Wanted: Dead Reviews
Wanted: Dead feels like a callback to the worst games of the Xbox/PS2 era. The game has a distinct lack of polish when it comes to its enemy design, and, combined with the horrid voice acting and confusing storyline that's only explained through supplementary material, it feels like the ultimate case of wasted potential that could've become something better had the developers put a bit more thought into it.
Wanted: Dead features a very fun combat system mainly based on the use of a blades, full of ultraviolence, combos and devastating final techniques, but it lacks a bit in everything else: the AI is inefficient, the mini-games are sometimes a pointless break between missions and the plot though interesting to follow constantly breaks up the action. Can this blade galore be enough to justify its purchase? Definitely yes, if you loved slashers of the very early 2000s, otherwise you may find the offering a bit sparse.
Review in Italian | Read full review
Wanted: Dead successfully captures what made action games incredible in the sixth and seventh generations of consoles. Its combat options are deep and due to this, cutting up enemies never gets old. While the narrative shifts into beautiful hand-drawn anime, the voice acting and dialogue halt interest in the unremarkable narrative. However, fans of third-person action games who want a gameplay-focused experience should take stab at this one.
Violent, ridiculous, and occasionally fun, Wanted: Dead misses a lot of its marks but is still worth a look for the devoted.
Wanted: Dead tries to rekindle that flame of passion for gaming’s earliest titles, and while it might resonate with some who unconditionally loved this era of gaming, the final product is very unsatisfying and a reminder of why going back in time is a double-edged sword.
Wanted: Dead is going to annoy a lot of players. It’s also going to please plenty more. Soleil has made a game that leans heavily into its PS2-era inspirations, and that includes an unforgiving difficulty level. Without any real way to make things easier, some players may never see the ending of an otherwise enjoyable campaign, outside of watching a streamer perhaps. For those who can manage to hone their skills, however, the time put into Wanted: Dead will be worth it because this slasher-shooter offers so much visceral joy when things go your way that it makes all the painful death worth it.
At the start of Wanted: Dead, players are given the chance to enter a training simulator that walks them through the basic functionality of combat against holographic foes. It’s revealing when one of the levels in the game is set inside the drab and boxy corridors of that simulator. Apart from your foes now being flesh and blood, there’s functionally no difference in killing them. But, then, nearly every level of Wanted: Dead is practically the same, and no amount of stolen memes, nostalgic riffs, and non sequiturs can hide that depressing fact.
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.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
Evaluating Wanted: Dead means coming to terms with the past of the action genre. We repeat: we had a lot of fun during the most agitated moments, fighting against some of the most peculiar bosses, or noticing the constant references to pop, cyberpunk and the history of video games of the 2000s. Unfortunately, however, the weight of technical inaccuracies and the inconsistency of the plot, the slowness of the interludes between an explosion of violence and the next, are evidently out of tune notes and condition the charm of an experience that in any case is able to entertain the most irrediculable fans of the action.
Review in Italian | Read full review
Wanted Dead is a hard game to recommend: it is truly bad in most areas, but it also has the opportunity to click with you depending on your tolerance for jank and of old-school character action games. If you really need a dose of nostalgia, or you love movies like The Room, Wanted Dead could be a hit.
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.
With Wanted: Dead, Soleil fails to accomplish its mission to make a good comeback for hardcore action games like Ninja Gaiden: this game seems blocked in the PS2 era.
Review in Italian | Read full review
Wanted: Dead has a charm and sense of humor that is rarely found in modern games, and it backs that up with an amazing combat system that only gets better the more you play.
Despite not living up to the character action games it clearly draws inspiration from, Wanted: Dead is a competent action game in its own right.
Wanted: Dead is a punishingly-difficult bloodbath that's a joy to play.
Wanted: Dead may be delightfully weird, but it's held back by extremely inconsistent combat, a nonsense story, and an all around lack of any direction.
I mentioned at the start that I could not tell if Wanted: Dead was a deliberate execution or something that went wrong during development.
If you are up for a challenge Wanted: Dead can be a fun experience, but for those who don’t like dying or having to learn perfect timing, it can be rather frustrating. The game’s shift in graphics between mini-games, gameplay, and cutscenes can be a bit much for those looking for a uniform experience. Soleil Ltd. tries to make Wanted: Dead the experience that Ninja Gaiden was, but misses the mark. Combat can be fun if you don’t get frustrated at a challenge, otherwise, if you are looking to just experience the story, Neko-chan mode is the way to go.
Wanted: Dead isn't as bad as the worst games to come out recently but sloppy game design and story-telling has let down what could have been a decent game to play.