At last week's E3 event in Los Angeles, we got a brief glimpse of the upcoming Wanted, a third-person action shooter based on the film of the same title. While movie games have a history of being substandard vehicles for over-ambitious licensing, Wanted could end up being one of those rare gems that breaks from the pack. One clue that hints that Wanted might not end up as a shabby tie-in is the fact that it's not releasing day and date with the film (which is already in theaters in the U.S.), so developer GRIN can take its time crafting an experience that Executive Producer Pete Wanat described as "not seeing the movie, but playing the movie." From what we saw of the game, this approach certainly appears to be working, because Wanted is already solving some of the problems that traditionally plagued action shooter games.

Assassination at 35,000 Feet

Our demo was set aboard a passenger airliner in which the film's protagonist, Wesley Gibson, must assassinate a specified target. Picking up where the movie left off, Wanted casts Wesley as the gifted yet still green professional hitman and member of the ancient order of assassins known as The Fraternity, so this exercise is par for Wesley's course. Instantly apparent was the interactivity inherent to the airborne setting; exchanging gunfire at cruising altitude is bound to have some unexpected repercussions, and nearly every shot resulted in depressurization of some kind.

Plug a slug into a hatch and the door blows free from the plane, causing a deafening whoosh as the previously pressurized fuselage vents atmosphere out into the stratosphere. A side effect of this depressurization is that any enemies caught loitering in an exit row may suddenly find themselves free-falling without a parachute, something the gentleman demoing the game for us found intensely hilarious (and repeated multiple times, just for fun). We had a hard time maintaining straight faces as the ruffians clawed frantically at the aircraft while being sucked out the door.


Once You Pop, You Can't Stop

Of course, an airplane is packed with rows of passenger seating, so cover opportunities are plentiful, but Wanted takes unique advantage of this with its fluid cover system. Designed to be more offensive than defensive, Wanted's cover system emphasizes using cover as a means to progress forward and discourages turtling up by giving you a constant flow of cover points that you can move to as freely (or in some cases, even more freely) as areas in the open. Wesley can vault over low cover and dive from cover point to cover point effortlessly, and as the enemies you face will saturate the area you occupy with whizzing bullets, you'll appreciate the unbroken stream of cover opportunities if you want to keep your hide bullet-free.

You can also exploit cover to flank your foes by poking your head out and firing a couple of rounds and then slinking around to another position. When you succeed in diverting your enemies' attentions, the screen becomes limned in a blue halo and you can crawl stealthily to a more opportune location.

Another bonus of closing from within cover is Wesley's ability to use a melee knife strike to stab people just on the other side of his cover. How many times have you been locked in a bitter battle between you and some jerk on the opposite side of your cover, shooting fruitlessly at each other with only a couple of feet of cement separating you? This is not a problem in Wanted because Wesley can simply lash out and insta-kill nearby foes by jamming a butcher knife into a vital organ or artery. It's a satisfying solution to one of the more nagging problems of cover-based action games.