“Wet”; short for “Wetwork”, a job that involves the unauthorised spilling of copious amounts of blood (according to this game).

Take the grindhouse genre which has enjoyed a recent revival, mix with elements from recent games, and you have the basis for Wet, a deadly cocktail of brutal action, acrobatics and wild gun play.

You play as Rubi, a sort of butch Lara Croft who appears to enjoy killing both Chinese and British people, initially battling your way through a Chinatown somewhere in the USA, hunting your prey and leaving hundreds slaughtered in your wake, before jetting off to Hong Kong (handy for the game’s artists) and then over to dear old Blighty to take on the real villain. Who, of course, is British (Malcolm McDowell, actually).

The daft plotting may fit within the grindhouse genre the game’s creator’s are trying to emulate, but everything hinges on the char­acter of Rubi. The trouble is, she’s a sociopath. She’s not likeable and you can’t empathise with her. I want to enjoy playing the lead character, not listen to her crappy one-liners before chasing off after her next target and slaughtering hundreds of his guards just to (eventually) get to him.

Wet is not exactly gushing with original gameplay. It’s said that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and Wet was clearly inspired by the shootouts of Stranglehold and the acrobatics of last year’s Prince of Persia and Tomb Raider titles. However it lacks Stranglehold’s inventive level design; indeed, after the first few levels, Wet’s pool of ideas evaporates almost entirely. Scattered amongst the shooter segments are some highly stylised Kill Bill-style batt­les; the graphics are saturated blood red and Rubi is a deadly silhouette, slicing and dicing her way through enemies like butter. They are intense, frantic and help stimulate the uneven pacing of the game. Other strong moments include death-defying “Quick-time” stunt sequences, such as the early freeway car chase in which Rubi leaps hilariously from bonnet to bonnet, vehicles exploding around her.

It looks pretty slick most of the time and, as a stylised shooter, even simulates a vintage film stock effect as you play. Add the 1970s cinema ads during level loading and the result is an impressively retro look. Audio is good too, with many songs specially commiss­ioned for the game, and the voice actors deserve some kudos for doing their best with a script that misses a bar set low enough for real grindhouse movies to hit.

So, a fun shooter that’s best played in short bursts – longer sessions merely highlight the repet­ition of arenas and the tight linearity of levels – with a heroine who lacks either the charms of Lara Croft or the conflicted psychosis of Max Payne, and who can’t provide the strong lead this game needs. There’s plenty of action, slo-mo acrobatics and gunplay to be had, but once you’ve played the first chapter, expect Wet to dry up.