Sierra Echo

While Artificial Mind & Movement is a veteran game studio, their past fame consists mostly of licensed movie and television tie-in games for major franchises. WET represents one of their only hardcore gaming titles, and certainly the most mature title in their arsenal.

If WET's style and box art looks familiar as a former era in gaming history, there's a reason for that. Vivendi-Universal, formerly known as Sierra was the original publisher working with A2M to bring this title to existence. Unfortunately for WET, it was one of the titles thrown to the wolves half way through the development process by Activision after the Vivendi merger was completed. Indeed the box art, though tweaked and updated by Bethesda, is still Sierra at its core, and may be the very last relic from the old design shop that was once Sierra. It's a bit of nostalgia to those of us who remember some of their great old titles.

The team at Bethesda, kind folks that they are, announced they would be picking up the game and publishing it a mere four months ago. Though lacking a publisher for nearly a year of the development process, the game had been too far completed to abandon, and A2M completed it on their own. Four months is hardly any time to come to grips with a new franchise and tie up any loose ends before the game goes gold, but somehow Bethesda and A2M have actually pulled off a pretty clean launch of an otherwise endangered shooter.

As the game opens, we're greeted with a rockabilly twang, a film grain crackle, and a dilapidated feeling environment. While there's little doubt that you have heard this before if you're reading this far, I'll say it again for those who have been sleeping for the past month and may have missed the promos. The stylistic design, both visually and audibly draw heavily from Quentin Tarantino films. Specifically the layout for WET, the design of Rubi's character, and the actions she performs are exceptionally reminiscent of Kill Bill. That's not to say it's a direct clone, but there's enough similarities that for those that ever wished for a true to form Kill Bill licensed video game, presented in the Grindhouse style, WET may become all you've hoped for. Did I mention that A2M is known mostly for licensed movie tie-in games? I thought so...

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