Wet Boneyard Level Hands-On

While Wet may be full of retro B-movie gunslinging action, there's more to the game's heroine, Rubi, than simply shooting and slicing everything in sight. In our previous hands-on, we took a look at Rubi's fighting skills and rage mode as well some light puzzle solving and on-rails sections. The final piece of the Wet puzzle is the Boneyard level, which acts as a home for Rubi in the game and houses a number of challenges to play through.

The Boneyard is a desolate place, full of broken-down planes and run-down vehicles smack bang in the middle of the desert, more than slightly reminiscent of the aircraft graveyards featured in films like Con Air. Yet this is Rubi's home, and like any good action hero, her home is stocked full of guns and platforms to keep her amused--but make no mistake, this is no Croft Manor. The Boneyard level will be accessible at any point in the game, and you will be able to use it as a training ground for new skills picked up during the single-player campaign. You can also participate in time trials and challenges.

The first challenge we encountered in the level involved a race through a series of hoops that were scattered around the environment. The aim of the challenge was to make it through all the red hoops on the map as fast as possible, while shooting targets that appear when you're jumping through special fire hoops. The course makes full use of Rubi's acrobatic skills: jumping, wall-walking, and sliding around on the floor all play a part. Passing through a fire hoop activates targets that pop up on parts of the environment--one of them Rubi will autotarget with one pistol, while the other targets have to be manually aimed at using the other weapon, with time rewarded for accuracy. The fire hoops are strategically placed around areas where jumping and wall-walking are required to progress, allowing full use of the game's slow-motion mode to hit the targets.

The courses proved quite challenging on the first play-through, and while we were able to land a bronze medal on the first course without too much trouble, it looks like nailing gold medals will require a fair amount of thought and high-quality execution. Not all challenges use the same weapons--we were able to try one time trial that used the shotgun as a primary weapon. Unlike the pistol, the shotgun does not have unlimited ammunition, so ammo has to be picked up along parts of the course. The shotgun race also introduced monkey bars and zip lines, which upped the ante in terms of difficulty.

The final challenge we played involved a Gatling gun mounted to the top of an old plane. This played much like an old carnival shooting gallery: targets randomly popped up from behind a wooden building, and we had to try to shoot them--the aim simply being to shoot as many targets as possible in the given time. The game also threw in barrels and clay pigeons to shoot, which fly across the screen and required us to quickly adjust our aim as we tried to shoot those and the pop-up targets. Fortunately, the Gatling gun had unlimited ammo and didn't overheat, so it was a case of holding the trigger down and aiming.

The graphics on the Boneyard level looked great, and we especially liked the spaghetti-Western style of the desert setting, which fit in perfectly with the cheesy b-movie style of the rest of the game. We also liked that the level gives you the chance to take a break from the action of the campaign mode and indulge in some old-school high-score chasing. Wet is due for release on September 18, so check back here for a full review soon.