Wanted: Dead

Even though I think the difficulty can be a little over tuned at times and the checkpoints are a little too spread out at times, for every moment I had frustration, I was still compelled to move forward and try again and again. Sometimes you just need a game where you turn off your brain to slash and blast everything in your way and can have fun doing so with some over the top violence, Wanted: Dead delivers that, even if it does feel way over the top with its style.

The experience, while good, was somewhat uneven. The empty storyline and narrative don't live up to the feeling of pure, frenetic action, which is the best thing about the game. Wanted: Dead hits the mark with its action, but loses solidity with the story.

Wanted: Dead feels like a game made in 2006. It looks like a game from 2006, which is not a good thing. But at the same time, it plays like it's from 2006, which is great. It offers fun action gameplay, a decent challenge, some offbeat humor and doesn't take itself very seriously.

Wanted: Dead is only half a successful experiment. The idea of mixing the shooter genre with the hack'n'slash action game one is good, but it is dwarfed by the shallowness of some of the mechanics, a substandard technical realisation and problematic balancing.

The visuals are great, and the story may be a tad generic but fits well into the kind of world they built. I hope to get better at the game and think we need more games that bring melee action into the blend of shooters, but the controls need to feel just right for it to work on a grand scale. Wanted: Dead is an okay hybrid game and despite it giving me vibes from my time with Devil’s Third, this is a way better experience overall and would-be players should check all the videos before making that final decision.

Wanted: Dead has truly been an experience. Combat takes center stage, though the fun of hacking and slashing away at lesser enemies is soon overshadowed by getting pummeled into oblivion during boss fights. Some aspects of the game could use some ironing out, but, otherwise, it’s a fun enough experience to pass the time and wrack up achievements & trophies.

There are things about Wanted: Dead that I really liked and others that really annoyed me. With technical tweaks and quality of life improvements it can become a very enjoyable game that seeks a niche of players who missed certain transgressive, immature and fun-seeking games from a few years ago.

Although it is from the creators of Ninja Gaiden, Wanted: Dead still has a good way to go to become one. Good ideas and an interesting action design lost due to technical problems and poorly calibrated difficulty.

In the end, I still enjoyed it enough to put in more than fifty hours in and still want to play more, despite all its problems. When it’s running as intended, it’s clear that this is the kind of game I’d like to see a lot more of — bloody, unpretentious, and gameplay-focused in a manner that’s eminently replayable thanks to strong core combat. That said, the good stuff in Wanted: Dead is buried under a mountain of problems — and when I say buried, I mean buried deep.

Wanted: Dead is very much an acquired taste, but those for whom its eclectic nonsense clicks will likely love it, even if it's not technically a great game. It's a throwback to a bygone age of gaming that's clearly made with passion, with the team just doing whatever the hell it likes rather than sticking to typical gaming standards to create something that certainly stands out in the modern landscape, if not always in the way it intends to. Stingy checkpointing can kill the game's momentum should you fall foul of a tricky encounter and have to replay large portions of a level, but there will be some folks who like that extra punishment for failure — just as with more or less everything else about Wanted: Dead, it's all going to land for someone out there, and I can see this one going down as a bit of a cult classic.

Wanted: Dead has poor execution, lack of possibilities, and repetitive structure. It's far from Ninja Gaiden legacy.

Wanted: Dead falls short of the reputation of Ninja Gaiden's developers. Not only it doesn't bring anything new, but it also demeans everything that already exists, adding elements that detract from what is essential in a video game, regardless of genre. The characters are hollow, the story is superficial, and the combat, which should be the strong point, is a complete mess. In the middle of 2023 and with a resume of weight, it was expected a different result from Soleil.

On paper, Wanted: Dead has everything you could possibly want from an action game, but it’s mired in poor execution, ropey presentation, and more than a few unusual design choices. Wanted? We’re not so sure.