Wanted: Dead feels like a game from the early days of the Xbox 360 in all of the best (and worst) ways.
Singleplayer.
Wanted: Dead has some of the worst voice acting I have ever seen, with the main character (Hannah), in particular, sounding as if she is speaking with a mouthful of marshmallows; in addition, it appears that lipsyncing of the English audio track is incomplete, with many characters appearing to mouth german words with English audio.
This theory is backed up by the fact that several in-game posters and an entire minigame lack an English translation.
While the Steam version only offers support for English, it’s clear that at least at one time, English was not the primary language for the game, with the protagonist speaking in a very heavy Germanic accent and struggling to pronounce several common English words, such as group, and several NPC’s having been lipsynced to another language before English was overlaid.
Wanted: Dead is an incredibly difficult game, even on standard difficulty, and due to its less refined combat system, I would place it on par with older Dark Souls titles, which are known for their punishing difficulty.
Fortunately, an easy mode is available for those who wish to experience the story; however, this bizarrely forces your protagonist to wear cat ears, signalling to the whole world that you were not “good enough” to play Wanted: Dead as the developers intended.
Wanted: Dead offers four difficulty levels, including Easy (Neko Chan), Normal, Hard and the humorously named Japanese Hard, which is named as such due to how popular hard games are in Japan.
Wanted: Dead contains very few checkpoints, and what few there are often proceeded by multiple groups of difficult enemies, meaning that players will have to backtrack for up to 20 minutes if they are defeated before the next checkpoint.
While this is frustrating, the dopamine rush you get when you finally reach the next checkpoint is all the sweeter.
Wanted: Dead is an incredibly gory game. The protagonist will finish every mission bathed in blood, in addition to enemies spraying blood in all directions upon death and dismemberment.
In addition, players can use a chainsaw to dismember enemies, which, while censored in a humourous fashion, still sprays blood in all directions.
The player character will often remain bathed in blood until the conclusion of a mission, which can, in a few instances, span more than one day, which results in Hannah appearing to not so much as wash the blood off her hands or face for more than 24 hours after the conclusion of a battle, most uncivilised!
Our protagonist takes a shower at the end of every mission in a semi-burlesque manner, taunting the player with near glimpses of “naughty parts” before cutting away; this feels cheesy and comes across as more weird than sexual due to our protagonist wearing the same model of combat worn t-shirt after every shower, in a variety of colours.
While it’s clear, they did this to save on costs. I feel that the odds of every t-shirt Hannah owns tearing in the same places is pretty low.
With very few exceptions, the main characters wear the same clothes (including full combat gear) in every situation, including playing arcade games while off duty and eating breakfast.
While this was done to save on costs (much like Hannah’s t-shirts), I wonder if adding a generic t-shirt + jeans outfit for each main character would not have been beneficial.
Wanted: Dead does exactly one thing well, and that is combat, which is just as well, considering players will spend around 90% of the game slaughtering various humanoid enemies and showering themselves and the environment with blood.
With over 50 finishing movies, a wide selection of combos, and a fair-sized arsenal of modifiable weapons, players will feel like a late 90s action star from start to finish.
While Wanted: Dead is unfairly difficult at first glance, players who invest the time to learn the intricacies of timing combinations and finishing moves will find that Wanted: Dead combat is second to none and is refreshingly a difficult game in a time when many games offer substandard combat systems that lack creativity or imagination. *cough* High on Life *cough*.
Wanted: Dead is a tribute to the 6th console generation (PS2/Xbox) which is fine as far as gameplay goes; however, I could honestly do without seeing any title released in 2023 objectify women and dismiss sexual harassment in the way that Wanted: Dead does.
Within a few minutes of starting the game, players will witness one of the main NPC companions (Herzog) sexually harass a waitress by dropping a fork so he can look down her shirt at her ample cleavage, while players are “treated” to a view of her bending over first from the back as her skirt rises to her panty line, before swapping to a frontal view, and getting to see what Herzog is ogling.
Later in another scene, he is shown to be attempting to grope a fellow officer (Vivennne) who is uncomfortable, only for the protagonist to state later that he should “ask her out already.”, all but validating his predatory behaviour towards Vivennne.
When combined with Dead or Alive jiggle physics, ogling, and a slew of weird undressing/shower scenes, Wanted: Dead feels like the type of game that was “acceptable” in 2003 but is in no way acceptable today.
Wanted: Dead features a huge amount of collectables, which helps expand the backstory of our protagonist (Hannah Stone) as well as flesh out the world around her, including biographies of her allies, enemies, and both current and former rivals.
Wanted: Dead’s narrative feels like much of it was left on the cutting floor, and at times appears to be missing cutscenes, with characters leaping from one situation to the next and, in more than a few instances, appearing to cover previous cases and events without any indication that you are witnessing an event that happened before the start of the game.
In addition, NPC will occasionally reference events that haven’t taken place yet in the story, such as one NPC referring to a major plot twist that would not be revealed to the player (or NPC in question) for at least two more missions.
Overall, Wanted: Dead’s narrative is decent, but it could be much more.
Wanted: Dead’s features an abundance of surprisingly well-made minigames from glare machines to rhythm games, and while some fit in like a sore thumb (that awful ramen noodle game), others, such as the karaoke game, are surprisingly fun and are a welcome diversion from combat, which while enjoyable, is rather bleak and gory.
Wanted: Dead’s female protagonist is portrayed as being straight; her dialogue references multiple ongoing relationships with men and gives no indication of being bisexual or even bi-curious; however, several scenes have her appearing to ogle female co-workers and act in a masculine manner, which could indicate that at one time a male protagonist was an option.
That being said, this could be an unintentional oversight, and the ogling is done so players can get an eyeful of the “goods on display” based on the unfortunate history of Dead or Alive and Ninja Gaiden, it doesn’t seem much of a stretch.
Wanted: Dead is a action video game developed by Soleil and published by 110 Industries SA, it was released on 14 February 2023 and retails for $59.99.
Wanted: Dead is available on the following platforms: PC, Playstation 4, Playstation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X|S.
On average Wanted: Dead takes between 10 and 20 hours to complete.
Estimated completion times are derived from various sources and may vary based on the skill level of each player.
The following peripherals are officially supported:
Wanted: Dead is rated PEGI 18+ and contains:
The developers intended Wanted: Dead to be a love letter to the 6th console generation, and they have succeeded wonderfully at that task.
In a time when many video games transcend the gap between art and entertainment, Wanted: Dead is a welcome reminder of a simpler time. However, I would not want every release in 2023 to be as devoid of artistic merit as Wanted: Dead.
In conclusion, Wanted: Dead is mindless fun, and I enjoy playing it. Still, I can only recommend it to those who love very difficult games and do not care about the artistic merit of the entertainment they consume.
