless it's during bullet time, so unless you use it you're just going to end up running round the room like a loony, endlessly shooting the furniture slower than a fucking bolt-action rifle from Call of Duty! Honestly, it's like playing CoD4 and none of the guns will shoot straight until you jump, it's just stupid! The difficulty contrast couldn't be any harsher; while fighting without bullet time is an un-winnable chore, fighting with it turns the game into a shooting gallery. So I decided instead to slice everyone up with the sword but the game wouldn't let me yet!
Moving on, so after that rather tedious fight, I then run off in pursuit of the mysterious brief case, going through various rooms using all 3 moves from my acrobatic arsenal as well as some more mandatory bunny-hopping bullet time shoot outs, picking up a wind-up monkey along the way, this being the games bonus-unlocking collectable. So yes, here we have a shitty Mirrors Edge rip off, which is a mind-boggling shock to me because to make a shitty rip off of something that's already shitty, the shitty rip off has to be even shittier than the shit it's ripping off!! And bloody hell, I never thought I'd resort to tongue twisters! Actually the running jumping and climbing, whilst somewhat jerky compared to the Prince of Persia series or Assassins Creed, is better than Mirrors Edge despite the limited repertoire, purely because it's 3rd person, so all the better to properly time your jumps and avoid a million splatter deaths per hour. It was at this stage that the game saw fit to let me use the sword and I found the animations for that to be the jerkiest of the jerky, no surprise considering this seems to be Bethesda's specialty. It's rather ironic that Bethesda would use draw animations for Oblivion that take just long enough to let you take a fair few hits before you were combat ready and not use any draw or sheath animations at all for WET. Melee combat is nothing like the smooth, flawless flowing choreography of Batman: Arkham Asylum; it consists of nothing more than the sword instantly teleporting into Ruby's hand for a spazzy 3 hit combo before teleporting back into the scabbard and doing it all over again if there're still some enemies left. And of course, there's the door opening quick time events. Thank you God of War.
And now onto the part that reminded me of No More Heroes: Ruby walks through a door, sees a bloke charging towards her. He gets to within 4 feet of her before she remembers how to use a gun and shoots him in the head, causing a lot of blood to splatter on her face, she then gets an evil look on her face, as if she was a vampire in disguise all along and when I took control of Ruby, I suddenly found that that bloke somehow had enough blood to repaint the entire fucking corridor, the sword now instantly turns enemies into a bloody mist and the pistols had turned into submachine guns! Utterly stupid! Ok, In No More Heroes, killing an enemy makes a fruit machine appear on screen and 3 matching symbols would result in Travis shouting things like "STRAWBERRY ON THE SHORTCAKE!!" and gaining temporary superpowers similarly over the top as the aforementioned blood splatter corridor scenario but what makes No More Heroes HUNDREDS of miles better than WET, besides there being actual context to superpower activations, is the fact that the game is self-aware and satirical in nature, which only makes elements like that funny. On the other hand, a game lacking self-awareness that takes itself seriously and activates crazy over the top player superpowers by ACCIDENT at RANDOM during a CUTSCENE can only hope to roll eyes! It's like if S.T.A.L.K.E.R randomly threw the occasional circus clown or cute wittle bunny wabbit at you as well as flesh-eating mutants.
After I went through the door at the end of the corridor, Ruby had snapped out of her blood frenzy, the camera showed the dude with the brief case still running, going past a couple of vans and into a car that swiftly leaves, then the vans block the way after him. The cam then showed another van smashing through a nearby mesh fence and unloading some thugs. Then came the moment where I nearly broke my controller: The camera then highlighted 3 infinite enemy respawning doors - marked with glowing red skull and crossbones for my convenience - which I had to destroy before I could proceed with the chase. I'd destroyed the 1st 2, not realising zat zhere is only von vay to proceed to ze 3rd, which was right above the door I'd come out of, so I tried jumping onto some nearby crates and jumping from there...nope! I then tried climbing onto the van in the mesh fence and wall running to it...NIEN!! Turns out the only way to the 3rd door was via a zip line placed on the platform of the 2nd, which I'd somehow missed earlier and took me 10 minutes and 100 bullshit bunny-hopping bullet time shoot outs to realise!
Then after the IERD's were dealt with came the climactic car chase scene...ripped from Enter the Matrix! This basically involves Ruby standing on top of a car, shooting at armed thugs sticking their heads out of other cars or rather - since you can't activate bullet time until SHE decides to jump onto another car - MISSING!!! Once again comes the God of War comparison because when Ruby does start to change cars, it's a case of 'press x to make fight winnable and not get run over' and the indicators are small enough that I missed them a couple of times and watched Ruby meet her bone-crunching end on the road, which was actually the only time I enjoyed the demo...take that *****! This took me another 15 tedious frustrating repetitive minutes to finish and then the demo ended.
So, would I buy the full version of this broken mess? Absolutely...when Satan becomes the snowboarding champion of hell!
