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Red Steel - Extended gameplay footage
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Latest Red Steel screenshots
- News Ubisoft using MotionPlus in Red Steel 2 [27]
Red Steel Review
Wii Review by Keza MacDonald
Whilst working through the first few levels of Red Steel, I kept being reminded of GoldenEye, and I couldn't figure out why. It wasn't the weapons, it wasn't the excellent level design (unfortunately that's something Red Steel cannot boast), it wasn't similar environments or familiar set-pieces or anything else immediately obvious. Then, suddenly, I realised that it was because it looked like GoldenEye - these were the same blocky characters, fuzzy textures and juddering framerates as I was seeing in 1998 with my N64 running through a blurry old RF lead. Obviously it's not quite as bad as that, certainly not when you remember to switch the Wii into 480p mode, but Red Steel's sheer ugliness is immediately and continuously noticeable. It looks half-finished, like a work-in-progress, linear levels punctuated by story-board sequences of stills that try to pass themselves off as cut-scenes.
And it's a real shame, because Red Steel has its moments. The immediacy of the control and small selection of inspired settings (a geisha house, or a Japanese garden, or a twisted amusement park) sometimes combine to make this an exhilarating, explosive action experience. There is an undercurrent of chaos running through Red Steel, and when the screen explodes into action and enemies come running out from every corner and forklifts start spontaneously blowing up and you're on your feet, shooting wildly at the screen whilst trying to run backwards into cover, you want to love it, you really do. But Red Steel feels just as often dated and incomplete as it does thrilling, and though the controls sometimes do much to make a great experience out of a fairly average game, it's never quite as good as you want it to be.
Red Steel follows the story of a faceless, voiceless American named Scott as he tries to infiltrate the Tokyo Yakuza in order to rescue his fiancée, the daughter of an influential boss whose Los Angeles hotel is ransacked at the beginning of the game. It's not exactly the most believable portrayal of the mafiosa underground in the world, but it does provide a plausible excuse for setting the majority of the game in neon-lit urban Japan, which is occasionally its saving grace. The missions themselves are extremely linear, although you do sometimes get to choose which order to pursue them in. With two or three exceptions, they are straightforward - get from one end of the level to the other, shooting lots and lots of gangmen and pulling out a sword for the more challenging foes. It's not a story that you'll particularly care about, but the B-movie voice acting and plot twists fit the action well.
The shooting itself is excellent. As any lightgun game fan will know, controllers just cannot match the satisfaction of physically pointing and shooting at the screen, and a headshot is infinitely more rewarding when you've aimed it yourself. The auto-aim is perfectly balanced; it helps alleviate the occasional twitchiness of the controls without making success feel cheap. Holding A locks onto specific enemies and moving the remote closer to the screen zooms in on them, which quickly becomes second-nature. The focus system, which involves using the 'ancient ninja technique' of stopping time to disarm or outright kill multiple enemies at once, is a little superfluous, but it works well. Especially towards the end of the game, sparing lives by forcing a surrender is rewarded more often than mindless blasting.
The sword fights, unfortunately, don't live up to their promise. The controllers seem to have serious trouble picking up anything other than wild swinging gestures and there is no semblance of accuracy, which is troubling. Stupidly, blocking and striking at an opponent's sword arm are supposedly performed with exactly the same motion, and due to the general haphazardness of the whole thing the easiest way to defeat opponents is to perform the same powerful special moves over and over again or, worse, just swinging the controller aimlessly left and right and seeing what happens. At best, you're exchanging blows - there is nothing here that resembles skilful fencing. Sword fights are often infuriatingly placed right at the end of sections of levels, too, forcing you to replay from the last checkpoint and go through five minutes of tedious, repetitive shooting before dying again as soon as the swordsman appears. It's tempting just to shoot them as they approach, but of course, you can't do that - nor can you bring out the sword to finish off an enemy in the gunning sections.
Red Steel is an old-fashioned game at heart, linear and cheesy and a bit inflexible, but also responsive, explosive and often greatly entertaining. It has inspired moments and a substantial single-player venture, but the whole thing is undermined by the terrible presentation and the all-permeating impression that Red Steel isn't quite finished, from the story-board-sketch cut-scenes to the jerky animation and weird, basic, placeholder textures. It's never enough to stop Red Steel from being enjoyable, but in an age where we expect our FPSs to be beautiful as well as action-packed, it's just not up to standard. Red Steel is a prototype - it does just enough to show that a Wii first-person action game could be genuinely superb, but sadly, it never capitalises upon that potential itself.
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Latest Videos
Red Steel - Extended gameplay footage [6] 6 December, 2006
Red Steel - Multiplayer [43] 26 October, 2006
Latest News
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Ubisoft using MotionPlus in Red Steel 2 [27]
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Ubi shy on Red Steel 2 [12]
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More Red Steel games? [9]
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Red Steel multiplayer video [6]
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Ubi targets seven for Wii launch [21]
Latest Screenshots
16 October, 2006 [102]
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The linkage someone provided in the forums some weeks back....... the pre-release pictures of "in game footage" followed by the actual screen grabs captured from the production version. Now that was an eye-opener.
Such a shame, in pre-release shots it looked very very decent and the fact that the controld were broken months ago in preview code made you feel like they'd fix it in time. |
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PearOfAnguish
12/12/06 @ 14:33
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Very mixed reviews on this one. GamesTM said almost the complete opposite, that the shooty parts were dull and the sword fighting was the best thing about it.
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I'm surprised there no mention of the controls not working well. Every other review I've read of this said the whole control scheme sucked big time. Particularly how you turn by pointing the at the edge of the screen, which means that you can't turn and aim at the same time. I'd like to know if the reviewer felt that the controls worked really well, or if they didn't but just didn't mention it in the review.
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"nor can you bring out the sword to finish off an enemy in the gunning sections."
Actually you can. Theres a "Tanto" attack you can do at enemies by juggeling the nunchuck at enemies up close. Unfortunatly you may only be close enough for a nano second and might have you reloading instead if your not in melee range... so its easier to just pop em. |
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JediMasterMalik
12/12/06 @ 14:49
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^^Yes it can. :s
Edited 1 times,
most recently on 12/12/06 @ 14:49
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SeesThroughAll
12/12/06 @ 14:50
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The Wii controller cannot tell where it is in 3D space
Therefore there will not be the light-saber game you are looking for It can tell the position in a 2D projection though. Combine that information with that given by the accelerometers, and it should handle everything just fine. Red Steel's problem with the sword fighting was the implementation, not the controller. |
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"The Wii controller cannot tell where it is in 3D space"
Perhaps the Wii SDK can't give developers x,y,z coordinates of the controller, perhaps it can, i don't know. But to say: "Therefore there will not be the light-saber game you are looking for" I think with a thorough understanding of the Wii controller and how it interacts with the sensor-bar, combined with some inovative programming; I don't see why a developer won't be able to make something which is 95% of the way to what we all want from a Lightsabre Duel game. |
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Hmmm, the game didn't get the bad review I was expecting after reading other websites.
Apart from Zelda, which doesn't really need the Wiimote at all, most of the other Wii games, which do use it more thoroughly and/or effectively, seem to be getting 6 or 7/10 scores. Somewhat ironic really but I suppose the instant accessibility and fun-ness of the Wii means a lack of games with "real" depth and that's the reason for the disappointing scores for most of the launch games. |
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The single-player mode is about ten hours, the multiplayer is completely inconsequential, split-screen shooting at each other, I think the controls work very well indeed, and the Wii remote CAN tell where it is in 3D space. It registers towards the screen and away from the screen with as much sensitivity as it s2D axis.
As for the mixed reviews... well. LOADS of people MAY have been reviewing this on unfinished code, as far as my understanding goes, after about three hours' play in the Wii house, because review copies simply did not exist before the launch. This is the UK retail version. |
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chupachups
12/12/06 @ 15:05
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Launch game, no surprise. The DS was full of 6/10 games in its first few months, let's just hope the Wii follows the same learning curve and we see some more decent innovative games by next Xmas.
Edited 1 times,
most recently on 12/12/06 @ 15:06
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ChimneyBug
12/12/06 @ 15:07
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@Darren
I think the reason for the disappointing (that is, above average scoring) scores isn't about the machine, its as you mentioned, they're launch titles :) but in saying that, we got elebits and trauma centre over here! ;) |
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This had soo much potential, why couldn't they have delayed it to make it a proper good game!!! Ubisoft is copying EA in too many ways.
I'll wait for a more polished(less buggy) FPS on my Wii, which probably won't be comign from Ubisoft Or EA P.S WHY IN GODS NAME is Trauma Center not coming out in Europe, There's not even a release date, I hate you Nintendo!!!
Edited 2 times,
most recently on 12/12/06 @ 15:15
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Stormflood
12/12/06 @ 15:12
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"The Wii controller cannot tell where it is in 3D space."
But with some skill, it could be effectively faked. Surely? |
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You don't need to know the position in space for a light saber game. Relative movement and rotation is definately good enough. For something like that.
As long as you have clearly defined actions for attacking and blocking. I'd actually set it up so that you have to hold a button down for blocking or attacking. |
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Manic Miner may be right, the Wii cannot be sure of your location in 3D space if you're not pointing at the screen (if you are it can calculate relative depth from the screen and orientation), but that's beside the point.
Sports Baseball shows you don't need positional information to do the kind of movements required by a sword-fighting game. With a bit of clever AI and some good movement recognition algs (which is really AI too) I can't see a reason why it couldn't be done. |
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Pac-man ate my wife
12/12/06 @ 15:25
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Yep, I'd agree totally with this game. I'm enjoying it more than I expected, but it is flawed to hell.
It's a proof-of-concept rather than a 'proper' game but it gives hope to a Halo/Goldeneye genre defining entry sometime in the near future. |
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My fear is that this game will have extremely disappointing sales figures and might therefor discourage developers to make these kind of games...
That said I read a report that the controls for Far Cry (also ubisoft) were very very good... Shame the graphics are on par with the xbox... I'm not sure about Red Steel though... I fear I'll finish zelda before christmas and then have nothing to play for for those 2 precious days I don't have to work... |
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MisterFalseName
12/12/06 @ 15:49
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It's a 7 for me. Brainless shooting fun.
They should have made it like Serious Sam, and dispenced with the hacknied story though. The graphics look fine to me, and this is coming from someone who has played Quake 4 and FEAR on a reasonably high spec PC. Guess I'm not that much of a graphics whore... (And the multiplayer is ace). |
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The problem with a sword fighting (or lightsabre) game is that you need the feedback of having your blow hit the opponent's blade and be diverted. Otherwise where you're holding the remote isn't going to match where your sword is on the screen.
For example: I do a big slice downward, but the enemy blocks it halfway through. In real life my remote is pointing at the ground. In the game my sword is pointing at the sky. It totally messes up and 1:1 control scheme. |
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Keza,
Thanks for your reply and confirmation that you thought the controls worked well. I personally wasn't having a go at your review, I was just surprised that you hadn't really mentioned in your review whether the controls worked well or not. Especially when all the other reviews I've read have really panned them. I was genuinely interested to hear you opinion on the control scheme, and now I have. Thank you very much. Ceatlan |
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"gizmo: really don't think that's true. It does seem capable of complex real-time movement interpretation. You can waggle your bat around in Baseball - it's no the same as a button press. "
Can it detect it if its slung over your shoulder, as it would be in real-life or does it have to be pointing at the sensor bar? I may have to go and buy a Wii just to experiment. |
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