Cyberpunk video games are something that I treasure every time I manage to acquire one. Cyberpunk 2077 is an obvious candidate, but I also love Deux Ex, Cloudpunk, Observer, Ghostrunner, Dex, System Shock, and Shadowrun Returns. They run a gamut of incredibly good to incredibly niche. In this case, Wanted: Dead is a cyberpunk video game is a very hard game to rate as it is an intensely flawed game that, nevertheless, had a lot to recommend it. It’s also a game that feels incomplete and I don’t just mean that in gameplay.

The premise is that in an alternate 2020s, China and Russia defeated the United States in a war that has left the world under the domination of oligarch megacorporations. How? Why? You will not have this expanded on and be left with more questions than answers. But, sure, alternate reality. It’s a good excuse for the fact that Eighties music like “Maniac”, “99 Luftballoons”, “I Touch Myself”, and “She works hard for the Money” are part of the soundtrack. But if that’s the case, why would it be in the 2020s? Nope. Wait, that’s falling down a rabbit hole and we haven’t even begun to deal with how weird this game is.

Our protagonist, Hannah Stone, is a cyborg war criminal imprisoned for life when she and her squadron are pardoned in exchange for becoming special tactical police officers in Hong Kong. Her war crimes seem to be, “kill thousands of people but they were all bad”, which tells you this game is about half Robocop and half Tank Police. Her crew is an oddball collection of misfits with a pervert, a mute but not deaf ASL user, a crazy cat lady, and a drunken medic.

To describe the plot is kind of missing the point because our protagonists are weirdly apart from it. A bunch of terrorists attack their employers, there’s a cybernetic revolt, you go after some human traffickers in a nightclub and then are declared outlaws by another megacorporation before fleeing. Then the game is over. Yes, there’s only five levels in the game and they’re only loosely connected. At one point, a super cyborg revolutionary is set up as the main villain and he just…never shows up again.

Wanted: Dead seems like a game that was planned to be far bigger in scope and then someone realized they’d run out of anime. I’m not even kidding as there’s fully animated anime storytelling sections, live action cooking programs (yes, you read that corrected), and all the licensed music covers but a surprising dearth of gameplay. If you played the game through with no deaths and not playing the minigames then you’ll probably have a total of five hours.

The minigames are also incomplete with a single arcade game shooter, a pair of claw machines (where I wasted a bunch of time), a ramen eating game, and a single karaoke game of “99 Luftballoons.” Not to be pedantic but maybe they should have devoted all more of their efforts on providing the game itself versus side content. The “twist” of the Synth Uprising deserved more attention, which is to say any attention whatsoever.

Despite this, I enjoyed Wanted: Dead. The characters are ridiculously likable with Hannah and Vivienne having great designs. The combat is serviceable and a great mix of both gunplay as well as swordmanship. The only place it stopped being fun was the ending where the enemies become endless waves with a dearth of save points as well as ammunition.

Wanted: Dead is just blatantly bizarre, and I can’t say that I didn’t have fun. I even love seeing Stephanie Joostan (Metal Gear Solid: Phantom Pain‘s Quiet) doing her hilarious live action segments. It’s not worth it if you want a modern AAA game but it’s a fun time waste for an AA game even with all its flaws.

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