First off, I would like to say I'm done with the Section 8 Demo. I just don't like it. The controls are awful, the game doesn't give you any kind of tutorial, it just drops you into the action and expects you to know what to do. It doesn't tell you the objective of the gametypes, either. With controls like RB to jump (I think, they were so muddled I forgot them by now) figuring out what to do definitely takes some doing. Then there is the matter of killing someone. In most FPS games, you want a fight with another person to last a got 5, maybe 10 seconds. In Section 8, people can take forever to kill. I had an opponent standing still at one point and it took quite a number of head shots to kill him, and the knife (described as 'extremely lethal') has sometimes taken me as many as 2 or 3 backstabs for a kill. I don't like the demo, and I don't plan on playing it anymore. Sorry.
Now for the main order of business: the WET demo. I am following Microsoft on Twitter, so when I saw the WET demo was out today I was more than eager to download it. This game is one of my preorders, so I am definitely going to post a good review of this one.
The WET demo, firstly, is a wonderful demo; it gives you a wonderful feel of what to expect in the game and is split into three parts.
The demo opens up with a very Grindhouse, Tarantino-Rodriguez scene with a deal going on between two people, during which gunfire breaks out to cool music and our heroine busts in. This is where you take control. The game teaches you some basic acrobatics and then thrusts you headlong into a gunfight in a room with planty of stacked champagne glasses and exquisite glass sculptures, which appease the destructive appetite of your bullets. At first, the controls felt weird. My initial attempt at this part ended with my health startlingly low, but still dominant. The acrobatics and shooting are fun and smooth, and while you can just jump around and shoot people a ton of times in the body, the game awards you with location specific shots by giving you bonus points and cool names (e.g. BALL BREAKER and SKULL CRACKER and things like that). It is a whole lot of fun, and once you get used to the controls you become a ridculous killing machine.
Once you clear the first room of unwitting minions, you continue to chase your prey along some alley ways and rooftops, where the game demonstrates the gun/sword-play-acrobatics by doing stuff like shooting enemies while you slide down a ladder upside down. It's a blast, although some of the more specific jumping tasks feel a bit wonky. You have to be jumping in the exact right direction from the exact right spot at the exact right time. Also, the health system is pretty different. As you wander around the levels you find crates of (I'm guessing) whiskey and drinking one refills your health in a cool sequence that is a rather wasteful use of whiskey. However, when you get into the enclose gunfights, there is no suck healing item. When in these situations, killing enemies starts up a combo meter, the higher the meter the faster your health regenerates. This is nice because unlike most games where you hide to get health, in WET you keep on killing and go headfirst into the battle to get your health back.
The second part of the demo puts you into a super killing spree mode, I'm not sure what it's called yet but I'm guessing it's what they call Rubi Vision. Rubi, the main character if you hadn't picked up on that, walks into a room and an enemy charges her. She shoots him, and when she does her face is covered in blood. The screen turns red and your ears are violently assaulted, a la Kill Bill's flashbacks, and it stays that way. Everything around you is colored in red, black and white, and your health is bossted to a ridiculous point as you get attacked by a whole bunch of enemies. This part is very visual and a lot of fun, as you are basically an unstoppable force. Other than the different visuals and increased power, however, it's basically like the first part of the demo.
The third part is my favorite: the car chase. You start on the roof of a car, guns out, and shoot enemies leaning out of other cars. However, you don't just stay on one car. As the sequence progresses, you are forced to jump from car to car in a series of quick time events, often ending in dismemberment, impalement and other forms of death. If you haven't gathered, this is a very violent game, in true grindhouse style. The only thing I don't like about the car chase sequence is that sometimes the enemies have ridiculous amounts of health. I shot a few in the head multiple times and had them survive.
All in all, WET is looking to be a very bloody, fun and cinematic shooter, and one I definitely can't wait for. It's bloody, epically cinematic and, most importantly, a lot of fun. I'll be sure to post a full review as soon as I can after its release next month.
WET Product Site: http://wet.bethsoft.com/
Section 8 Product Site: http://www.joinsection8.com/
I didn't really get to watch you play this demo since I had to leave...But you make it sound interesting, although I think some of the words you use in your reviews although probably appropriate I think you get into it a bit and go a little over the top. But again a nice review.
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