Wanted: Dead Is Going To Make Ninja Gaiden Fans Very Happy

thegamer.com:

Wanted: Dead is a deceptively hard game to describe. Its creators call it a “triple-A love letter to the sixth generation of consoles,” which isn’t surprising, considering the team is made up of former Ninja Gaiden and Dead or Alive developers. There’s a lot of Ninja Gaiden’s DNA in Wanted: Dead, but I get the sense that it’s calling back to an even earlier time. While it looks and plays like a hack-n-slasher, structurally, it’s actually closer to traditional 2D beat ‘em ups of the arcade era. If you like any of those things, you’ll want to keep an eye out for this game when it arrives next February.

I got very little hands-on time with Wanted: Dead at PAX West last month, but my short play session made me eager for more. Part cover shooter, part spectacle fighter, Wanted: Dead is a gory, cyberpunk brawler that, much like Ninja Gaiden, will push you to master every single encounter, largely by smashing you into a pulp over and over again until you learn the ropes of combat.

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Wanted: Dead has only five levels, but the developers at Soleil Ltd. (Samurai Jack: Battle Through Time, Naruto To Boruto) say they still expect players to spend at least 20 hours getting through them all. I’m no slouch when it comes to this genre, but I got my ass thoroughly handed to me throughout the demo, which took place in a high rise office building filled with gun-toting thugs boasting devastating accuracy. I obviously can’t speak too much to the difficulty having only played it for a few minutes, but it seems clear it’s aiming for an old school, if not practically medieval experience.

There’s plenty of games in this genre that combine hack-n-slash with guns,