WANTED: DEAD

A shooter-slasher seeking to relive PS2's weirdest moments

Developer Soleil

Publisher Industries

Format PC, PS5, Xbox Series

Origin Switzerland

Release 2022

Sergei Kolobashkin is in the process of explaining why Wanted: Dead features a live-action cooking show when he says something that seems to sum up the game's entire existence: "Why? Because, why not". Those four words could serve as an origin story for both 110 Industries, founded by Kolobashkin after he left a career in the energy industry to turn his hand to videogames, and for its debut a blend of third-person cover shooter and katana slasher that occasionally morphs into a 16bit shoot-'em-up, a rhythm game and, yes, a cookery show.

It feels out of sync with the rest of modern videogames that's deliberate, it turns out. "At some point I noticed - and it happened long time ago that developers and publishers started to take fewer chances," Kolobashkin says. He describes Wanted: Dead as a love letter to the sixth generation of consoles, a time when budgets were smaller and it was easier to take risks, referencing Mr Moskeeto and Grasshopper Manufacture's Michigan: Report From Hell. "Can you imagine [those games] being made today?"

Wanted: Dead, then, feels plucked from an alternate timeline where they still are. "Imagine if PlayStation 5 came out in 2006, or 2004" is what Kolobashkin told the team at Soleil, the Tokyo-based studio founded by ex-Team Ninja talent, which is responsible for developing 110's first two games (see 'Sunny forecast'). It's no surprise to discover that player-character Hannah Stone rolls between attackers with all the agility of Ryu Hayabusa, nor that the arc of her blade leaves the kind of blood sprays and tumbling body parts that earned Ninja Gaiden its age rating.