A fast-paced action game from the makers of Ninja Gaiden and Dead or Alive, Wanted: Dead is a chaotic police squad adventure, for better or worse. Soleil Ltd. has created a challenging slasher and shooter hybrid that offers exciting gameplay, not without an alarming level of jankiness.

Well… that was something

The story follows an incredibly nasty week in the life of an elite Hong Kong police squad, Zombie Unit, on a mission to uncover a major corporate conspiracy. Lead the team and play as Lieutenant Hannah Stone, a strong and hardened ex-mercenary turned cop from Sweden, and plough through armed forces, gang members, and private military contractors in a dramatic cyberpunk adventure.

The haywire crew and tone of the game are first properly introduced at a local diner where Sure Know Something by Kiss is lightly playing in the background. From that first mission, Zombie Unit are a reckless and not very likeable group of surface-level criminals turned law enforcement. Herzog is the loud-mouth and insensitive member of the group and Doc is the logical and smart support. Cortez is a deaf specialist who signs using ASL throughout the game and adorably whips out his handheld console when idle in-game. While they are all over the top, there is no depth to the main cast or the side characters. Even the villains feel like they pop in and are eliminated before getting to know their motives.

Lieutenant Stone does get quite a bit of characterisation through a range of in-game graphics and anime flashback cutscenes. The otherwise stone-cold leader will occasionally blackout and a memory of what seems to be the past tells a little more about her background, cybernetic prosthetic, and motives. Although mixed mediums are a fantastic way to tell the story, the anime visual style is plain and the performance of Stone’s uninspired dialogue by Fee Marie Zimmermann doesn’t do the character any favours.

This is my finest sword

The hack-n-slash combat offers a decent amount of fun. Stone can use a katana and a range of firearms to take out a variety of enemies in a Ninja Gaiden style. With a range of deadly moves and over fifty unique finishers, the gameplay can be truly chaotic—especially with the clumsiness of the controls and cover system.

Melee combat shows off that Soleil Ltd. trademark; slicing off arms, through torsos, and decapitating foes with creative moves and animated finishers is always exciting. There’s a variety of standard combos and mixed strings of actions with the sidearm for stuns or parries which can make large fights thrilling. Upgrading Stone’s skills to unlock charge moves or dashing uppercuts will add more to that imaginative catalogue of attacks. The real downsides to melee are the inability to jump and the terrible chainsaw pick-up. Not being able to leap into the air and combo enemies feels like sacrilege in a game like this, and the chainsaw is monotonous and repetitive and is supposed to be entertaining. Instead, Stone is locked to the ground to facilitate an awkward cover system and the honestly quite tame chainsaw finishers are censored for what must’ve been perceived as shock value by the developers.

The other half of the combat is ranged. Stone has a handful of weapons to use from afar, aiming for the head for high-damage precision or firing gleefully on the run. While gunplay isn’t that bad, the cover system it revolves around is appalling. Players can try to enter the finicky cover system by crouching near waist-height objects which look purposely placed across each superficial shooting gallery. Standard foes will pop in and out of cover like wack-a-moles and fire or endlessly scream the same “GRENADE” line and lob tiny explosives that will damage Stone regardless of cover. Other stronger types will often just run straight towards her, ignoring any cover themselves because they soak an enormous amount of damage, and need to be dealt with head-on. The cover system is broken and useless, especially when sword fighting is so much more satisfying and effective.

More time in the training room

To add to the disappointment, there are many functional issues with Wanted: Dead. Visually, it’s okay but not great. Many animations are stiff and others like the finishers are smooth as butter. Elements of the environment, weapons, and lighting will distractingly pop in and out of the world. While the levels aren’t intricately designed, they are creative and offer a fine range of places to cut bad guys to bits. It’s just a shame so many visual bugs disrupt the experience.

Besides the charming use of licensed music, the audio leaves much to be desired. Constant and annoying screaming and one-liners from the cannon fodder foes, cheap sound effects from what could be a bargain bin for SFX, and the aforementioned terrible voice acting are very obvious. There were moments when my ears were about to bleed thanks to the vast crowds of enemies all shouting and firing and the chainsaw repeatedly shredding through foes. There’s also a weird oversight when turning off subtitles, making Cortez unable to be understood without understanding American Sign Language.