UnexpectedGames

Wanted: Dead, developed by Soleil, is one of the wildest games I’ve played so far in 2023 and it’s left me with one burning question, “How Did This Get Made?”. I feel like I’ve been saying this a lot lately, but Wanted: Dead is the quintessential “This game feels like a PS2 era game but in actuality, it’s a lost PS3/Xbox 360 title”. Even if you ignore the campy/questionable dialogue and SWERY-isms where you question whether or not if the game is supposed to be so “intentionally bad that it’s good”; Wanted: Dead carries a very particular torch from a less-talked about corner of the Japanese PS2 era action game library. Games like Konami’s Cy Girls or even Namco’s Death By Degrees starring Nina Williams come to mind. If you want to jump a generation ahead on the PS3/Xbox 360, Square Enix’s MindJack or Konami’s NeverDead start to creep out from behind the recesses of your mind and you begin to question your sanity and ask yourself, “Did I really play those games?”. Yes, you did. Fast forward to 2023 and as I insert the physical disk of Wanted: Dead into my PS5 I’ve somehow traveled back in time and find myself at my local game store picking-up my pre-orders of Bujingai: The Forsaken City and Galerians: Ash for the PS2. Good times.

Wanted: Dead is a cover-based third-person shooter with character-action game elements. To be somewhat reductive, it’s like WinBack or Kill Switch, but with swords. The “back of the box” claims that it’s from the developers of Ninja Gaiden and Dead or Alive, but the developer is most recently known for the already-forgotten VALKYRIE ELYSIUM and Samurai Jack: Battle Through Time. If any of the aforementioned games provide a peculiar sense of nostalgia or masochistic comfort, then woof, I have a game for you. Wanted: Dead isn’t great, but I also couldn’t help myself from indulging in all of its quirkiness. The story feels like a really bad take on what Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio attempted to do with Binary Domain (one of my favorite games of all time) but as ridiculous as it is, you’re not really here for the plot. Wanted: Dead is a fairly linear shooter with missions essentially being compromised of corridors and larger arenas filled with (what feels like) endless enemy spawns. The game’s also very challenging, even on Normal difficulty, with somewhat brutal checkpoints and frustrating boss encounters. The highest difficulty is titled “Japanese Hard”, which I found somewhat humorous, perhaps a nod to how some older games used to be more difficult prior to being localized for the west.

The thing that really stood out to me about Wanted: Dead, however, is the intermission of sorts where you explore a police headquarters between missions. The police station is littered with collectables, training tutorials, target practice and other distractions, like a handful of wannabe Yakuza-like mini-games including karaoke, UFO catchers, and even a 2D side-scrolling shoot ’em up! Perhaps the wildest thing about the police station, however, are the people and things that inhabit this space. The NPCs strutting around the station look and sound like the townspeople from Sonic ’06. At times, it also feels like I’m playing an old 3D Realms game like Max Payne with its generic soda machine labels and photoshopped pictures of cheeseburgers and Pringles-like cans of chips hanging out in the break room. There’s a distinct PC style western game influence sort of bleeding out around the edges of the police station and it creates a really interesting juxtaposition against the rest of the game. I could write another 500 words on this game, but I’m wanted (alive) at my local GameStop. My copy of Firefighter F.D.18 arrived at the store so there’s no time like the present.

See you next time…

-Matty