Previews// Wet

So... we've got a game starring a hot, leather-clad lady who's voiced by the obscenely sexy Eliza Dushku called... Wet. Did you ever try running the word 'Wet' through an unfiltered Google image search? I did. Needless to say, I'm struggling to find a way to start this preview without throwing in some heinously smutty quip of the sort that tends to get me slapped by my girlfriend. Instead, I thought I'd just vaguely allude to smut. Here's what I'm going to say: Wet is a very sexy-looking game thus far.

Here's the nutshell version: it's a stylish acrobatic shooter.

Now, the proper version:

A2M, the developer behind Wet, is all too happy to outline the influences behind Wet to myself and other assembled press at London's 360 Altitude building: '70s action movies, the Grindhouse genre, Tarantino (more specifically, Kill Bill and its Crazy 88 sequence. It's just as well, because the game wears them on its grainy sleeve.

It stars Rubi, a 'fixer' sent in to sort out situations gone bad. These seem to involve bad men and guns and, in Rubi's case, a sword. According to A2M she's a bit 'Man With No Name' (I guess we're meant to ignore the fact that she isn't a man and does have a name) with a dead mysterious past and all that good stuff (and a tight ass!). She's also rather fond of whiskey. She's all about the money and as we can see from the opening cutscene, she's about to get into a whole world of mess.

As promised, the cutscene evokes the grindhouse movies of yore and not-so-yore, complete with attitude-y dialogue, a deal going bad and a suitably grainy camera effect. There's a suitcase that's supposed to be changing hands and this, it turns out, is important to your involvement in events.

Switch to Rubi, who's standing on some sort of chimney stack looking a bit Batman and suddenly we've got a swan-dive towards what would certainly mean certain death were you or I to attempt it in this world full of hard surfaces we live in. Fortunately, it's quickly apparent that Rubi isn't restricted by the same laws of physics that we are and, having crashed through a glass ceiling, she lands it elegantly.

So begins the tutorial. First thing on the agenda is acrobatics. Your basic moves are jumping and shooting, sliding on your knees and shooting and wall running and... shooting. Wet's certainly not about prancing around doing gymnastics for the sake of it...

Initiating an acrobatic move puts you into slow motion. This, A2M informs us, is because the developer wants to instantly show us a benefit of using acrobatics. It is, undeniably, a benefit. You're also going to be looking cool as fuck within about 30 seconds of your first twitch of the thumb. (That's not to say it's easy, though! The old “Easy to pick up, hard to master” line makes an appearance).

Another gameplay element that quickly comes to the fore is split targeting. While you're doing your acrobatic thing, you control the targeting for one of your guns just as you'd expect – with the right analogue stick – but another crosshair pops up on screen. The game handles this one, meaning you're taking out two for the price of one.

Anyway, the case from the initial deal has left the room, so Rubi does too. What proceeds is a bit of a corridor/rooftop chase, complete with a spot of killing. What starts to become apparent is that Wet isn't just about the individual acrobatic moves, it's about stringing them together. I get the distinct impression that A2M wants you to never stop the moves flowing and would be quite happy for you to play the whole thing in slow motion.