Have you ever experienced a melting pot of design choices so unique that you can’t help but love the final result despite some glaring flaws? That’s how I felt while playing Wanted: Dead. The new game from development studio Soleil Ltd. is being described as a “love letter to the sixth generation of consoles” and has a dev team made up of former developers of Ninja Gaiden and Dead Alive. In a current gaming landscape consisting of battle passes, always online connections, and microtransactions, Wanted: Dead has the potential to be a cult throwback hit for an audience that desires that hardcore old-school experience.
Wanted: Dead puts players into the role of Lt. Hannah Stone, leader of the elite Zombie Unit. Zombie Unit is a division of the Hong Kong police department that consists of convicted war criminals, forced to work for the Chinese government and dealing with the deadliest situations that a cyberpunk dystopian future can throw at them. Right off the bat, Wanted: Dead oozes an extreme sense of style and flair. I noticed influences from classic 90’s cyberpunk anime such as Ghost in the Shell and Dominion: Tank Police and even crime anime such as Gunsmith Cats, plus a heavy dose of Robocop inspiration. Wanted: Dead is essentially a ’90s cyberpunk fan’s dream game.
When the Zombie Unit gets deployed on missions is where the real fun begins; and also where your mileage may vary. Hannah is armed with a personal arsenal of a fully customizable rifle and a custom pistol, and she’s able to pick up a secondary weapon hidden around the various levels. While I found customizing the weapons to be fun and they do give you minimal stat boosts, I found gunplay to be unsatisfying as a whole. Guns have little to no impact and the zoom while aiming is a little too aggressive, causing me to feel like I never had a proper field of vision; this is not adjustable in the Options menu. While not feeling good in execution, gunplay looks hilariously chaotic, with every gunfight turning into a John Woo flick of bullets flying everywhere and causing copious amounts of damage. Sure it’s pretty to watch, but is it fun to play? Unfortunately, I could never really get into a proper rhythm.
The crown jewel of combat though is Hannah’s katana. In what feels like a holdover from the Ninja Gaiden series, Hannah is able to slice and dice her way through the opposition in satisfying fashion. She is also able to block and parry if she blocks at the last moment, leaving an enemy vulnerable to an attack. Hannah is even able to parry unblockable attacks with her pistol and I will admit it feels very badass to ditch a gunfight and run up to an enemy and lay waste with her sword and counter someone into a gloriously bloody execution. Her toolset in this mode is far more expansive than it initially seems due to a skill tree that actually makes the game very fun to play. By upgrading the tree you can give Hannah abilities such as a proper dodge, a run slide, more health, and various special commands to the rest of her unit. She may not seem powerful at first but for players that stick through the rough difficulty curve at the start, they’ll soon be rewarded with a character that can stand toe to toe with Ninja Gaiden’s Ryu Hayabusa.
Level design is fairly standard fare. Most are simply point A to B with very little exploration. Occasionally you’ll reach a mech drone checkpoint that acts in a similar manner to the bonfire from Dark Souls, where you’ll restock on all of your ammo and health stimpacks, and be able to customize your loadout. You’ll be seeing this drone a lot as the game can be quite difficult even on the lowest difficulty setting of normal, and with one revive per checkpoint you will die. A lot. Levels usually end in a boss fight that are total tests of skill, almost to the point of frustration. There was a boss fight in particular that was so frustrating because it felt like artificial difficulty due to strange hit boxes and uneven patterns of movesets. Whereas the level encourages you to learn enemy layout to plan out your assault, boss fights feel like a test of endurance at points. On a more positive note, boss enemy designs are pretty great and fully lean into the 90’s cyberpunk fantasy. One in particular put a smile on my face as I was reminded of a Tachikoma from Ghost in the Shell.
In between levels Zombie Unit heads back to their Hong Kong police station which acts as a base of operations. Here, Hannah is able to learn about and interact with her squad mates, explore the base, and participate in a variety of activities. The extra side activities feel like they’ve taken inspiration from the ever popular Yakuza/Like A Dragon series. Hannah is able to participate in using jukeboxes, play claw machines for prizes, get high scores at the firing range, and there’s even a musical ramen eating minigame where the more bowls of ramen she eats the higher score she gets. It’s all very humorous and admittedly very fun, but like the Yakuza games, these are all optional.
This all begs the question: how is the story? It’s fine. Wanted: Dead provides a typical cyberpunk story about dystopian society, cybernetics, war crimes, etc. It’s a little lackluster in certain aspects due to seemingly erratic cutscenes that sometimes don’t make much sense and whiplash-inducing art styles. For example there are flashbacks told through fully animated anime cutscenes that look great and will be followed up by in-game cutscenes that look like early PS4 graphics. It’s a unique choice but not one I’m fully convinced paid off.
Performance on PS5 is pretty good as well. The game targets 60 frames per second and for the majority of my playtime seemed to hit that goal. For an action game of this style where response time is a key factor, I was happy to see this target met, even though there were a few moments where the framerate seemed to dip a bit. Graphically on the other hand, Wanted: Dead at times looks like a mid-generation PS4 game. Not terrible, but nothing great which is unfortunate because the artstyle just oozes that slick cyberpunk atmosphere.
Wanted: Dead fills a void that’s been absent in gaming lately. There are few too many offline character action games as of late that aren’t bogged down by an open world or mundane amount of busy work (Devil May Cry 5 is the last one I can think of). It succeeds in being a loving tribute to games like Ninja Gaiden and anime like Dominion: Tank Police while being a rip-roaring action game in its own right. Despite its issues, Wanted: Dead just feels like a game I’ll go back to for a quick action game playthrough… if only to finally conquer those harder difficulties.
