We were able to dive through several of the game’s early levels, as our lead character made his way through lustrous locations set in Japan and America. The majority of the levels we played were based within buildings, but there was still a fantastic variety in architectural design for these areas. As strange as this may sound, this was actually the first time I had even played the console – as you’d imagine, the fear of aiming wildly around the screen began to quickly sink in. Quite surprisingly though, the controls are actually considerably responsive to your movements and are easy to understand within a matter of minutes. Despite this, Red Steel is still a relatively complex game to wrap your mind around, with there being plenty of control movements to understand.
Red Steel features three settings of sensitivity, which ultimately prevents you from having to make outrageous movements to aim and shoot. You’ll only need to make small movements of the wrist to move the cursor around to aim, open doors, pick up weapons and reload – all of which that makes Red Steel so attractive for avid first-person shooter fans. Rather than having to frequently press additional buttons to open doors and reload, in Red Steel you’ll be able to do all of those things on the fly just by moving the nunchuck controller up or down.
Crazy Japanese hairstyles part 1...
What is surprising is that there are a number of moves to pull off just by swinging either the nunchuck or Wiimote controllers, as well as pressing the various buttons that are on the controllers themselves. Admittedly, it can become quite overwhelming early on just to remember some of the movements and buttons and what they do, since some movements have several uses. For example, you can move the nunchuck upwards to open doors and push over tables for cover, swing it downwards to pick up weapons and to reload your weapon and a side motion to stab enemies within range. You’ll also have the various functions of the Wiimote that can cause further confusion - you can lock-on to enemies by pressing the A button, and then zoom-in on them by moving your Wiimote in a forward motion (towards the screen). The noticeable downside to aiming is that it’s difficult to understand just where you need to place your Wiimote before moving it forward to zoom-in. In most cases we were forced to lean our entire body forward to effectively zoom-in on a target, making it much more difficult to maintain balance whilst aiming.
Another issue that we noticed is that Red Steel doesn’t opt the typical PC first-person shooter control methods. Rather than having your character move as you adjust the cursor, you’ll need to position the reticule towards the edges of the screen before your character reacts. While it isn’t necessarily a huge problem, it certainly reduces the smoothness found with many PC shooters; and makes Red Steel a little harder to control at times of urgency.
Thankfully, the sword fighting mechanics are a bit more fluid and intuitive; allowing you to have more control over the actions made on screen. The game only picks up on vertical and horizontal motions as you swing your Wiimote, and identical motions with the nunchuck as you try to parry attacks. It works really well as it feels as though you’re putting in the force to swipe and parry attacks, giving you the illusion of being in complete control. You’re also able to side-step attacks by pressing the C button on the nunchuck whilst moving in any direction.
Red Steel relies more on your ability to find cover and utilise your surroundings rather than quickly rushing in and blasting enemies away. Enemies are typically quite aggressive with their firing, and they’ll use cover frequently. A lot of the areas within the game are fully destructible, allowing you to utilise your surroundings to clear paths. For instance, blowing up fuel barrels or cars are perfect for destroying areas or killing nearby enemies. Whether it was because we were playing an unfinished build or we were just too good, Red Steel is a relatively straightforward game to play and very rarely offered much of a challenge; with the ability to regenerate your health by simply crouching not helping either.
...and crazy Japanese hairstyles part 2.
While the controls do have several iffy aspects and can use some improvements, other areas of the game highlight how good Red Steel is. Load times are fast, and the overall look of the game is superb. The unfortunate thing though is that Red Steel suffers from an incredible amount of jaggies (PS2 quality anti-analysing), which is disappointingly quite noticeable in all of the Wii games we’ve seen thus far; and grows as a concern for Wii gamers.
There are a few minor positives within the game that, while aren’t anything particularly important, they just make the game that bit more appealing. The Wiimote has a sound device in it that allows you to hear when you reload a weapon (there will be other purposes for it in the game, but that’s all we found). In addition, after completing a level you’ll be given rankings based on your ability throughout the level, such as accuracy and how much you respect your enemies by not killing them when defeated. Receiving high scores in these areas will also unlock new features, which works as a nice incentive to replay the game.
You’d have a hard time passing up the fact that Red Steel feels very much like your old arcade shooters like House of the Dead and Virtua Cop, with a little bit of GoldenEye thrown in for good measure. In the sense of the old arcade shooters, your movements made corresponds with the actions shown on-screen, giving you more control as to where you’re shooting and what you actually want to shoot; and GoldenEye mainly due to the fact that the missions, locations and overall style gives you an old reminiscence of the classic title. Whether it’ll be just as good, remains to be seen.
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