You assume the role of Scott, a bodyguard turned Don Juan who has a thing going with the hot “Eurasian” girl he was hired to protect. Her father Sato is naturally a big shot in the Japanese underworld, and of course is the target of a rival gang’s attack at the same time you are meant to meet him and get permission for his daughter’s hand in marriage. What an appallingly ironic outcome! Conveniently enough, you used to be a bodyguard, so it’s straight to the nearest gun and then on to uncover a deep plot against Sato and the mysteries of an all-powerful katana blade. There really aren’t any awards for creating a deep and enthralling plot, but it works well to let the player travel to all kinds of cool locations in Los Angeles and Tokyo.
The atmosphere of the game is perfect for those who have an affinity for everything Japanese. You won’t find any factual information, but it’s a decent (if exaggerated) representation of Japanese-American turmoil. The voice acting is pretty bad - some characters speak with perfect sentence structure and grammar, yet add such a thick, fake Japanese accent it becomes difficult to understand. The biggest design problem lies with the cutscenes, which are in fact animated paper cutouts, presented in a comic-book style narrative. There are two reasons a developer would do this – because it suits the game’s style well (e.g: XIII), or they are so hard-pressed to create everything else from scratch that they resort to simple options for cutscenes to save time. Red Steel clearly falls into the latter category, and while the scenes serve their purpose, it’s painfully obvious how much better it could have been with fully 3D animated movies.
East meets West....again.
Here’s what you’ve all been waiting for – the verdict on the combat. To put it simply, running through the levels and blasting enemies with pinpoint accuracy is immensely entertaining. Movement is controlled with the Nunchuk analogue stick, while looking and turning is operated by pointing the Wii Remote. As the white crosshair on the screen is moved in any direction, your view begins to move with it, and increases in speed as the Wii Remote points closer to the edge of the screen. It works very well, and allows for accurate shooting at various points on the screen without completely sacrificing peripheral vision – as is the case with other FPS titles, given that the crosshair remains in the very centre of the screen at all times.
The Wii Remote can also be rotated to twist the gun sideways and pop some caps gangsta’ style. This isn’t especially functional, but serves an important purpose of increasing immersion. Other motion-sensing controls involve reloading and zooming. The Nunchuk is quickly flipped upwards to reload or open a door, and pushed down to pick up a new weapon. If the A button is held down on the Wii Remote, then pushed forwards and backwards directly towards the TV screen, the gun will zoom in and out at your will, as well as “lock” the camera onto the highlighted enemy, providing a better view for aiming.
Some deep secrets were hidden within ancient Japanese legends, and surprise – you can learn them! The biggest new feature is the ability to stop time, and target multiple enemies for some quick-draw shooting. Once a time meter is filled after shooting multiple enemies in rapid succession, the A button can be held in conjunction with C to stop time. As the meter empties, you can target whoever is on screen for rapid decimation, or their weapons to disarm and subdue the opponent. Disabling your opponents rather than killing earns respect points, which are handy later in the game when branching missions paths open up.
There's no blood, but it's still red.
Weapon switches are controlled with the D-Pad, and another recent trend of shooters (along with the 30-second battery, thankfully absent here) is the inability to carry more than two weapons. Yes, Halo takes the blame once more. Whatever happened to carrying a gazillion weapons at once, laughing manically as you issue the hurt? In any case, the weapons all feel suitably powerful, and the standard pistol actually receives glorious recognition, due to the motion-control allowing for far more realistic and accurate headshots. The Wii Remote even gives feedback and sound effects from the speaker when reloading. Very cool.
Speaking of sound, the music does a very good job of combining traditional Japanese folk music with extreme action pieces. Heavy music kicks in as a fight begins, then reverts back to atmospheric tunes when all foes have been dispatched. You'll even come across some very catchy J-pop songs while playign through some sections - which for any fan of J-pop is a surprising and veyr welcome addition. The guns and explosions are all suitably loud, and when several enemies are bearing down on you in a Pachinko parlour with the clattering machines ripping apart as you reload, it's a very satisfying audio experience.
True, you do need to remain alert and controlled while playing, and any lapse in steadiness will result in random screen movement. This is offset by the vastly intuitive and supremely fun controls that raise the excitement levels so high, you’ll find within moments you’ll be sitting on the edge of your seat. It may tire you out a bit quicker than a marathon laz-e-boy session of Half-Life 2 on the Xbox, but Nintendo never claimed that the Wii would play the same as its competitors. If you get tired after a few hours (which is when it’s recommended to take a break, regardless of what game you are playing), then pick up a quality title on a different console and relax. There is no “best” way of playing, only “different”.
As with every criminal investigation, a seedy bar must be visited.
Red Steel isn’t perfect, far from it. The crosshair seems to be a tad twitchy, but strangely never when it matters. Usually it strokes off for a split second or two when walking down a corridor, but never during an intense firefight. This may be due to some unannounced loading causing the jitters, but rest assured it hardly diminishes the experience. Other bugs are also present, with some strange levitating enemies and quite jittery physics being more common than desired. The Nunchuk sensititvity could stand to be a little better, as could grenade throwing – also controlled via the Nunchuk. Sniping is also an issue, given that the sniper rifle zooms in far quicker than ordinary guns, and as such requires an extremely steady hand. However, one could imagine that real sniping requires just as much focus and skill. It’s still loads better than automatic, random twitching when sniping using analogue stick control in, for example, Metal Gear Solid. If mistakes are made, they are your mistakes and can only be improved upon.
The other gameplay addition to Red Steel is sword combat. Most reports on this are true – it really isn’t up to scratch. You control two blades; the first being used for attacks (with the Wii Remote), and the second shorter blade for parrying (the Nunchuk). Moves are pre-set animations, so a swing in any of the general four directions will result in a standard attack each way. The enemies attack with regular swings which can be parried by shaking the Nunchuk, and power attacks which need to be dodged by holding a direction on the analogue stick and pressing C. You can also unlock stronger attacks as the game progresses, but they don’t improve upon the clunky responsiveness. The swordfights don’t come all that often, and are usually over very quickly, so they don’t detriment the core quality of the gameplay. For a first attempt it’s passable, but a repeat of the same general concept without any vast improvement isn’t really acceptable.
To round off the gameplay is the multiplayer component. It’s a very standard selection of modes and levels, with customisation not much deeper than that of Goldeneye. Split-screen is the only option, and the lack of online play isn’t a criticism of Red Steel itself, but rather of Nintendo. Hurry up about it! Getting a bunch of friends together for some very animated shooting action is great, but the whole split-screen method is soooo last millennium. In short, multiplayer works just fine, and should provide ample longevity for those finished with the single player game.
The graphics genuinely look this good.
The graphics in Red Steel are extremely good, and trump most of what was seen on the GameCube. The biggest problem lies with anti-aliasing - there are a few too many rough edges. The characters also seem to have a thin white aura surrounding them, and from a distance they can actually look like paper cutouts. However, there are a number of environment details that are nothing short of stunning. Particularly excellent scenes include a traditional Japanese garden bathed in sunlight, a back alley of the Shinjuku district saturated with neon, and the depths of an exploding factory – the heat of which melts the surrounding air as you rush to escape. In summary - it looks great, especially for a launch title built from the ground up.
Many gamers crossed Red Steel off their “buy” list when anticipating the Wii launch, given the negative reviews. Here’s a better idea: put your Wii Remote down, head out and pick it up. Why? Because it will instil complete confidence, within the first hour of playing, that the Wii works. If the superb controls in Zelda aren’t enough proof, the recreation of such a classic genre in the form of Red Steel should convince anybody.
Truth be told, no one had a clue what to genuinely expect when the Wii arrived, but now everyone can get their hands on one, it’s been proven through this launch title that the console will be able to compete with the best of them. Problems remain in the form of a very standard physics engine and random bugs, but these issues can and do appear on every other console. What must be said is that the Wii handles first-person shooting very well with the radical control. It’s nowhere near perfect, but if a launch title that completely overhauls a classic genre is this good after the very first try, then what some developers have up their sleeves is surely going to be history in the making.
Adding a control system is something that could be introduced on any console. The gameplay still comes from the coding and on the wii developers are limited theres nothing that can be done about it.
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