I've never seen Wanted and I'm not sure I need to any more - if it's anything like the game, it's a quick-paced action flick with great special effects and sarcastic banter that's worth a rental but probably not a purchase.

The first point to make abundantly clear about Wanted: Weapons of Fate is that it's undeniably great fun. The duck and cover mechanism is quick and reliable, with a simple press of the A button seeing your character Wesley diving from one point of cover to the next or sliding from the top of a table to a desk. Behind cover you can blind-fire, but unlike games like Gears of War, you basically never hit anything from this position. Instead, if you shoot close enough to a target, the corners of your screen feather white and you have the opportunity to dive from cover to cover extremely fast while your opponent is apparently dazed from the shots. This allows for some complex flanking maneuvers that allow you to drop more polygons than the fabled E.T. landfill.

There are only three guns available in Weapons of Fate, two of which are basically indistinguishable from one another, although most people probably won't see this as a major issue due to the fundamentals revolving around your acrobatic maneuvers rather than your weaponry. Besides carry-around guns, there are also sniping and mounted turret sequences where you must kill a certain number of baddies before moving on. Sniping is relatively easy, if not a bit ironic due to the decision to constrict you to one area, hence making you more of a target than you might hope. The mounted gunfights however are without a doubt the worst part of Weapons of Fate. Your crosshairs don't line up to anything in particular, your turret shield quickly breaks away, and you usually die, leaving you to restart the challenge. They aren't fun but at least there are only a handful of them throughout the game. There are also several timed events, where you must shoot bullets and enemies within seconds while the game takes control of your character's movement, which is actually relatively amusing. They're not incredibly hard but they feel very cinematic and certainly not as stale as button-press quick time events.

The true magic of the game comes when you seamlessly combine your abilities to quickly and effectively dispose of entire roomfuls of enemies. You can reach over the table you're sheltered behind and stab enemies before diving to a new cover, bullet curving and dropping another enemy. It really is stylish - there's no other way to describe it - so it's too bad there isn't some sort of a scoring system for stylish skills, along the lines of The Club.

The visuals are dark, gritty and surprisingly violent; splotches of blood form on the screen and everything becomes tinted red when you're shot repeatedly, finally turning gray right before you die. Close combat kills too are gory, with Wesley repeatedly stabbing enemies while blood splatters in every direction. The in-game locations vary widely, with some fights taking place at night on rooftops while others are set in broad daylight in France.

The writing is witty and crude, and the voice acting is done well, with actors James McAvoy and Morgan Freeman reprising their roles as Wesley and Sloan respectively. The tone is a mix of action films and videogame storytelling and the medium is utilized well; the protagonist starts his narration by addressing you - the gamer - as a fat nerd whose brain is slowly melting under corporate consumerism. Sections in the game skip between Wesley and his father Cross, as you piece together the mystery of the fraternity of assassins and track down your mother's killer.

Weapons of Fate also brings back cheat codes in the form of Binaries that you can uncover by purchasing a collector's edition of the Wanted film or alternatively having access to a 56k dialup modem. These binaries unlock several sorts of fun but mostly gimmicky modes to play through, although the main reason to use them is to unlock the achievements that require them.

The main problem with Wanted is that it basically only has one mode, a single player campaign that really doesn't last long. The campaign is short enough to be fun for two play-throughs at least, but the only real incentive to continue playing is unlockable characters and achievement points. A harder mode is unlocked at the conclusion of the first play through, but this mode isn't brutally challenging. It's not entirely a bad thing that the Wanted: Weapons of Fate is so short though, because this saves it from becoming overly repetitive. Ducking behind cover, curving bullets, witty banter - it's all played out just enough to seem fresh. Wanted is a good game but it's an easy kill and with a full retail price tag it might seem a little too short for some, making it ideal fodder for a weekend rental.

Reviewed by Nic Vargus for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).