Shameless, stylish, and ridiculously fun
Simply put, Wet is an addictive, super-fun blend of Pulp Fiction, Sin City, Kill Bill, and Tomb Raider. As mish-mash as that may sound, its execution is astoundingly cohesive and addictive. You take on the role of Rubi, an alcoholic mercenary who's dedicated her life to becoming a Neo-Lara Croft hybrid. While the story itself is nothing to write home about, the characters are convincing and varied and, to varying degrees, you'll actually care about most of them.
The graphics are above-average, though some of the character models are a bit jagged and modeled with poor collision detection and lip-synching. The art style, however, is phenomenal - most of the time you'll experience environments ranging from a dusty Texas junkyard to the back alleys of Hong Kong with a dingy, film-grain overlay which pays obvious homage to the game's Tarantino-like roots. In certain parts of the game, Rubi will enter Rage Mode, and everything becomes colored in shades of red, black and white, a la Sin City. While the change in color can be jarring at first, it's undeniably attractive and lends an appropriate feel to the mode, the point of which is to, somehow, kill even more people, even more violently than usual.
The controls are simple and intuitive, and respond well - most of the time. Occasional mishaps outside of combat, such as iffy jumping and climbing segments can be frustrating, but these rough patches are few and far between. During combat, Rubi will auto-target one enemy with one of her guns, leaving you free to manually target a second enemy with her other. The scheme is surprisingly easy and fluid, and allows for infinite combinations of efficient carnage. Kills earn you style points, vis-a-vis, more stylish kills earn you more points. These points can be exchanged for additional acrobatic maneuvers or spent on upgrading Rubi's sword, pistols, shotguns, SMG's or explosive crossbows. Yes, explosive crossbows. Two of them.
Now, on to what I consider the game's shining star - sound. While the voices are average at best, the sound effects are crisp, clear, dramatic and convincing, and the music is possibly the game's best feature. An invigorating blend of surf/grunge rock accompanies every battle, and kudos to Bethesda and A2M for including such a wide variety of tracks that you will literally never hear the same song twice throughout the game. Each track fits perfectly with the mood of the scene, and at certain points you feel like a choreographer, deliberately deciding how you will off your adversaries so that their deaths best match the soundtrack.
The campaign is relatively short, around 10 hours, but unlockable difficulty levels - including a DMC "Heaven or Hell" mode - and separate Challenge Course maps add a decent amount of fulfilling gameplay. All in all, I had such a blast slinging bullets and car-surfing on the freeway, I played the whole game straight through and can recall only two or three moments of anything but pure enjoyment. Perhaps most impressive amid Rubi's talents is her ability to perform such ridiculous acrobatics and impossible headshots while constantly wasted - health stations are crates of whiskey, which she utilizes by taking a swig, then tossing the bottle into the air and shooting it.
Wet's flaws are minor and sparse - easily overlookable, especially in light of its many, many successful innovations and nonstop, fluid action. Honestly, go pick it up. At least rent it. Seriously. Go right now.