First Red Steel 2 review 9.2 - Overall, Red Steel 2 was able to come from a bad game to create a true masterpiece.
gamingeek said:
Overall, Red Steel 2 was able to come from a bad game to create a true masterpiece. It's something that few third (and even some first parties) can top or come close to, and something that third parties should strive to be half as good as. It takes what we've all been waiting for and fills us up every bit.
Presentation: A unique blend of Japanese and Wild West styles mix with a futuristic setting to bring you a great atmosphere that's all its own. The game pops with style and oozes with creativity at every edge. The story is better than expected, if not the best you'll ever see. Menus are easy to navigate and look stylish. 9/10
Graphics: It's easily the best looking third party Wii game, and it even beats a lot of first party titles (except for the likes of Super Mario Galaxy). The cell shading looks great, it has some gorgeous models, environments, and lighting effects, the cutscenes are amazingly beautiful, and it all runs at a constant 60fps. The only thing it lacks is blood and gore to bring your hacking and slashing to life. If it had that, I'd easily give this category a perfect score. 9.5/10
Audio: A nice blend of traditional Japanese sounds and Wild West vibes. It's subtle, but it helps bring the world to life. The voice acting isn't bad, but it's definitely not great. Sound effects are pretty damn good. 8.5/10
Gameplay: We've wanted "that sword swinging" game forever, and now we have it. A mix of pin-point perfect gun slinging transitions smoothly with accurate 1:1 sword swinging. It takes a while to get used to, but the game tackles the learning curve well. The game itself has lots of depth through upgrades and side missions. It borders between first person adventure and first person shooter, which is great. There could be a little more enemy diversity, but that's just nitpicking. 9.3/10
Lasting Appeal: The single player is decently lengthy. Multiple difficulties, upgrades, side missions, and various other features will give you plenty of reason for multiple play throughs, on top of the sheer fun nature of sword swinging. A lack of multiplayer, even if it could be hard to imagine it, is a massive disappointment though. 8.2/10
Overall: 9.2/10 Steel 2 was able to come from a bad game to create a true masterpiece.
Saw this on the IGN boards:
"I play it and m+ is doing a great with the controls. The game stays at 60fps so that helps a lot! The thing is that you don't see your sword move with your hard/arm (1 to 1) like in WSR but all of your strikes move in the right directions. ALL OF THEM. When you hold "A" you will be in defensive mode and its more 1 to 1 there. Believe me. I'm been playing it about 5hrs +. I seen on IGN that the forward stab doesn't work... well it work for me every single time and I been doing it with fast forward motions. It doesn't use the IR for the forward stab too like i thought it would ( I cover the top of the wii mote with my hand). Pointing and shooting is great and very very smooth like metroid but better becasue you can change the bounding box and turn speeds. You can even change the turn speed when the cursor is off screen(m+ ). You don't have to swing hard because you can change the swing strength. "Enemy Lock on" is the best when turned to manual. You hold Z to lock and what ever character you are pointing at is the one you lock on to. You change enemies by press Z again."
"The difficulty isnt typical lame metroid prime style difficulties, where everything is the same except you take more damage and they take stupid amounts less dragging the combat out into tedium instead of simply making it more challenging.
On easy mode, even if you get surrounded, you only really have to worry about the guy right in front of you, and you can pretty much block all attacks no matter how you hold your block.
On normal getting surrounded is pretty bad, you have to block more, how you block is more important more often more enemies will attack you at once, enemies will block more.
Ninja mode ge3tting surrounded will end you fast, as all enemies in an area will attack you simultaneously without restraint, you will need to use all your moves, particularly the counterattacks, constantly keep moving....."
I can't watch this video, slow connection. I assume its from a freaking pirate.
I hear its a really great boss fight.
Anyway... The game looks good but has evident flaws, I don't think it's worth 9/10 in graphics. The recently added "dust" effects in place of blood don't look as sharp as they could and there are obvious low-poly PS1-like elements in some videos, like one that showed a truck or something that you blow up and its wheels were hexagonal or something lame like that. Lots of low quality elements that the Wii can certainly do better can be seen, even though the presentation is top notch and does hide a lot of it under a cool setting and atmosphere it seems.
Yeah, seems like a pirate site. IGN guys said so and even the link says that the ISO is on a page there? Bleh.
I think the visuals look like a 9 from the gamersyde videos, I mean at least the style and frame rate factor in hugely. I'm more worried about repetitive design, if its just walking from one section to another, repeating fights ad nauseum. The review did say it was more like a First person adventure with quests though, so might be cool.
As for Red Steel 2, it doesn't have tracking as good as Wii Sports Resort, so if it has lag or whatever (which I don't think it does) that doesn't mean it's the motion plus' fault. How dumb is it to still use third party software to judge the capabilities of the Wii?
Its combat system however is very deep and engaging.
Full 1:1 mechanics alone won't make combat engaging for long. You need proper traditional mechanics for blocking and attacking and countering and you need to throw in some gesture based attacks to spice things up, like the finishers and some other special moves in Red Steel 2. You even get a special that lets you throw a weird blast similar to how you throw a frisbee in Wii Sports Resort, able to send it to three rough directions (left, center, right) depending on where in the arc you release the buttons.
The melee combat can be described as Zelda on steroids. You circle strafe enemies, using A to dodge in all directions, either to get to the sides or behind the enemy, or to move further back, or close in. Then, you slash away at any angle you want with motion plus as shown in that gif. Holding A down blocks most melee and ranged attacks, except for strong attacks which need you to either hold the sword vertically, or horizontally, to counter their orientation. You also can't just waggle away, especially to make strong attacks against enemies that need them (to break their armor or break their block stance or whatever else) as you need a certain swing strength to activate them, so you'll find yourself playing it somewhat realistically, not waggling in front of you, but first swinging back to get room for a large and strong swing. This probably makes some people think it's not 100% reliable, they likely don't make a strong enough swing (but you can change the sensitivity).
Then you get all sorts of move upgrades (some from the story, others you purchase, alongside new guns, and further efficiency upgrades both for the special moves and the guns, as well as health and armor stuff) that are mostly gesture based but enhance the combat greatly, including a parry that has you pushing forward with the remote and nunchuck just before an attack to make the opponent stagger, charging your sword with A+B then doing the upward slash to launch them, or a downward strike to send a wave around you, it has many different moves that make the fighting system as robust as any good beat 'em up, having you exploit the weaknesses of the specific enemy type (there are many), not just 1:1 waggling. It is by far the better option for a deep engaging game, Ubisoft will surprise you all when you get it.
It has flaws, but the combat system is way cool and up there with the best of the brawlers, not to mention the shooting on top of that for even more variety, which while it has The Conduit-like settings for full control customisation, it also has cursor smoothing as seen in Metroid Prime 3 (smoothing is a separate option too) which makes the cursor movement feel much tighter and better than in lesser Wii shooters.
[...other posts followed, then he spoke of the camera when asked about it...]
The camera, like I said, has The Conduit-like options, with Metroid Prime 3-like cursor smoothing. It's excellent. For melee, you lock on enemies like in Zelda in first person. It's just as tight as in those games. Depending on the lock-on options you can have it so that camera movement stops when you hold Z even if you're not locked on an enemy, so that you don't move it around while attempting to swing, or looking up or down as you do so. You tend to use it like that when smashing stuff in the levels (there are tons of breakables and secrets to find apparently, the game is mostly linear but it has enough exploration for secrets and some backtracking as in the Metroid Prime games, though after certain points you can't backtrack further anymore, and move to completely different areas with their own exploration etc).
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Some info from GAF
[N]Gamer Closing Comment (Dutchies!!!)
Pro's: The swordfights in the game have been worked out wonderfully en the controls are flawless. The awesome cyberwestern vibe is impressive. Cons: The uneasy missionstructure and the (a tad to) big environments takes out the pacing of the game. Keep some ice around for your wrists. Score: 8.5/10 - MotionPlus's first test, and it passes with flying colours - You can swing like a maniac, (and so, performing slow but heavy blows) but that won't help against powerfull opponents. There is a lot of room for more subtle movements during sword duels. You'll learn a lot of moves, which is awesome. These moves are demonstrated with real footage, by some chick with a white tshirt. Bit weird. - The weapons are there, but aren't that important plus they don't add anything but can be used for fighting enemies of from a distance. Katana is way more effecient. In the end, it comes down to a well balanced use of guns, hitting hard and subtle/tactical attacks. - Mission structure is meh. You go to a Casion, dojo or office and you accept a mission. But after traveling towards the mission location and completing it, you have to backtrack, which takes to long. About halfway in it's possible to accept more mission (due to more people dishing out missions) but it takes way to long to get back. - Graphics are great. The vibe coming from the surroundings don't feel forced at all. Except for the opening sequence, feels like Max Payne. - Leveldesign isn't that great, levels are to big and don't provide that much. Real map isn't there. except for little HUB indicator, but that doesn't help. Variety of objects is lame to, there are garbage bags though with lots of money to use for upgrades. Shit is everywhere, even in things like a royal palace. The safe craking bits are fun though, becaus eyou use your Wiimote in a fun way. - Overall RS2 has it's flaws, but it's an intense game that's worth your time. It has a lot of moments you won't forget and because of that you'll take the sore wrists for granted. Ubisoft delivers on it's promiss. |
For the Power Unlimited (Dutchies!!) Review, written by resident Nintendo fan Jurjen:
"The promiss of intense fights with guns and Katana's in Red Steel 2 have been fulfilled, but the rest isn't as intense. I found it a bit to cliché to be fully taken by it" Score: 6.5/10 - Controls work! Fast and convincing - In the options put sensitivity on "relaxed", so you won't swing yourself to death - Graphics are pretty, cool vibe. But, he couldn't get drawn into that world. Felt dull and cold/distant. That's because of the story, cliché characters, couldn't take the world serious. Lack of blood also doesn't help when interacting in that world. Misses "Warmth, intimacy". Red Steel 2 nailed the controls, but it should offer more than just that. |
Apparently it lacks both 'warmth and intimacy' and 'blood'.
Won't see that kind of statement in movie reviews.
robio said:Yeah but Ico isn't a game.
Indeed, it has transcended the medium.
New interview here:
http://www.vg247.com/2010/03/22/interview-red-steel-2s-jason-vandenberghe/
"This is probably the best third party wii game we've played in recent memory. A great deal of thought has gone into every aspect of Red Steel 2. The visual design is stellar, but most importantly its evident that ubisoft has put the necessary amount of time into making sure the controls and the balance are (almost) pitch perfect. It's been a long time coming but finally we have it. After watching Shiggy waggle the wii remote on stage at E3 2006 and having our ballooning expectations deflated, we now have the sword game we all wanted. It's taken new technology and the best part of three and a half years to get it, but precious few will argue that it hasn't been worth the wait. Red Steel 2 is finally here and it's awesome."
93%
I agree. They are going to show how motionplus can add value to your game and then everyone is going to be using these systems for years to come.
It slashes exactly the way you swing, showing the sword on screen while you're flailing about would obstruct the view, especially with the on screen effects and jaunty camera angles.