Member Review: Red Steel (Wii)
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Member Review: Red Steel (Wii)
Thatch Tue Apr 15, 2008 10:50 pm
Your company hears about the Wii. So you thought to make one of the launch titles as a "hardcore" game that uses the Wii Remote in an exciting new way. You decide to make a First Person Shooter that uses the Wii remote in a revolutionary way. Then you find out the release date of the Wii, and find out you're a little behind schedule, so you try and speed things up a little. A bit rushed but you’re at a push to get this out for release. That’s pretty much what you get when you play Red Steel.
The plotline is basically the cliché guy kidnaps girl, you go and kill the guy and save the girl. Basically. A main theme of the game is being a "gaijin", a foreigner of Japan who doesn't know the way of the sword. The plotlines will twist and turn throughout the game, and cutscenes are done well with a storybook-like feel, showing pictures of what’s going on, and who says what. This fills you in on the story very well, but laughably poor voice acting ruins the mood. You start off in Los Angeles, where your girlfriend is kidnapped. A short part of the game is spent here, to be honest, shooting people and moving on.
The controls are...controversial to say the least. Red Steel uses the Wii remote and the Nunchuk in...pretty expected ways. The Wii remote acts as your gun, which you will be pointing at the screen to target enemies, and the B button shoots. The Nunchuk is used for moving, strafing and jumping; basically your movement. First of all, now and then your cursor will fly across the screen, jumping everywhere. This is one of the main pains in the game, especially if you’re at a particularly tough bit in the game with lots of enemies shooting at you, you will die – A lot. Especially if you’re standing amongst enemies armed to the hilt with Mini-Uzi’s and all you have is a handgun with a mind of its own.
Another thing is that one of the "motion sensing" features of the game involves pushing the Wii remote forwards to scope, like on a sniper rifle or look down the reticule of a gun. This. Is. Awful. The fact that you're almost alwyas caught in the midst of warfare when you're trying to get a better look on your enemies, you frantically push the remote forwars and end up with a worse shot on your enemies than before.
The rest of the controls are fairly easy to master – although, if you’re playing a 1on1 with a friend and it’s their first time, they're going to be stuck as soon as they hit a corner. There are little extras in the game, which are pleasing though, such as twisting the remote to the side to put your gun to its side, gangster style. It’s the little things like this that makes you wonder how Red Steel could have been, albeit with a little more polish. Though, speaking of polish, the game does have good graphics, for what was availible. Not so good as to be blown away by them, ala Super Mario Galaxy, but they are good nonetheless.
Throughout the game you get taught little techniques in your sword fighting skills.In each mission you do the expected, shooting people then moving on etc. Though at the end of each mission you have a boss fight, where you respectfully put down your gun and have a sword duel. This is where it’s clear the game lacks intricateness where it has been rushed:
You learn lots of fangled methods of eventually defeating your opponent, such as raising your nunchuck to block with your secondary knife; though you forget them easily, and they're difficult to pull off in that most of the time it just doesn't register what you’re doing... The player ends up frantically flicking the remote in hope that your character cuts the opponent before your opponent cuts you. To be honest, the controls just don’t work where it comes to sword fighting. The best thing about the sword fighting is if you eventually win the duel then you can choose whether to “finish” your opponent or save them, for respect points. Finishing them off is rather satisfying, especially if your arm is aching after that session of waving the remote very, very hard.
Red Steel does have some good points though. The multiplayer is excellent, with support for up to 4 players locally. You can have free-for-alls in a variety of different maps, and each player gets to pick their certain perk, for example more health or a faster reload. This adds a tactical element to the multiplayer, but not much. The thing which really disappoints is that Red Steel features no online mode whatsoever, which I guess is kind of acceptable in that they didn't really know what the Wii could do at the time, being a launch title, but if other titles i.e. Medal Of Honour Heroes 2 can make a decent online FPS, why can’t they?
It has been announced that Ubisoft are developing a sequel to Red Steel, which has the potential to be great, considering they know (hopefully) where they went wrong and can fix it. Nice and slow.
To sum up, Red Steel could have been much better, which is a shame because on paper, the concept looked great. Fair enough, it does the job, but with jumpy, hard to get used to controls and no online mode, this generally feels as another one of those rushed launch titles. I wasn't happy with Red Steel, considering some respected reviewers gave it a great review with a score higher than 90%. Maybe I'm missing something... Anyway in total i gave this game a score of 67%
The plotline is basically the cliché guy kidnaps girl, you go and kill the guy and save the girl. Basically. A main theme of the game is being a "gaijin", a foreigner of Japan who doesn't know the way of the sword. The plotlines will twist and turn throughout the game, and cutscenes are done well with a storybook-like feel, showing pictures of what’s going on, and who says what. This fills you in on the story very well, but laughably poor voice acting ruins the mood. You start off in Los Angeles, where your girlfriend is kidnapped. A short part of the game is spent here, to be honest, shooting people and moving on.
The controls are...controversial to say the least. Red Steel uses the Wii remote and the Nunchuk in...pretty expected ways. The Wii remote acts as your gun, which you will be pointing at the screen to target enemies, and the B button shoots. The Nunchuk is used for moving, strafing and jumping; basically your movement. First of all, now and then your cursor will fly across the screen, jumping everywhere. This is one of the main pains in the game, especially if you’re at a particularly tough bit in the game with lots of enemies shooting at you, you will die – A lot. Especially if you’re standing amongst enemies armed to the hilt with Mini-Uzi’s and all you have is a handgun with a mind of its own.
Another thing is that one of the "motion sensing" features of the game involves pushing the Wii remote forwards to scope, like on a sniper rifle or look down the reticule of a gun. This. Is. Awful. The fact that you're almost alwyas caught in the midst of warfare when you're trying to get a better look on your enemies, you frantically push the remote forwars and end up with a worse shot on your enemies than before.
The rest of the controls are fairly easy to master – although, if you’re playing a 1on1 with a friend and it’s their first time, they're going to be stuck as soon as they hit a corner. There are little extras in the game, which are pleasing though, such as twisting the remote to the side to put your gun to its side, gangster style. It’s the little things like this that makes you wonder how Red Steel could have been, albeit with a little more polish. Though, speaking of polish, the game does have good graphics, for what was availible. Not so good as to be blown away by them, ala Super Mario Galaxy, but they are good nonetheless.
Throughout the game you get taught little techniques in your sword fighting skills.In each mission you do the expected, shooting people then moving on etc. Though at the end of each mission you have a boss fight, where you respectfully put down your gun and have a sword duel. This is where it’s clear the game lacks intricateness where it has been rushed:
You learn lots of fangled methods of eventually defeating your opponent, such as raising your nunchuck to block with your secondary knife; though you forget them easily, and they're difficult to pull off in that most of the time it just doesn't register what you’re doing... The player ends up frantically flicking the remote in hope that your character cuts the opponent before your opponent cuts you. To be honest, the controls just don’t work where it comes to sword fighting. The best thing about the sword fighting is if you eventually win the duel then you can choose whether to “finish” your opponent or save them, for respect points. Finishing them off is rather satisfying, especially if your arm is aching after that session of waving the remote very, very hard.
Red Steel does have some good points though. The multiplayer is excellent, with support for up to 4 players locally. You can have free-for-alls in a variety of different maps, and each player gets to pick their certain perk, for example more health or a faster reload. This adds a tactical element to the multiplayer, but not much. The thing which really disappoints is that Red Steel features no online mode whatsoever, which I guess is kind of acceptable in that they didn't really know what the Wii could do at the time, being a launch title, but if other titles i.e. Medal Of Honour Heroes 2 can make a decent online FPS, why can’t they?
It has been announced that Ubisoft are developing a sequel to Red Steel, which has the potential to be great, considering they know (hopefully) where they went wrong and can fix it. Nice and slow.
To sum up, Red Steel could have been much better, which is a shame because on paper, the concept looked great. Fair enough, it does the job, but with jumpy, hard to get used to controls and no online mode, this generally feels as another one of those rushed launch titles. I wasn't happy with Red Steel, considering some respected reviewers gave it a great review with a score higher than 90%. Maybe I'm missing something... Anyway in total i gave this game a score of 67%
Last edited by Thatch on Fri Apr 18, 2008 6:54 pm; edited 1 time in total
Thatch-
Number of posts : 54
Age : 30
Location : Glasgow.
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Registration date : 2008-03-30
Re: Member Review: Red Steel (Wii)
sean_t Thu Apr 17, 2008 1:45 pm
Nice review. Have only played a bit of this and must say that the controls were really awkward and the gameplay was quite dull. Didn't play it enough though to judge it properly.
sean_t- Number of posts : 33
Age : 31
Location : Ayrshire, Scotland
Achievement Points :
Registration date : 2008-02-04
Re: Member Review: Red Steel (Wii)
Chris Tue Apr 22, 2008 9:39 am
I really did not like this game and it did not live up to the hype for me but oh well. I traded it in for a decent enough price and it did give me some enjoyment I suppose 
Chris- Number of posts : 75
Age : 30
Achievement Points :
Registration date : 2008-04-10
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