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Developed by GRIN and presented by Warner Bros., Wanted: Weapons of Fate hit shelves last month after a lot of media attention, and this month’s Official Xbox Magazine demo disc gave me the chance to curve a few bullets and bring down some bad guys as anti-hero Wesley.

Duck behind seats and the bullet-proof serving cart to stay out of sight.

Set aboard an airplane, the demo feels fresh as you set about taking cover and popping enemies. And that’s good, because the cover system is a real rip off of the tried and true Gears of War formula. The controls are even pretty similar, so the whole thing will feel familiar to gamers who have shot their way through the Locust hordes.

Where it differs, Wanted lets players suppress enemies with blind fire, chain together acrobatic moves from cover-to-cover, execute one-hit melee kills in close range, and dive through the air for occasional, bullet-time slo-mo shooting.

It works and brings Wanted to the level of competency. The other gameplay hook is the ability to curve the trajectory of your shots and pick off bad guys who are still crouched behind cover. This is a cool mechanic and I was able to fumble with the buttons to pull it off at least once. Unfortunately, the tutorial didn’t touch this ability, so the whole idea seemed a bit clumsy and uneccesary. Hopefully the full game exploits this technique to a larger degree, because it’s one of the only gimmicks that give this title any legs in an already bloated shooting game landscape.

For me, Wanted is a great idea on paper and the developers have carried it out with a pretty high level of polish, but it’s going to take some more unique moments throughout the course of the game to overcome the me-too Gears of War gameplay, the bland enemy forces that are decidedly without character and the clunky bullet-curving technique to elevate this one from competent free demo to worthwhile, $60 purchase.

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