Red Steel (Wii) Review
Posted by Morakoth Tang on 12.15.2006
Do you have what it takes to take on the Yakuza?
Title: Red Steel
Publisher: Ubisoft
Type: Shooter
Players: 1-4
Red Steel for the short time it has existed has gone through hell and back. The jury is all over the place with this game. Why is this case? Could it be because it was the first game that introduced the Wii’s capabilities? Like Zelda this game carried a lot of weight on its shoulders. People expected so much from it. Did it deliver? We shall see…
Graphics
The infamous Forest Gump said in his movie, “Life is like a box of chocolate, you never know what you’re going to get.” Never has this statement been so true when applied to Red Steel. The game’s presentation is awesome in the front end, I was so excited. The neon color lights for menu items and the simplicity of design all lit my retinas and made me in a Joey Lawrence voice say, “WHOAA. This is a great front end.” As soon as I got into the game I saw some nice 3d work. The textures were clean, the models nicely done, the lighting was great and the atmosphere was set, but then they started talking. Why did they start talking? What happen there? The lip sync was completely off, the voice acting sounded terrible and the illusion of me being there in game disappeared like water vapors in the air. Lip sync animation is part of what makes the graphics in the game great, but I’ll continue with this later ---more about the presentation.
The models, the textures and the lighting in game all looked great. I must admit Red Steel did deliver to my expectations considering the Wii’s graphical power. The game is beautiful, but there were too many inconsistencies. After defeating the first block of play I reached a cut scene. To my surprise I see anamatics—this is a term in animation that consists of storyboards, rough animations to time out the real animations. I understood what Ubisoft was trying to do with this comic book like presentation. They were trying to mimic a film noir style, but they failed, they lost in this department. Max Payne attempted this too and it pulled it off, and that game was made a long time ago. There’s no excuse for that Ubisoft please… in Red Steel II play some Max Payne. Red Steel’s graphical presentation is as random as chocolate in a box.
Gameplay
Red steel in the game play department has been very controversial. The story is pretty straightforward, but there are some twists and turns thrown in the plot. It starts you off as an American name Scott who is the fiancé to the daughter of a Yakuza head. You are on your way with your fiancé to meet him for the first time when he is ambushed. Now, you've been thrust forward into a crazy war of deceit, murder, plotting, and war. Welcome to Red Steel people! Now that we know the premise of the game lets get into the actual play mechanics. Red Steel is a unique fps. It is an fps with sword fighting. The game is controlled with both the Nunchuck and Wii Remote. The Nunchuck performs a few different functions. The analog stick controls the character’s movement, left, right, forward, backwards and the degrees in between. The C button allows the character to jump, which is very valuable to evade damage quickly. The Z button allows the character to crouch. And lastly, thrusting the Nunchuck forward is context sensitive. Its function depends on what the player character is doing. If the player is in a gun fight, thrusting it forward will reload the gun, throw grenades or perform melee attacks on near by enemies. If the player is in a sword fight he’ll perform parry attacks and dodges. The Wii Remote in gun fights is used for aiming and using your special abilities such as focus shots. The B button is used to fire your gun, but during sword fights none of the buttons are used only the remote and it controls the swing of your sword. Now we’ll continue with the good, the bad, and the butt ugly of the controls. A lot of the complaint that comes from this game is the way it handles the camera. Let me tell you now, be patient, stick with it and it will come…a fun game that is. The controls have multiple flaws, for instance if you move the remote out of the sensor bar area it will continue in the direction you left it. The camera will spin for at least half a second after you move the Wii Remote back into the correct position. There’s no way to avoid this but to learn how to deal with moving the remote carefully between the sensor areas.
During sword fights, the moves that you make will not translate 1 to1 but it does detect origin points, meaning if you swing right to left, in game it will swing right to left. The Wii Remote as everyone suspect is an incredible tool for FPS’. I was able to pull head shot after head shot, precision is not problem in the game. The problem is the camera. How does an fps have camera problems you say, well as I mentioned earlier if the Wii Remote moves away from the sensor area, it wigs out and continues to move the camera automatically in the direction it left. The problem exists because Ubisoft used the whole screen as a bounding box and moving across the screen is incredibly slow. Players have a tendency to over turn their Wii Remotes to try to compensate for the slow movement and while doing that they move the Wii Remote out of the sensor area causing the crazy camera problems. We all know that half a second of automatic uncontrolled turning is death!! In addition to that, the turn around time is another symptom of the camera scheme Ubisoft choose to go with. I timed it to be three fourth of a second to do a complete 180. Again in the world of FPS this is a big “No No”. I don’t pretend to understand the cause of this camera problem, but it seems Ubisoft tried to correct or relieve this issue by putting a lot of game play action on a static screen instead of running from one zone to another. The sword fighting in Red Steel is genuinely fun. As you progress through the game, you’ll learn new moves that you would want to apply over and over. Sword fights behaves as the exact opposite to the gun fighting. Its responsive, intuitive and easily one of the best features in the game. Even though the sword fights have these highlights I don’t feel a complete connection when I hit the enemy. This could have probably been fixed if there was a 1 to 1 movement, a more detailed animation and more effects and even perhaps some…blood?!
Sound
The music in Red Steel is awesome. I love the Japanese themed pop songs to the serious techno fighting music. How can we not love Japanese accented girls singing English lyrics?!?! The music never gets stale it’s always appropriately layered from level to level. I say it’s pretty catchy to even play in your car if your feeling up to it…well make sure no one is there with you while you’re attempting to sing the catch with a Japanese girl accent. The voice acting in Red Steel on the other hand is completely horrid. Here I don’t understand what went wrong, like the cut scenes they completely went second rate on this. The Japanese dialog sounded like it had an English accent and the English sounded like it had a Chinese accent. I would have thought all the characters where Chinese if I walked in on someone playing the game during the cut scenes. Being totally immersed in the game is absolutely hard with the Voice acting. Other dialogs in the game are totally ridiculous, for instance I’m in a gun fight with people who shot at me first, and then they scream out MURDERER! What?!?! Ubisoft designers, did you guys play this game with the volume down, why is this even written in the script? If it wasn’t for the soundtrack I’d play the game with the volume way down and listen to the sound effects emitting only from my Wii Remote. On that note let’s talk a bit about the sound on the Wii Remote. We all know the speaker on the Wii remote is not Bose quality nor will it ever be, but the sound effects emitting from the speaker is a welcome addition. The reloading and the sword clinging effects are cool details that Ubisoft threw in. I don’t know why I’m admitting this but there was a portion in the game where the remote rang and I actually tried to answer it like a phone, hey it’s embarrassing but it goes to show that little additions add to overall value.
Lasting Appeal
Red Steel as a stand alone single player game isn’t that long. It’s pretty straight forward, there’s no exploring no side quests just the plotted out game the designers intended. It’s a good 10 -12 hours of single player game in there and they even added an alternate ending; however, the multiplayer game is what adds to the lasting appeal. It’s a local multiplayer, up to four players. The screen divides into four sections. There are a couple of modes, the basic death match, team death match and the unique Killer mode. Since we all know what death match is about (kill anyone and everything) I’d like to focus more on Killer mode. In Killer, each player fights for themselves like death match, but at the beginning of each round the players receive a secret objective through the Speaker of the Wii Remote. The objectives range from stay alive until the end of the round to protect a mystery player. There’s a time limit for each round objective, the first player to complete his/her objective wins. This is a truly fun mode but the only way to play take advantage of it is to have four human players, not 3, not 2…four only. Ubisoft should have made CPU stand ins, but I’m guessing they didn’t have enough time to implement it. Overall multiplayer is a fun experience and I truly had fun “OWNTING” the other players. I know that it’s not Ubisoft’s fault for not having this game online, but I seriously believe that would contribute to a far greater lasting appeal.
Fun Factor
I have to say compared to the current selection of Wii titles Red Steel’s fun factor is not too shabby. The single player experience is fun considering the control flaws. The game itself offers a lot of interesting concepts. The level design and good selection of weapons adds an addictive element to multiplayer. The game was designed in a way for you to almost beat your own best efforts. For instance you start off favoring weapons that has mass destruction and rapid fire, but then as you go on you tend to trade those for more precision handguns or rifles. As I was playing I attempted to take out enemies with the fewest amount of shots by using my focus system. Ubisoft in a way invented a game within a game and I give them credit for this. The only problem that decreases the fun factor in Red Steel has to be its camera, and turning issues. If it was not for this flaw and it is a big one, the game will have delivered almost on all its promises. Moving onto multiplayer, Red Steel’s multiplayer game is fun but it is still missing something that could have made it a bigger hit. Perhaps there could have been another mode in which players raced through a levels or who could have pulled off better kill to death ratios, I don’t know. Another missed opportunity is that it only permitted players to play the FPS game against each other and not engage in sword fights, which is probably the best part of the game in my opinion. What could have been more bad ass then to engage in a one on one sword fight to the death?
The 411
As I mentioned earlier, Red Steel held a lot of weight on its shoulders. It promised a lot of unique and fun features. It was the first revealed Wii title, and at the end of the day I say this game is worth checking out; it has a lot to offer. Yes is has some pretty bad camera actions, and some goofy voice acting and some other small problems, but it also provides an interesting unique game that’s only playable on the Wii. The level designs are awesome, the lighting in game is pretty, the texture in most levels look great and the play mechanics if you stick with it offers a pretty fun experience. Give this game some time and you could see what it can offer. Don’t write it off because of all the negative press that it has received. Read the reviews, watch the videos, but you won’t know until you play it yourself with an open mind.
Graphics
7.5
The in game graphics looks great and there’s a cool noir art style to it, but there are some inconsistency. I like the overall presentation of the game, but the horrid lip sync, voice over, and poorly executed cuts scenes docked some points away.
Gameplay
7.5
The game has some serious camera control issues and the turning is slow; however, it makes it up by adding unique game play and maps.
Sound
7.0
The music in game is pretty awesome, but the voice over are pretty awful.
Lasting Appeal
6.0
The single player game last about 10-12 hours and that’s that, but the multiplayer experience adds a few more extra hours.
Fun Factor
7.5
Get use to the controls and you’ll have a fun game experience, especially in multiplayer Killer mode.
