Wanted: Dead

Those of us born before the new millennia have all experienced walking into a video game store and frantically searching for the next adventure to set out on. There was a time when we couldn't stand with one hand on the rack and the other on our phones, googling for ratings and reviews of the selection in front of us. No, we had to search around for the titles with the coolest covers, obscure games we'd never heard of, ones that may or may not have boasted a cyber ninja on the cover.

Many of those games that were in the low-price box were hack 'n slash and it's a genre that's alive and well to this day, with everything from Metroidvania-esque titles like Dead Cells, all the way to FromSoftware's Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice. And that's the thing about these types of games, we expect silky smooth controls and perfect precision today, something that was a luxury few enjoyed in the past but imagine if we could have both. What if it was a sheer delight to be able to dash through hordes of enemies and cut them down with shocking accuracy, while everything else looked like the early 21st century. One long B-movie in game format. With some of the worst cutscenes we've seen in modern times, embarrassingly cheesy dialogue and a story that could have been lifted straight from the American Ninja franchise, Soleil's Wanted: Dead is just all of that and then some.

Here we play as a katana-wielding police officer named Hannah Stone and we're part of the Zombie Unit, an elite force about to uncover a massive conspiracy. We have a number of more or less competent colleagues to help us, and together we must clean up Hong Kong, which has turned into a den of criminals. The first thing that happens, after undergoing a meticulous training segment, is that we die. Right away. It's the first time but certainly not the last. Our days ahead will consist of constantly staring death in the face and falling short more times than we care to admit.

Wanted: Dead was developed by former Team Ninja employees, and anyone who has played Ninja Gaiden will know the brutal challenges that awaits when you fire up the game. It was our first mission and we felt more than ready. We were filled with joy, energy and confidence after the captivating introduction but were quickly dropped back down to Earth. We are no hero, just a little defenceless mouse among starving cats. We barely made it through the entrance before we were immediately surrounded by ruthless villains who mowed us down in a fountain of blood and we realised that this was going to be a trip we would never forget.

Wanted: Dead is old-school in many ways, but most of all it's the high difficulty level that stands out and brings dormant memories back to life. After an almost embarrassing number of attempts, we finally succeeded, but it always looked the same. We stabbed, we shot, we died. Until finally, with our heart in our throat, we managed to stand there victorious. A feeling that cannot be described in simple words, but simply must be experienced. Even with a squad of up to three police colleagues accompanying us, the odds were miserable, usually at least a dozen to one. Plus a delightful mix of enemies firing at us from a distance while their companions went at us with their melee weapons, in a ruthless attempt to bring us down for good.

As we slowly but surely upgraded our weapons and abilities, with parrying and dodge rolls in particular becoming vital to our continued survival, we still began to feel more and more confident and sure enough it got easier but even with two skill trees almost fully upgraded, it was certainly still no walk in the park. Wanted: Dead is a brutal experience, one of the hardest we've played in a very long time, with every showdown feeling delightfully chaotic but it's also exactly what makes the game so insanely good.

It would have been incredibly easy to tire of the concept, duck, attack, run, die in a hail of bullets. Rinse and repeat. But because no two battles are the same, it's a sheer pleasure to take on a seemingly endless number of enemies and watch them die before our eyes. This is where Wanted: Dead excels, with over 50 different death animations, with limbs flying and skulls smashing. It's violent and daring. It's graphic and, not least, creative. Because Hannah draws on her surroundings to come up with innovative ways to end a life, so you don't get caught in one of the most common traps when it comes to hack 'n slash: lack of variety, where every battle and death ultimately feels exactly the same.

And speaking of death, in our opinion one of the most annoying parts of a game where you die often is having to start over, run the same course again, killing the same enemies over and over again, but thanks to the magnificent battles, Wanted: Dead manages to get away with this as well. Not having to start again where we died also builds on the retro feel, where autosave was just a naive dream of the future. But even if the combat is the game's core, its bread and butter, there still has to be something that breaks away. A breathing space and time to rest the battered trigger finger and there's certainly no shortage of options here. 16-bit mini-games, karaoke, ramen, cooking TV and cats. It's all there for diversion between the bloody showdowns.

Everything in Wanted: Dead is over-the-top. It's clichéd, it's deliberately preposterous and a clear nod to a bygone era. A frequently frustrating experience that requires constant full focus, and due to the brutal difficulty level it won't suit everyone but for those of us who have long dreamed of a resurrected Ryu Hayabusa, it's a gift from heaven.