Wet is loaded with faux scratches over its visuals in an attempt to give it the look a grindhouse film. At first, they are an annoyance, a general irritant that exist for show and not much else.
Then, it all seems to click. Movie trailers and advertisements for refreshments show up to fill in the boring gaps of the story. It is as if a virtual editor went nuts, creating a movie that could only make sense to its digital mind. Wet wants to be that type of game, incoherently written to create increasingly absurd action scenarios.
Unfortunately, the mechanics are not up to the task, routinely failing the concept. The player controls Rubi, an acrobatic gun slinging, sword swinging death dealer. She is out of control, and certainly crazy in her thirst for blood.
Her lack of reasoning almost seems to come through in the controls, which are so unbearably awful, Wet renders itself almost unplayable. Running and shooting with Rubi is a waste of time. Bethesda has given her an aiming reticule the size of one from Halo’s sniper rifle.
Instead, the ideas that try to differentiate Wet step in to make some sense of this mess. As Rubi jumps, she suddenly gains an extra gun. One hand auto targets, while the other is manual. The sudden slow down gives the player some time to work around the wonky aiming in hopes of killing someone.
Of course, enemies take a ridiculous number of bullets before going down, further compounding the game’s problems. Guns have no impact, even when powered-up. In general, the level system seems in place to fix flaws within Wet, not help the player gain a sense of power.
Wet’s levels are a wasteland of repetitive ideas, the more baffling ones occurring in closed off arenas with infinitely spawning enemies. While these numerous areas cater to the insanity of the game, they are truly ridiculous playgrounds. They stop the game cold, creating a claustrophobic map that illogically has poles and ramps set up so the game designers can show off Rubi’s moves.
Wet even contains areas where Rubi must run around her junkyard-based home, passing through circles to reach her goal. These serve as training missions, totally pointless since all weapons control exactly alike, and her core move set is complete after the first mission.
Two bursts of brilliance show up in Wet’s limited repertoire, a red/black/white anger mode and car chases. The former works decently, although one section requires some extensive platforming that is difficult given the color scheme.
The car chases are amongst the best, the only chance Wet has at showcasing all of its ideas, concepts, attitude, and fun. The targeting is still tricky, but Rubi is at her best, jumping from car to car as additional vehicles blow up around her. It is the height of absurdity, perfect for a video game paying homage to equally questionable content of grindhouse films. It is a shame the rest of the game never attains this level of control or excitement.
