WARNING: The visuals in Wanted: Dead are incredibly graphic and as such some of the images in this review are as well. This game is rated M for a reason and the game and imagery below are NOT for children.
It’s been a while since we’ve had a good ninja game. Sure we’ve got the Nioh games and Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty is coming but there just isn’t a lot of content out there in the stylized high difficulty hack-and-slash market. We only get one every couple of years or so because the market is remarkably small compared to most genres. Martial arts games, especially sword-based ones, can be incredibly difficult and that steep learning curve leads to prohibitively challenging combat and a smaller market share. Fortunately, a few companies keep cranking out incredibly cool content once in a while though and it’s time to see another intense combat-based third-person ninja-styled combat game!
Today we’re looking at Wanted: Dead from developer Soliel and publisher 110 Industries. This isn’t your traditional ninja game by any means though. Instead you play Lieutenant Hannah Stone, leader of the Zombie Unit, a tactical police unit in Hong Kong. You’ll notice right away that the design influences here are significantly closer to Cyberpunk 2077 than they are to Ninja Gaiden, but there’s a lot more going on here than you might think! Wanted: Dead is kind of an amalgam of a variety of gaming ideas. It cribs shamelessly from anime, gaming, manga, and a ton of other pop culture sources. In that sense, the game feels almost alive. The jokes and ribbing are the same kind of thing that the guys would do over a beer when there isn’t anyone around to get offended, the references to assorted media are plentiful, and the conversations feel remarkable human.
Basically, Stone and Zombie unit are ridiculously violent and they’ve been asked not to go in with a bunch of troops inside the facility of the people who, well, fund the police department. Stone doesn’t care one bit though and drags her team in guns blazing. The game starts off fast and furious and barely gives you a chance to get a feel for the controls before you’re fighting for your life and likely dying rapidly, but we’ll get to that. There’s actually a remarkably interesting story in Wanted: Dead once things really get moving but it takes a while. It’s also really, spectacularly full of absolutely filthy language. Seriously, this game feels like a ‘90s movie that’s trying really hard to offend as many people as possible and there is absolutely no censorship at all in the script. The M rating is absolutely deserved with the script alone and that doesn’t even consider how incredibly violent Wanted: Dead is.
The game isn’t long by any means, weighing in at about 20 hours or so on normal mode if you really get the hang of things. But those 20 hours consist of only 5 combat stages as well as a variety of extracurricular activities you can participate in. That should give you an idea of the kind of combat you’re in for as part of Zombie team. The meat of Wanted: Dead is grueling third-person combat, the kind of stuff that will make some people want to punch a hole in their wall or chuck their controller through the TV. Unlike other games in this style, there’s a heavy focus on both gun combat and sword combat. Each plays noticeably differently and both are quite challenging to get the hang of at first. Let’s start with gun combat.
In Wanted Dead, Stone starts out with an assault rifle and limited ammo. No magical ammo refills here unless you make it to a checkpoint and your gunsmith hooks you up via drone. What you’ll rapidly find is that unlike other action games, your enemies are wearing body armor. Spray-and-pray won’t work here and you’ll be out of ammo in seconds. Instead you’ll have to carefully target your opponents with directed fire, repeatedly hitting them in the head until their armor gives way. You can switch between auto-fire and burst mode as well as zooming in on your targets, but it’s still difficult and they move fast. On top of that, enemies are constantly pouring fire on you and your team. Bullets are spanging off of surfaces all around you left and right and you’ll have to either use cover effectively or sneak up and slaughter the enemy close up. As you kill enemies, you’ll be able to pick up some of their weapons as well. You have the ability to carry two different weapons at a time in addition to your pistol, so choose wisely! Ranged combat is fairly standard with targeting reticles, scope zoom, and even modifiable weapons. But even though you’ll absolutely need to master ranged combat, it’s not the focus in Wanted: Dead.
Instead, what you really want to get the hang of is sword fighting. Stone is a skilled swordswoman and utterly deadly with a katana. Often, the best defense in Wanted: Dead is a strong offense and you can rush at the enemy, slicing them to ribbons with your sword. But the game also shifts here, becoming significantly more like Ninja Gaiden, Nioh, and Devil May Cry with a variety of unlockable moves available to you. In addition to plain slashes, you can toss your pistol into the mix, shooting enemies at close range via button combos (it has unlimited ammo, unlike rifles) and staggering them so you can break their guards and hack them to pieces, literally. In fact, you can actually sever hands, arms, legs, and even heads in Wanted: Dead and you absolutely will. It’s an incredibly brutal game. Enemies that have lost an appendage aren’t dead yet either and they’ll fight on, attacking you as blood pours from their wounds. You can finish them off with a variety of flashy and gory finishing moves that are easy to pull off, but enemies tend to swarm you in Wanted: Dead so don’t get too invested too fast! Oh and did we mention you get a chainsaw too?
You’ll also have to learn to parry enemy attacks when fighting hand-to-hand. Naturally, the enemies aren’t going to let you off the hook easy and the game has a challenging timing-based parry system built in which forces you to essentially parry or die. Your three medkits won’t last long and enemies can even pull off unblockable attacks so don’t forget to learn how to dodge as well! But parrying is essential as you get surrounded by enemies slowly slicing you into little messy bits. So is upgrading.
For each kill you rack up skill points which you can then use in the pause menu to unlock new abilities, strengthening Stone rapidly and effectively. You’ll need them too because this is one hard game! There are three skill trees in Wanted: Dead and each one provides a wealth of abilities. From charge attacks to extra healing, you’ll get all the extras you need to survive…maybe. You see, Wanted: Dead isn’t just hard. It’s one of the most challenging games to come out lately and if you don’t have a keen grasp of the mechanics of the game, you won’t even beat the first stage. In fact, as soon as more powerful enemies start to show up, you’ll find that you’re barely surviving against most of the threats in the game. Just wait until the first couple of enemy cyber ninjas!
The difficulty is so high on normal that if you die enough times, Wanted: Dead offers you Neko mode. This is a weaker version of the game that’s playable for people who struggle with the high difficulty of things like Souls games and the like. Neko mode tosses cute cat ears on Stone’s head, and they’re there for the entire rest of the game as a permanent reminder that you suck. However, it also knocks down enemy HP by 50% and provides you with 6 medkits instead of three, drastically putting the odds in your favor. The game is designed to be played on normal but it’s important to stress what a difficult road that will be for some players. Prepare to replay levels. A lot. Or get used to cat ears.
In between levels the entire feel of Wanted: Dead shifts drastically. You’re in the Hong Kong police station, getting reamed out by the Captain, you’re wandering around talking to everyone and picking up dossiers and case files that give you skill point boosts, and you’re playing mini-games. Much like the Yakuza games, there are a lot of strange and silly mini-games in Wanted: Dead. Each time a new mini-game is introduced, you’re forced to play it at least once too, so don’t be surprised if you’re suddenly having a noodle eating contest or playing a rhythm karaoke game to 99 Red Balloons in German. There’s even a vintage-style tough-as-nails horizontal shmup that just feels unfair. The world is your burrito in the Hong Kong Police Station. In addition to the games to pass the time, you can also just talk to the NPCs. They have a lot to say that adds tiny bits and pieces to the story. You don’t get anything out of it but the game does a good job of fleshing out Wanted: Dead’s world. You can even talk to the gunsmith and have her service your armaments…and she’s got a lot of cats. Yeah, they went there. Best in-joke pun for anime/manga fan in the last little while!
During these sequences there are a number of story cinemas and they’re fascinating. The plot gradually builds and as it does, we get some unique cinematography. Some clips are fully animated as traditional cartoon anime and others are standard CGI cinemas. Most are pre-rendered and it’s easy to tell which clips are shot with the in-game camera and which are not because in-game, you’re basically covered in blood all the time. Stone is literally covered from head to toe in gore most of the time and after every mission she takes a shower. No, it doesn’t show anything you pervs. But if you’ve triggered Neko mode by being incompetently bad at sword fighting with electronically enhanced cybernetic ninjas, you’ll also note that pre-rendered scenes don’t actually show the ears while on-the-fly stuff does. You’ll also slowly get to know your team and find out that your teammates are indispensable and surprisingly interesting!
Now let’s talk about the visuals in the game. Wanted: Dead is interesting because it draws in so many different disparate styles to build its own unique voice. The visuals scream Cyberpunk 2077, but there’s more than a bit of Ninja Gaiden flair in there as well. The gore is off the charts with blood absolutely everywhere but you’ll also notice a fair bit of motion blurring. Try to take screenshots and you’ll quickly find out that Wanted: Dead moves so fast that it’s almost impossible. The details are fantastic and the visual ambience of the game shifts back and forth from a mid-budget B game to spectacular AAA-level stuff quite regularly. For the most part, everything looks cool here. Environments are partially destructible, the various stages are unique and interesting, and the whole game just screams cool on multiple levels.
Then there’s the music. Tons of heavy pounding tunes, a weird variety of pop songs, and a ton of sound effects as well as an absolute top-notch voice crew make Wanted: Dead a fascinating game. The voice acting alone almost pays for the price of admission and, oh yeah, one of the team is mute and only speaks using sign language (which is conveniently subtitled)! Naturally he doesn’t make much noise unless he’s in combat, but sound design is excellent across the board in the game and fun to boot. There are plenty of tracks and you might even find yourself using Shazam a couple of times…
By now you’ve probably got at least a decent idea of how Wanted: Dead works. But it’s how it all ties together that really turns what could have been a muddled, mediocre game into a compelling masterpiece. The aesthetics come together with an interesting plot and exceptionally well-written (if crude) dialogue to combine parts of Gears of War-style combat with Ninja Gaiden-style swordplay. Add in a twist of police procedural plot and you’ve got a game that by all rights should feel derivative and boring but manages to end up feeling fresh and fun. That doesn’t mean the game is perfect though.
Notably, some of the level design in Wanted: Dead is a bit weak, offering a ton of choke points where you can snipe enemies and even bosses, significantly reducing the difficulty of the game in some areas. Enemies only have a certain number of attacks too, and once you’re powered up, it’s easy to waste them all, dropping them like flies all around the combat field. The lack of clever AI and the predictability of bosses doesn’t make the game easier though. You’ll still be struggling to survive. You’ll just find out that there are easier ways to do it than going in guns blazing. But hey, maybe you’re a master of digital sword combat with god-like reflexes and the entire game will be a breeze for you!
Wanted: Dead is a unique game that combines the sensibilities of a variety of the best games around in order to create something new and interesting. While the AI isn’t the best and the level design could use some tweaking, by and large the game is ridiculously fun to play, the plot is not just compelling but quite good, and the dialogue is outstanding. You’ll love the entire cast of characters before the end credits roll and honestly, even as short as Wanted: Dead is, it’s definitely worth the premium AAA $60 price tag attached to it. This is a game that will make your Valentine’s Day red…with your enemies’ ichor!
This review is based on a digital copy of Wanted: Dead provided by the publisher. It was played on an Xbox Series X using a 55” 1080p Sony TV. Wanted: Dead is also available on PS5 and PC on Steam.