Wells
Available on: Xbox One & Windows, Steam
Release Date: January 30th, 2017
Price: $9.99
Reviewed on: Xbox One
The 3D Side-scroller/Run and Gun genre has been relatively absent in modern gaming, so Wells is certainly a welcome change from the gameplay of most mainstream games. Wells is a 3D Run and Gun game that pays homage to previous Run-and-Gunners from gaming’s past. While it’s refreshing to get taken back to a simple game design that expects player’s to use critical thinking and reactionary action to progress, Wells gets held back by game levels and boss battles that drag on and don’t offer as much enjoyment as they should.
http://https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVe5EV3FE5o
Seeing as how this game is an homage to the previously-forgotten Run and Gun sub-genre back in the 80’s and 90’s, the visuals are included in their homage as they’re very much stylized in character design and the locations. However, outside of the interesting world and not-often-used cyberpunk theme, the game looks pretty dated upon further examination. The environments lack detail and the explosions border on being noticeably poor, with many of them looking like just a collection of red pixels. The poor quality of the graphics are put to the forefront during the short cutscenes in between levels as they involve close-ups of the characters themselves and the lack of detail is put on full display.
That being said, the cyberpunk world that the player can run around is visually interesting and unique. The old-timey cop uniforms, the odd enemy types like the scuba diver, flying beetles, and bosses all help add in visual variety to sections that could’ve become uninteresting without them. From the elaborate mansion of the game’s main baddie to the platforms in the skies, the background is visually interesting overall.
All in all, the world of Wells is visually interesting and unique, but graphically, it’s not much to look at.
When it comes to the sound design, this ends up being one of the weakest aspects of Wells. Consistent sound drops, repetitive music, and overall just missing sound in multiple areas. Explosions will consistently be silent and when the sounds ARE there, they lack any kick or energy to them.
Then there’s the music which although charming and fun at times, largely repeats the same tune throughout their respective levels leading to a definite annoyance with the same background tempo and beat (especially when you keep dying and the music continually restarts).
Finally, the few examples of voice acting within the game aren’t up to snuff either. While it seems that the voice actors were trying to make their characters quirky and unique, it just doesn’t seem to work out that way. With the main villain, he speaks very muffled and I could barely understand any of the words he said. The character of George Wells, the main character, was at least intelligible, but even that voice acting just ended up distracting. In the end, it would’ve worked better if they just made the dialogue text-based or cut the cutscenes out entirely.
The story is relatively simple with George Wells hunting down the leader of many murderous clients (who just so happen to be the guys you’re shooting throughout the game). The story is suitably simple considering that in games like this, players just need to understand why they’re moving from location to location. Now, the game does lose some points since there are cutscenes and voice-acting, yet the story doesn’t benefit from it. It implies that there’s development in the story, but each cutscene boils down to Wells going after evil-man and then next scene with little to no variety in between each one.
With the plot, it ends as you’d expect. Even then, it’s an enjoyable enough journey to take out the baddies leading up to the big bad guy in the end. The story IS relatively nonexistent and I feel like they’ve could’ve done more with it considering the presence of cutscenes and voice-acting, but the story still works with the overall experience.
When it comes down to the gameplay, it can be best described as rewarding to creative players, but all too repetitive for the lengthy levels spread throughout the campaign. With each progressing level, you get one new gun with each of the starting 5 levels (there are 10 total). This does help add to variety and creativity in regards to how you take down the many enemy hordes, but there’s not a whole lot more variety added in once you get all of the guns (your starting revolver, a grenade launcher, a gun that shoots explosive mines, machine gun, and a shotgun that shoots environmental-deteriorating bullets?).
Throughout the levels, you move both horizontally and vertically as you move to higher ground and move right to progress to the next section of enemies. As you move forward, you’ll be shooting all enemies onscreen at all times. Enemies will come at you from the sides and above you and will be unloading bullets into you until you take them out or you die. In this game, you’ll likely die quite a bit. Your character never gains any improved defense or health so most of the time, enemies will take you down quickly. With enemies like spiders that slow you down (that are ALWAYS released in groups) and enemies shooting without needing to reload, you’ll die more than you expect to. This is especially the case when in regards to the boss battles.
In the boss battles, you gain a different challenge in the form of giant enemies with the ability to kill you even quicker than the henchmen that have been shooting at you all game. The difference is, they may only require two good hits. From a zepplin armed with a dozen different firearms to a golden punch-happy robot, these bosses aren’t the typical enemies most gamers encounter. This does help make them feel unique at least in a visual sense. On the mechanics side, they are a bit overly simplistic. Not a lot of complexity on the offensive side and certain battles end up becoming a slog. The boss will appear, you hit them once, they move upwards so you can’t hit them and they start trying to hurt you, then they move down again so you CAN hit them, you hit them, and repeat.
Overall, the boss battles DO add some form of variety within the gameplay, but they become repetitive back-and-forths soon after they begin. Overall, with the boss battles, they start promising, but you end up wanting them to be done sooner rather than later.
In regards to the replay value, there IS a New Game+ mode once you finish your first playthrough. This opens up the possibility for players to take down evildoers as Wells once again but with a heightened difficulty. The campaign and shooting is enjoyable enough and allows for players to take out enemies the way they want to, but the gameplay does drag after a while (even with the attempts at variety with the boss battles) and it hurts its replay value overall.
