Game Review - Red Steel

So, the first game I'd like to touch base on is actually a game I don't personally own. I heard a lot of bad stuff about Red Steel, a 5.5 at Gamespot. So I decided it would probably be safe to rent it off of GameFly.

Trivia: Did you know that Red Steel was the very first game ever announced for the Wii? Yep, no Mario, Zelda, Metroid, or any of those big hitters, but a completely unique and new game series not even created by Nintendo, but created by Ubisoft.

Story: The plot of this game is pretty solid, I can't complain about anything really, it's your typical kung-fu flick type of plot. It's only slightly better than a "The President has been kidnapped by ninjas." plot however. Basically, your girlfriend's dad is some Yakuza (japanese mafia) crime boss. However, some rival crime boss tries to kill him and kidnaps your girlfriend. It's up to you the 'Gaijin' (Foreigner) AKA American dude 'Scott', to rescue your girlfriend and save the world/Tokyo/yakuza crime syndicate, etc. It just so happens that you used to be a bodyguard so you already know how to use a sword and a gun fairly well, good thing!

Gameplay: When I first started playing this game, things felt a little iffy, and it felt really crappy and everything was hard to get used to. But, I think it was just a learning curve, I cranked down some of the sensitive of the controls from high to medium, and then started cruising through it. Around Act 2 of the game, Harry's Bar, everything started to work a lot better. There is a Multiplayer (no co-op) and Single player feature, I personally only have experience in the Single player aspect, which I imagine is the most important part of the game. So, let's break things down into gun vs. sword gameplay though.

The gun mechanics are very very solid, it acts and feels like a real shooter like in the arcades. Zooming in and out feels a little 'weird' simply because it's not how you'd expect to zoom in with a gun, maybe a button press or something to tune your aim or scope, but... moving your controller towards the screen to zoom, I just don't buy it. Focus (time slowing down) mode is where everything becomes awesome and easy, you can easily start aiming at peoples guns and making people submit to you. The first Act of the game without focus mode makes everything feel very... generic, but once you start freezing time to aim your shots it just feels a lot more complete.

Sword battles are where this game becomes a bit wonky, no matter what you do it always seems that you're not swinging the way you are in real life. If you take things slow and timed well it seems to work better, as if the game does not register your movements very quickly and you need to time things out like in a rhythm game. Overall though a lot of fights I usually just tried repeatedly to do some of my high respect (a point system for a rank at the end of the game) earning moves. If things got scary I started doing my 'special' ability which simply involved holding down the Z button and swinging down both the nunchuk and wiimote like a hammer, thus the move is called 'Hammer', or something along those lines. By doing that you can either ultimately win, or break their sword over time. Either way, it's pretty powerful throughout the whole game and speeds things along if you dislike the sword fights.

Levels: Fairly solid, some felt a bit 'linear' due to the fact there were doors everywhere and you could only open certain ones, and others felt really large and 'free roaming'. The bar and dojo designs as 'training grounds' was a really nice touch, and then again when those areas were expanded upon for later levels. One level REALLY stands out in this game though and that's the 'Tetsuo's Game' level. Basically, you're in a giant zany funhouse with all sorts of weird spooky and odd things occurring. It feels completely out of place from the other levels, and it was a ton of fun just because of how random and odd it was.

Graphics: I don't see a problem with it. I've never put the Wii up there with PS3 or 360 graphics, and therefore I didn't feel the need to say the graphics sucked for a 'next-gen console'. However, many people DO knock it because of the graphics and that's just silly. The graphics are about as good as any Gamecube/PS2 game if you ask me, and the odd 'clipping' around the outlines of characters I personally think adds a unique style to the whole thing, like they were aiming for some sort of 'XIII' comic book feel. While these may not be cutting edge graphics, the gameplay for this is what is really important.

Audio: was awesome, there was some awesome J-Pop that was thrown into some of the levels that just felt really awesome and fun. Everything sounds and acts as it would be, and overall I just can't complain. Sometimes the music just blended right in, and other times it would pop out at you, but that's how it is with almost every game soundtrack there are always those select songs that are just pure awesome.

Overall: While this game is 100% worth a rental, it may not be worth a purchase (at least not new, maybe at a used game price.) There are many things that hold this game back, there are indeed some bugs within the game, but nothing I experienced personally, and the sword battles are sometimes a ridiculous pain in the butt and totally offbeat from the shooting aspect of the game. Overall though this game gets a solid 7.8 review from me, it is nowhere near deserving of the horrible reputation it has received. I feel that a lot of this bad rep has been gained simply due to high expectations and the tons of hype surrounding this release title.

Short Version

Pros:
- Arcade shooter in your own home
- Solid rental title
- Decent soundtrack
- Overall good fun factor
- Really awesome 'Tetsuo's Game' level

Cons:
- Wonky sword battles
- Occasional glitches
- No real reason to replay game

Score: 7.8