Wanted (2008) was a certified entry into the category of brainless entertainment. It is gun porn with bending bullets, for those that still enjoy watching movies with physics defied at every turn. Wanted expressed every subjugated office worker’s fantasy of escaping the life they have made for themselves by settling. Yet despite its pandering to such puerile fantasy, Wanted still worked on some level as a joyride through an adolescent’s brain after they’ve been given a gun and permission to set things right in the world with it.

After I saw the movie, my first thought was where is the video game? This is material positively ripe for exploitation with the medium. Forget The Matrix, because Wanted paints that overwrought philosophical morass with spattered brains and spent casings.

There is one scene in the Wanted film in particular that takes headshots to a new level of disturbing: Wesley, the main character, shoots a man in the eye, jams the muzzle of his pistol into the gaping eye socket and continues to shoot at the remainder of his adversaries through the back of the dead man’s head. How he is able to drag the body attached to his gun like that is a question saved for the same people who thought up the flying leap at the beginning of the film, or how someone is able to shoot bullets with another bullet – but this is beside the point. Wanted: Weapons of Fate could have capitalized on the graphic violence and physics-bending gunplay. But it didn’t. Instead, it comes across as a reheated misson-based shooter that copies the latest trend of duck and cover with bullet-time effects.

The best developers GRIN could come up with for someone’s introduction to the game is running from the cargo area of a passenger plane to the cockpit, while some guys with guns block your way. Who are they? Are they the bodyguards of the man you just killed? It’s a passenger plane, so there’s no way it would be a political figure. This obvious question is never answered. The game just wants you to shoot, and ogle the bullet curving and slow-motion as you jump from cover to cover. And settle.

The controls are clumsy. They ignore conventions set by previous games. The primary reason I even set aside time for this game is to see how they implemented the bullet-bending mechanic that was made so incredibly fascinating by the film. It’s there, but it’s fucking terrible. Bending bullets should be seamless. I should be able to fire a bullet around the corner at hidden adversaries without an early onset of carpel tunnel syndrome. Directing the curve with one of the analog sticks while holding the right shoulder button and releasing it to fire is contradictory to the regular fire, where you actively pull the right trigger. The angles of bullets are also limited. Yes, you should be governed by your current position, but I want more flexibility. Rotating the curve of the bullet feels incredibly closed in, almost as if the flight path was dictated by the environment and not your character’s viewing angle. And you should be able to have a distance gauge, to be able to move the curve closer or farther. We are working in three dimensions here, right? There was also little regard for materials used for cover. If I want to shoot at a guy behind a wooden crate, the bullet should pass through. Or at the very least, the crate should be destroyed after a few shots. This is basic game design, GRIN. I have only seen one portion of the first level and already the game is behind.

There is a crippling lack of creativity in presenting the film’s gratuitous violence in this game. Instead, Weapons of Fate plays it safe and creates a generic third person shooter. Except we don’t need any more of those. Take the licensed property seriously. You are supposed to be an assassin with preternatural skill in this game. How about planning missions out, like it was in the movie? Stalk the quarry, gather intel – fight off minions to get to him if necessary. Kind of like Assassin’s Creed. Make the final assassination satisfying by creating a varying set of moves and skills to use, that should come with being an assassin (Not like Assassin’s Creed). The scope of this game feels so limited, I can’t help but feel that it was a complete waste of the license.

Weapons of Fate should feel glossy. It should have the top notch production and attention to the details of killing people in impossible ways that were in the movie. I want to see teeth flying out of mouths when I pistol whip them. I want to see a trail of brains coiled around a bullet when I shoot adversaries point blank (thank you, Team 7). Wanted could have been the gaming world’s next Soldier of Fortune. Instead, it settles for the uninspired goal of joining the Gears of War and Killzone club. But why? It had a solid premise to build upon that gave ample opportunity to create a shooter needing no excuse for egregious violence.

There are three difficulty levels for this game: “Pussy”, “Assassin”, and “The Killer”. It’s pretty obvious which one reflects the developer’s ambitions.