Wanted: Dead

Wanted: Dead was provided to us by 110 Industries and Plan of Attack for review. Thank you!

From the minds behind Ninja Gaiden and Dead or Alive comes Wanted: Dead, a hybrid slasher/shooter that's all about kicking ass. Following a week in the life of an elite Hong Kong police squad, you will be put on a mission to uncover a major conspiracy happening. From a third person perspective, you will brutalize your enemies, riddle them with bullets, and utilize flashy finishing moves in a cyberpunk world. As a love letter to sixth gen consoles, this is going to be a game to remember.

Wanted: Dead is a game that I did enjoy, but had some glaring issues I wasn't the biggest fan of. Starting with the good, the game looks great and melee combat is flashy. I love the finishers and chopping people in half was always really cool to see. I also really like that they went for a mixture of swordplay and third-person shooting, some moments where I switched between the two felt great.

On the bad side, the combat overall felt a bit lacking. The fighting was fun, but I would have loved to see more of an expansion to the melee with more combos when swapping between the X and Y buttons. I am also not the biggest fan of games where enemies can be bullet sponges and can eat up half a clip to kill. The story was iffy, but I didn't mind it much since I prioritized the gameplay more. Overall, it's a decent game that I am happy I played, but $60 feels a little much for what is being offered. The good news is, if you decide to get the game, you will be able to enjoy it on the Steam Deck!

Wanted: Dead - Max Performance

At max performance, Wanted: Dead can actually hit 30 FPS in a some areas, but it doesn't stick to this for long. The game can easily drop into the 20s with a drain of 24W - 25W which is way too much. But, with a couple of setting tweaks and FSR in-game, this can be easily remedied!

Wanted: Optimization Time

Through my testing, I decided to start off with a battery saving 30 FPS build. I found 40 to feel very smooth, but there were a lot of times the game would drop or stutter when in certain combat situations or moving around too fast. With the recommended build, I used a combination of Medium and Low settings to get a stable 30 FPS with an average drain of 12W - 15W, which I felt was pretty good. The game still looked quite nice and held up in every scenario...except for one where I was cornered by 6 guys with explosions going around!

The biggest performance drain was shadows, which pushed the device much harder than any other quality setting. So for our quality build, I prioritized using no upscaler and keeping shadows at Medium. Anything higher than medium didn't change the visuals enough to justify the increased draw. So with a mix of medium and high settings and no TDP limit, the game was able to push through and look great while doing it.

The last build I worked towards was 40 FPS. This one was a bit harder to do than quality and the battery build due to the stutters the game has from time to time. At 30 FPS, this wasn't as noticeable and very much reduced at the lower framerates, but even when the game is on the lowest possible quality settings, 40 FPS still has more noticeable moments. I did try forcing resolution down through Steam, which significantly helped the performance in-game, but it blew up the pause menu, which you need to access skills and modify weapons.

Because of that, I kept the game at 1280x800. If you can withstand the blown up menu, I highly recommend forcing the resolution to 1024x600 and using SteamOS FSR to upscale. The game will still look decent and performance will be more stable, but again, it will be harder to actually use the menu.

I didn't encounter any controller issues, though I felt the third-person shooting camera movement was a bit too fast and I had to change the sensitivity. There were no visual bugs either, so other than the performance issues, the game performed as intended!

Conclusion

Wanted: Dead is a mixed bag for me that I ended up enjoying more than disliking. The game itself is quite fun and I loved slicing people up while looking around the gorgeous world. The shooting and basic combat mechanics were a bit of a let down though and I was hoping for more variety. I also didn't care for the minigames, but it is a nice change of pace from the combat. I would say wait for a sale on this one as I did still enjoy it and find it worthwhile to buy, but it wasn't as memorable as I had hoped. Luckily, if you do decide to get it, this is one you will be able to enjoy on the Steam Deck!

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