Wanted: Weapons of Fate – 13 Years Later |

Publisher: Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment

Developer: GRIN

Release Date: 03/23/2009

Available On

Most video games based on movies are notoriously terrible, and thankfully, the trend has mostly ended. With game development costs in the rough, it’s not feasible or profitable to pump out a game in six months based on the next big movie. Weapons of Fate is a rare video game-only sequel to a movie because the movie bombed. The story seems interesting at first. The voice acting is great, and many of the original cast members from the movie return, but the game is over so quickly that the story doesn’t get time to unfold. It plays out like a typical Hollywood action movie. There are lots of cool and interesting words like “The Immortal” and “The Fate of the Loom,” but they mean nothing in the end. It seems almost like an Assassin’s Creed-type storyline where you play as the child of an assassin and are trying to find the killer of your mother. There are legendary real-world assassins who are buried in special tombs, and so on.

It’s just an action sequence and a repetitive shooting sequence to the next cutscene. These are abrupt and frequent, but it’s still not enough to shell out the lore that this type of storyline needs. There’s no backstory for any character. You just get introduced with a few lines, and that’s it. Why do I want to kill these people? Who do I care about my two characters? Who cares about any of this? The game at least tries to give you interesting abilities, decent gunplay, and some scripted moments. There are even a few boss fights thrown in, for good measure. The game plays like any third-person shooter. You run around the incredibly linear and cramped levels and can take cover behind things, pop out, and shoot. This seems standard enough, but I have to give GRIN compliments for good hit feedback when you shoot enemies and they aren’t bullet sponges.

You slowly unlock a couple of abilities. There are adrenaline shots you use for bullet bending and slow-mo dodging between covers. Honestly, the bullet-bending is a really neat gameplay idea. You can pull up a line that you move around that locks onto enemies. When it’s white, the bullet will get them around the cover and corners. The downside is they can’t be moving, but if you hit them, you recover that adrenaline shot back. You can chain these together easily, but it kind of falls apart towards the end of the game. Tougher enemies get introduced and can dodge your bullets. Bullet-bending no longer becomes a one-shot that kills most enemies. Usually, they stagger out of cover, and you have to continue the kill. You still get the shot back, but it can get quite annoying because all of these enemies do become bullet sponges in the end or require melee attacks.

Bullet dodging only became useful during a couple of boss fights, and that’s it. Each level is filled with cover, and enemies use it too. There are moments where you get to use a sniper rifle, mounted machine gun, and cinematic bullet dog sequences in which the game slows down between animations and you have to kill whoever is blocking your way. They’re fun and shake things up a bit, but the repetitive level design and the constant barrage of killing enemies behind cover get tiresome towards the end, and the bullet bending loses its charm fast despite how cool it is. There are rare occasions where a shielded enemy will confront you, and you can suppress them, sneak around the sides, and flank them. This was in the main tutorial, like it was a constant thing. I ran across less than five of these guys through the whole game.

That’s all there is to the game. You just run around shooting, bullet-bending, and killing each wave as you push through the levels. Each chapter has an end boss that isn’t all that tough, but they’re there. You can eventually acquire your dad’s sub-machine pistols towards the end of the game and his suit. You go back and forth between the past and current times. The game is over in less than 4 hours, and you’re left with 4 hours you won’t get back. There’s literally no reason to play this game at all unless you’re super bored and want a decent afternoon with an HD-era shooter.