Red Steel

As the first Wii game revealed to the public, our French friends at Ubisoft had a lot of pressure to make Red Steel a really great game.  When word got out that Nintendo aided Ubisoft in hopes for the next GoldenEye 007 game, pressure built up even more.  When the developers announced a multiplayer feature, pressure and expectations ran wild.  When gaming journalists noted that Red Steel felt very awkward at E3 2006, developers must have went mad under the pressure and with the very little time tried to improve the entire control system.

Today marks the release of the game's final version.  The big, burning question is actually several small questions with very different answers.  Is Red Steel the next GoldenEye?  Is this as good as everyone says it is?  Did the developers finish the game on time?  Is this a must-buy title for the Wii, or is this just another rental?

As far as the controls since E3, the game has made dramatic improvements.  The developing team worked night and day to ensure a good shooter with responsive controls, and they pulled through.  This isn't to say that all of the bugs have been ironed out, there's still a few noticeable ones, but enough has been done to make the game worth a chance.

Take your heart medication, Jack Thompson.  The gun style is realistic.

It is important to note that the controls are a lot like GoldenEye, moreso than some players want to experience.  If you can play GoldenEye on the Nintendo 64 again without any gripes of how the control system works, then you'll be pleasantly surprised with Red Steel.  If you feel the system is archaic and outdated, then your views of the game may be a lot more negative than my analysis.

To ensure controller precision, the game starts off in front of a fish tank.  Your girlfriend, apparently connected to an underground crime syndicate, asks you to look at the fish in the large water tank.  Her voice guides you to look at each fish on the screen to optimize your movements and controller position.  While this seems to be a bizarre task, the game is calibrating your controls to ensure you know just how the game will run.

However, gamers have experienced some weird glitches in the control system.  When a player moves the controller out of a certain radius, the controls seem to flip out and spin you around a dozen times.  I experienced this after playing a sword battle once, as my arm movements were more broad in a sword battle than the precision of gun aiming.  If you are experiencing problems like these, try readjusting your sensor bar's position.  After placing the sensor bar below the television and resetting the configuration in my Wii options, everything worked fine.

While the gun controls are on-target, the sword play in the middle of the first stage is a bit concerning.  While still fun, the controls may not be what everyone expected them to be.  Underarm slashes, uppercuts, stylish moves and savvy attacks aren't something to expect in Red Steel, as the controls are limited to a few slashes, a parry move, and a method of evasion.  This still remains a great strategic fight, but players hoping to freely wave a sword around to their every move may feel disappointed.  Parry moves remain on the Nunchuk rather than the remote to block attacks and leave the enemy open for a slash of the remote.  In fact, the Nunchuk feels more responsive to your movements than the remote.  Still great fun to experience for the first time, but not what everyone hyped the game up to be.

With that out of the way, fans of GoldenEye's control system will experience a lot of nostalgia in the controls.  It's almost a shame that the swordplay is not involved in multiplayer, but we'll deal with the mess of multiplayer in Stage 2.  Let's just say this: four large stages, three types of gameplay, and that's all you seem to get with no indication of unlocking any others.  Again, we'll get into that later.

The developer mockups have been very close to actual stages.

There are some amazing effects in Red Steel.  While it may not compare with high-definition gameplay or superior graphics cards, the single-player mode looks a lot like GoldenEye with some major upgrades.  The stages are vibrant and colorful with a lot of twists and turns, each area is unique from one another with a great palette of color even on composite cables.  The enemies have a decent amount of intelligence to throw over tables to cover themselves and, best of all, environments change.  At one point, I had to blow up two explosive containers to make a hole in the wall to advance onward.  When I shot explosives in a kitchen to kill off a horde of enemies and closed the door, I reopened the door to find the sprinkler system kicked in with some nice water effects.

Could this game be just another first-person shooter if the controls weren't so unique?  That's very difficult to answer at this stage, as the gun controls and interactive environments really bring the game to life at the initial stages of the Wii revolution.  Another nostalgic part of the controls is that it emulates GoldenEye's slower speed quite well.  While many PC gamers cringe at the notion of slow gameplay, old-school gamers may find the style to be a breath of retro air.

Even though we're at a very early stage of analyzing Red Steel, this is definitely a game to try.  Whether it's worth a purchase or a rental is still up in the air, depending on how long the game lasts and how long it takes until multiplayer gets boring.  We'll go into all of that next time when a lot more time has been invested, so stay tuned.

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