So if you’ve seen the movie Wanted recently, or read the comic book, you’ve probably already figured out that it was really only a matter of time until it was going to be converted into a game, dubbed Wanted: Weapons of Fate.  And like most movie to game translations, this one will also be a lackluster cash grab designed for the sole purpose of separating you from your cash.  Let’s take a good look at why.

Basically, the plot of Wanted: Weapons of Fate puts things at about five hours after Wesley killed his own father with quite possibly the longest range rifle I’ve ever SEEN.  After whacking his own father, Wesley drifts off to sleep the sleep of the parricide and has a dream about his pregnant mother, who also gets shot, not surprisingly by assassins from the Fraternity.  Turns out Wesley’s got a LOT to do with the Fraternity before he was even born.  Anyway, from there, Wesley’s out to try and identify the guy who shot his mom in his dreams, and on the way there, he’s going to travel the world, shoot at and get shot at by tons of different people and a few downright personalities, and discover the truth about his family’s connections to the Fraternity.

All of this, of course, SOUNDS awesome.  The problem is that this is merely the story surrounding the overall gameplay, which is where the problem is.  Those experienced with the movies and the comics will know that, somehow, Wesley has all these nigh-magical powers to control the flight of bullets.  Wanted: Weapons of Fate will let you USE those powers, but only a little at a time.  You have to “build up” your adrenaline via a whole lot of killing.  You’ll get more adrenaline for using a knife rather than a gun, and when you gain adrenaline, you gain the ability to bend the bullets you fire in flight, kinda like in the movie.  I find that a cheat, in all honesty—in the movie, he was doing this sort of thing every couple of minutes.  In the game, I have to practically exterminate entire area codes before I get to try it.  I don’t know if this was some kind of attempt to introduce challenge or what, but it really just hampered the experience more than anything.

In fact, with all the running and jumping and finding cover and, yes, roadie-running, it reminds me of nothing so much as Gears of War with a whole new paint job.  I don’t know how many times I’ve played Gears of War with different settings and different characters since it came out and frankly, it only gets worse with each passing time.

I understand that it’s an action game, and a game about assassins, and frankly, expecting a movie to game conversion to pack anything more than action is probably a stupid idea.  But surely we could do something a little more original than yet another Gears of War knockoff with the Wanted license.  Or maybe we really couldn’t…and that’s the most depressing thing about the whole mess.