Wanted: Dead is the sort of game we don’t get any more. Framed on its store page as a throwback to PS2 era sensibilities, it lives up to that promise in every way you could possibly imagine. Made up of several key staff from Team Ninja (of Ninja Gaiden fame), Wanted: Dead is brutal, corny, short, and doesn’t follow any industry trends.
So, it’s an acquired taste, to be sure, but at no point can you call it bad.
The thing is, those old school kinks can have their own appeal, and Wanted stands out starkly given how many nostalgic remakes are actively avoiding that sort of feel. It also explains why the critical reception is all over the map. Wanted: Dead will kick your ass repeatedly, expects you to make sense of its story without being spoon-fed every detail, and yet I completed most of it in a single sitting.
Days after putting away Leon Kennedy’s questionable reprisal of his final hour, it’s ironic how Wanted: Dead, with its clearly miniscule budget and scope, demonstrates all the exact eccentric energies I was missing from Resident Evil 4 Remake. I’ll go one further – it even has some of that good jank that got polished out of Dead Space Remake. There are ways you can twist the mechanics in Wanted: Dead to your advantage that no modern game would allow.
So many annoying modern rules are abandoned here. The skill tree is fully open from the start, letting you truly customize your playstyle in the opening hours and drastically alter your priorities. The intro drops you directly into the thick of terrorists robbing a local android firm’s corporate headquarters, letting you dish out enough blood to cover protagonist Hannah Stone’s whole suit in crimson.
There are no quick-time events or level ups, everything mechanical is a skill you use regularly, and those skills reward you with raw experience points you can put wherever provided you’ve collected enough. Even your weapon customization parts are given freely throughout the game.
And then things get really wild. Your pistol isn’t something you aim, but one of two ways to counter enemy attacks in melee, working more like John Wick than Max Payne. Without even telling you, there’s a per-checkpoint insurance policy for you where your team medic can revive you one time, on top of gaining health from aggressively dispatching opponents before they can harm you, and stim-packs that don’t stop you in place like certain other games.
Ammo is sparse, but every so often, your team’s trusty gunsmith deploys a care package drone that refills your primary, grenades, and whatever secondary is equipped – including if you’ve got the devastating grenade launcher. Yet the missions are still balanced so that they’re never a cakewalk, ensuring that you’re typically walking a razor’s edge of challenge.
Don’t worry though, if you thought Wanted: Dead was going to be nothing but action gaming mindlessness like the last time Team Ninja veterans tried to make a weird throwback, this isn’t another Devil’s Third. Where that Wii-U exclusive trainwreck was incomprehensible nonsense trying to blend Ninja Gaiden and Call of Duty, which was effectively oil on water, Wanted: Dead is Yakuza by way of Metal Gear.
You’ve got brutal combat with geysers of blood contrasted by tons of mini-games. You can waste actual hours in an arcade bullet hell, a claw machine that’s as infuriating as the real thing, and karaoke except the Hong Kong Police Department only bought you one song that the primarily German POW-turned-wet works cops heroes can sing.
Oh yeah, that brings me onto the next hook – that this game is set in an alt-history where World War 3 happened, Russia and China won, and now anyone they capture is given the option to either work for them or be permanently locked up for good. This isn’t even getting into Hannah’s traumatic backstory and ongoing fight for the custody of her son, contrasted by her trying to keep a jocular yet hard-as-nails team leader to her men.
Yeah, the women in this story get to actually be fully realized characters with their own personalities and flaws! Neat, huh? A major highlight is Stefanie Joosten as Gunsmith. You might remember Joosten’s… body from Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain as Quiet. Here she’s actually allowed to say things and wear clothes – she’s incredibly charming among a cast of delightful oddballs. You won’t have the pitch perfect tones of Laura Bailey or Troy Baker, but that’s not what the story is going for.
This is the sort of game to dedicate a minutes-long cutscene to emphasize how prison-like this existence is for the members of “Zombie Unit,” even if it’s technically a far more glamorous prison than where they ended up in the first place. For all the delightfully OTT boss battles and balls-out action, there’s equally sedate moments of character building.
Things are told out of order between Hannah’s flashbacks, but it’s not that hard to follow what’s going on. A bunch of people who may, or may not, have done some extremely questionable things are paying their debt to society, and just trying to survive the ongoing politics of a world that doesn’t care about them one bit. If that doesn’t sound incredibly relevant, I don’t know what is.
It’s not that Wanted: Dead is perfect. The combat moves are a bit stiff to allow for more generous counter windows for newcomers, some of the guns aren’t all that satisfying, and the rhythm mini-games are honestly more challenging than even the steepest difficulty curves the campaign throws at you.
Yet, to dismiss Wanted: Dead as “bad” is to miss the forest for the trees. Individually, there are elements that might not quite be the way you’d prefer them, but taken together, there’s nothing else like this on the market, especially in the AAA space.
With refreshing brevity, genuine replay value, and style to spare, Wanted: Dead is an unforgettable rush of creativity. It’s messy creativity, sure, but the kind worth encouraging. If you’re as burnt out on repeats and safe bets as I am, I highly recommend it – just brace yourself for that old school difficulty.
