The first trailers for Wanted: Dead showed off some combat that seemed familiar, upon learning that some of the developers also worked on the Ninja Gaiden games, I could see why. As more and more of the game was shown off, I felt my excitement growing, he was a game that would test my combat skills. Having spent time with the game, I am happy to report the combat is just as punishing as I was hoping for, the problem is the rest of the game.

You are Lt. Hannah Stone, leader of a reaction force in the Hong Kong Police called the Zombie Squad. The squad itself is made up of people that were sent to prison for various reasons and now, in order to cut time of their sentences, they have to help stop bad guys. Alongside Stone are Sgt. Manolo Cortez, Sgt. Arnold Herzog and Doc, the latter being the units medical officer. They report to Cpt. Albert Simmons and are aided by the gun loving Vivienne Niemantsverdriet, the cast seems to be quite the eclectic bunch, though they work well together in the field. Upon getting reports of a robbery at a tech companies headquarters, the team respond and then ignore the order to stand down, finding a plot that involves gangs, private military and synthetic beings.

All that sounds very awesome, the problem is that it is anything but and there are many reasons as to why, but I will give you two. The first is that the characters are boring and I don’t mean that I didn’t resonate with them, I mean that if they were replaced by wet cardboard cutouts, I would have found no difference. Stone is forever getting chewed out by Simmons, because what kind of rogue cops would they be if the Captain didn’t, but her reaction to that is the same as it is when ordering food or anything else. The other issue is that the acting for the Zombie Squad is so bad, there is literally no dynamic between any of the members. If it was just between two of them, you could play up that angle as part of their relationship, but across the group, none of them feel genuine. There are extra characters that you meet in the game and some of those feel right, but they and everyone else, all feel like they have stepped out of a D-grade 80s action movie.

The story and characters being terrible aside, the gameplay itself is very solid, at least once you understand that running in like a damn fool will get you killed. The game is equal parts melee game and shooter, but it tends to focus more on the melee aspects, in fact sometimes guns are useless. The games melee attack system requires you to pay attention to the enemy type, their attacks and your surroundings at all times. While some enemies will wait their turn, some will attack you from behind, ensuring that you will get plenty of practice at dodging or parrying. The game lets you mix up your melee by throwing in some pistol attacks, but again there is timing involved and spamming the buttons will not help you. Pressing the parry button at any time will have Stone hold her sword up in a defensive position, but too many hits like that you lose the ability to deflect. However if you press the button at the right time, you will knockback the enemies attack and then leave them open to a counter attack. The only thing to be aware of is that they can also do it to you and when you start encountering the bosses and even more challenging enemies, ensuring you only parry when you can be sure you will succeed, because if you mess up you can be destroyed.

That might be an issue for many players, as the game is fairly unforgiving at times. There are times when you will run into an area and find yourself attacking a wave or two of enemies and then at the end, a tougher opponent will appear. If you should fall to them, the game will reset you back to the checkpoint, meaning you have to do all of that over again. Falling once in combat, will usually have Doc come in and revive you, giving you a chance to push on, a second time is when it is game over. There were a few times that I failed to get through enemies and I thought maybe using the guns would be better for me, headshots usually are effective. Sadly the guns don’t quite feel as powerful as they should, there are some enemies you can take a lot of shots, before they fall and if you use a SMG, you need to be up close to have any chance of dealing damage. The guns can be modified at the checkpoints, so you can equip better scopes, grips, magazines and more, with each choice modifying how the game will work. Some mods will increase the damage but decrease the accuracy and so on. Vivienne will provide some insight between missions, but when you are on the ground, the choices are up to you.

Something that is also up to you, are the upgrades that you can purchase as you earn the games xp. The earlier upgrades are cheap and the further you go down the list, the more expensive they become, with three categories to select from. The first upgrade I got, allowed me to charge into an enemy and knock them down, giving me a window to deal out some damage. One of the later upgrades let me charge up my melee attack, which was even more effective at dealing with other melee attackers. The game rewards you pretty consistently with the xp, so earning it doesn’t take long, it does however not remind you that you can upgrade, so there were times I had a fair amount of xp to spend. One final thing about the gameplay, as I have said it is brutal at times and the game only offers you a choice between normal and hard to begin with. If you however you fail to clear an area multiple times in a row, the game will mock you by offering to switch you to Neko-chan mode, which drops the difficulty quite a bit. It also has the impact of giving Stone a set of cat ears and once you enable it, you can’t swap back, both the difficulty and the cat ears are there to stay.

As I got up to a boss fight that I struggled with, I ended up caving and enabled the mode, so for the rest of my playthrough, Stone had cat ears and that is about the only highlight for the games presentation. Much like the personality that each character doesn’t have, the visuals for the game are fairly bland as well, with a lot of weird issues that shouldn’t exist. The character designs are actually decent, Stone herself has a prosthetic arm, which is a nice change of pace and while Cortez is the silent type, his design shows a hidden strength. The problem is the execution of the designs falls apart, with weird things like Stone’s hair locked in place and bouncing as if it was a ball, the same applies to Vivienne as well. Another issue impacting both female characters and more, applies to the chest area, the slightest move and they bounce a lot and its an unnecessary addition.

There is more than just the characters, the environments are massive, but they are generally devoid of life and even when you are outside in the rain, the rain doesn’t impact the ground. There was one stage early on where I was standing out in the rain and watching it fall onto a shallow stream and there was no interaction, not even a generic splash effect. That lack of attention also carries across to the games liquids, when eating ramen, it never moves and heck even the coffee they drink doesn’t move. I could understand the no liquids moving, if the chests didn’t bounce around, but that is not the case. Across the board, the game looks great when still, but the moment motion is applied the illusion is broken. Something that is more weird that anything else though, is that the blood that showers out of enemies you slash at, ends up stuck to Stone in cutscenes, even after drives back the station, its still there, but none of the other members have a drop on them.

On the sound side of things, the music is really well done, it has this sort of dystopian future rock, but still connects to something familiar. The problem with the rest of the audio is that its all connected to the characters and for the most part, they suck. There isn’t a nice way to say it, Stone sounds so disinterested in everything she does and the rest of the Zombie Squad is no better. The captain sounds like he is voiced by someone who watched every cop movie with a captain who suspends the team and decided to it worse by a significant margin. If you play with just subtitles on, the story is ok, but with the spoken words, it’s not great, at least in English.

Wanted: Dead is an interesting game, its gameplay mechanics are solid, if you rush into fights the game will decidedly kick your butt and if you take to long, they may still own you. The problem is the characters are not interesting, the visuals are a mess and the voice work is so terrible, you are better playing with no voice at all. If you can deal with everything else not being good, the gameplay will test you, the problem is that that may prove to much to ask. If you wanted to get the game, just know what you are signing up for and if you were on the fence about it, I would advise caution.