Wet

What if you could take the wallrunning, pole-swinging, platform-y goodness of the Prince of Persia trilogy and mix it with the bullet-time, guns-akimbo, diving-over-tables third-person shooting action of Max Payne/ Stranglehold? And then add a confident heroine named Ruby, who gives Lara Croft a run for her cup size and gets her kicks by sliding down ladders upside-down with her legs, freeing her arms to fire more bullets? And what if — on top of all that — you got one of the veteran writers of the hit TV series 24 to pen the script?

Sierra’s doing all that in a new IP they’re calling Wet (a title we can only assume is dripping with innuendo). It’s being crafted by Montreal-based Artificial Mind and Movement (a.k.a. A2M), a studio whose résumé, to date, is littered with mostly kid fare like Scaler and Carmen Sandiego.

But we’re not saying you should hang Wet out to dry just because it’s the studio’s first attempt at a big-budget title. Far from it. Heck, what we saw seemed quite fun. Imagine doing mid-air flips between ledges à la Prince of Persia, but being able to go bullet-time in midair and gun down foes waiting for you at your destination. Or running into a room crowded with armed enemies; you’re outnumbered but able to even the score by running headlong at them, dropping to your knees, and sliding in slow-motion, switching targets with each kill and clearing the place.

Our favorite move from the demo we were given: a wince-inducing number the developers like to call the “taint splitter.” Running along a wall, Prince/Gaiden style, Ruby pushed off the wall and toward a single foe with a katana in hand, clocking her opponent in the back of the skull on her way by, then stepping in front of her target and facing away from him. Before he could move, she thrust the sword backward, up and into the baddie’s naughty region. Deep hurting!