gamingeek said:Visuals are wow, the frame rate really helps and it's like concept art come to life. I curse HDTVs though because I get some jaggies around edges where it would be smooth on an SDTV.
Yeah, I haven't noticed any jaggies on my SDTV. The game has razor sharp crispness. 
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Agnates said:Yeah, they should have made the cut scenes in-engine, I prefer the look of the in game graphics myself, sharper and more cartoony, the cut scenes have all sorts of advanced lighting effects that don't quite fit in, among other issues. Got this for my birthday, it's freaking ace, and pretty much like all the pirate impressions I was posting. I dunno what the reviewers bashing it are on. It's got issues but nothing that really detracts from the awesome game at hand which is more or less a new experience wrapped in a familiar formula. Have they advertised it more?
happy birthday buddy
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Listen to Wu-Tang and watch Kung-Fu
Agnates said:Yeah, they should have made the cut scenes in-engine, I prefer the look of the in game graphics myself, sharper and more cartoony, the cut scenes have all sorts of advanced lighting effects that don't quite fit in, among other issues. Got this for my birthday, it's freaking ace, and pretty much like all the pirate impressions I was posting. I dunno what the reviewers bashing it are on. It's got issues but nothing that really detracts from the awesome game at hand which is more or less a new experience wrapped in a familiar formula. Have they advertised it more?
Happy B-Day. How old are you?
I don't have an issues with this game, sure there is no great story motivation but the design and gameplay is all there and so satisfying to play and beautiful to look at. Great game.
I love the way they started to mix enemies, hammer guy with long range shooters and grunts. Armoured crew too. The level design isn't repetitive or an issue because the game is all about the combat and the different enemy AI changes how you play. I just got to the tommy gun guys.
I played past Payne and did the elevator bit. You know how call of duty has you start at one point of a level, move around it then partway through you can see the rest of the level which you've played? It did some geometry like that. It's production values are through the roof which puts it up there with a very small minority of wii games that have a non-gimped (on rails) design with great visuals and audio.
If you like a game like Metroid Prime, I would say that as a traditional game, this is up there as one of the systems best.
Amazon UK: ranked 9th in Wii best sellers
Amazon France: ranked 22 in Wii best sellers
Amazon Canada: ranked 22 in Wii bestsellers
Amazon Germany: ranked 26 in Wii bestsellers
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Listen to Wu-Tang and watch Kung-Fu
Gun codes C/O Dash Kappei.
357 Magnum The Tataro: 370402
Barracuda Cord Industries : 360030
Swords:
Nihonto Hana Sora Katana of the Katakara Clan: 389330
Kuro No Ken The Lost Blade of the Kusagari Clan: 412094
bugsonglass said:33% of the canadians here bought it. mind, that means just monkey
Iga_Bobovic said:Just bought Red Steel 2 impressions will follow when I can be arsed to write them. So don't hold your breath.
A nation holds their breath...
I'll be very interested in your breakdown, even if it's a few words.
Played the game for about an hour last night.
I generally dont play games for more than an hour each time. That said I can see how reviewers who had to sit there and incessantly play a game from start to finish, in a rush to get the review out. I can see how they got the repetitive complaints.
It's a really strange situation, but assuming you aren't forced to play a game through at high speed for a deadline - and can dip in and out when you want, you wont get those repetitive blues.
gamingeek said:Played the game for about an hour last night.
I generally dont play games for more than an hour each time.
Really?
What you see going on with me and FFXIII is a rare, rare, rarity!
gamingeek said:Amazon UK: ranked 9th in Wii best sellers
Amazon France: ranked 22 in Wii best sellers
Amazon Canada: ranked 22 in Wii bestsellers
Amazon Germany: ranked 26 in Wii bestsellersUK wiiins.Mekere and the Canadians here, hang your heads in SHAME.
Yipe. How many copies do you want Mekere to buy?
bugsonglass said:33% of the canadians here bought it. mind, that means just monkey
Hey, there's only 10 of us with wii's over here.
I just closed 26 btw, and yeah, that was a present to myself. Really enjoying it so far, I'm quite past that point so I won't discuss details and spoilers but I really love the variety of the fighting system, it's right up there with the best beat em ups in my opinion. I hope Ubisoft make more like it, and maybe partner with Lucas Arts for a game
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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The optimist proclaims we live in the best of all possible worlds while the pessimist fears this is true. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ |
Okay, I guess it is time for my Red Steel impressions.
First some little background info. This Thursday we started training with swords at my ninpo dojo. So it seems suitable that I would give some impressions, given that I have some experience with katana sword techniques.
Okay back to impressions, lets start with the presentation. The graphics obviously look pretty. It really looks like a clash between East and West. You have all the cowboy saloons and all these Tokyo like neon signs. Rolling Tumble weed and Japanese like temples and gardens with giant carp statues. The theme remains the same up until now, but there is still great variety within that theme. The menu's also look very slick and the picture you see before fighting an powerful enemy/mini boss is just awesome.
The technical side is also nice. It runs very smoothly at 60 frames per seconds. It has nice draw distance and the loading times are very manageable. The sound is nothing remarkable and the voices sound like a Saturday morning cartoon. Kinda reminds me of Bravestarr, with the futuristic western theme and the snake, bear, etc techniques. The voice acting is not as bad as some review say, it is fine. The story so far is pretty simple, but again not that bad. Just like a Saturday morning cartoon.
But that is not important, how is the fighting system. Well to be short it is awesome. WM+ allows you to have all the different direction of swings. This is best showcased with the wooden dummies. You can decapitate these dummies with a horizontal attack. Cut them from shoulder from hip with a diagonal attack from either upwards and downwards directions. But you can also slice them horizontally from head to groin, or even better, from groin to head.
You can do fast strikes or more powerful wide strikes. You have 3 different sensitivity settings and relaxed is the best, the other 2 ask you to swing like a loon. Fun but tiring for most of you fatasses. You can block strikes by pressing and holding A. This will block all strikes both horizontal and vertical. But it wont block power strikes from the enemies. A horizontal power strikes needs be blocked by keeping the wiimote pointed to the screen and vertical by blocking it overhead by pointing the wiimote at the side.
Then there are the lock on. Which you should put to manual immediately. You point at an enemy and press and hold "Z". It feels like Prime and Zelda in control. You can use the A button to dash around, just like Zelda and Prime.
The combat begins simple, but soon you earn more moves, and it becomes very varied and awesome. Each of these special attack will cause a status change. For instance a running stab will cause your enemy to fall over. Opening him up for a Zelda like downward stab. But each special attack has a finishing animation. When a enemies has a certain status like fallen over, stunned, or on his knees, you can use a certain special attack to finish the enemies in a brutal and awesome manner. My favourite being, grabbing an enemy by the head with one hand and putting the gun under his chin with the other hand and then pulling the trigger.
Fighting technique is half of the battle system, the enemies are the other half. It begins with stupid weak enemies that are easily dispatched. Then the game introduces other enemies. A dual wielding gun enemies, hammer guy, enemies with armour that requires strong slashes to knock off, robots that are similar to the Metroid Prime 3's flying drones. Enemy encounters take place in enclosed areas. It is not like Okami, you still have enough room to manoeuvres, but there is a forcefield that prevents you to simply run away. If you kill all enemies, you can move on and you energy is recharged.
The game really mixes up the enemy encounters. It throws like 2 brutes 2 gunners and a armoured enemy. Do you take down the gunner first? Or do you get rid of metal head? It keeps changing up, I am now up to the point where enemies block your strikes, causing you to use horizontal strikes when they block sideways and horizontal strikes when they block overhead. Sometimes the enemy encounters are really difficult, like when to hammer guys attack you in a small enclosed area.
The battles are really in your face. You dash from enemy to enemy, hit, block, see a stunned enemy. You quickly stab him. Your sword enters his stomach and life leaves his body and he crumples. You dash back, launch an enemy in the air. Jump after him and knock him down, then slash again to jump on him and stab him in the chest killing him. You really do feel like an agile ninja. Shoot a guy, he kneels over, than a horizontal attack kills him instantly. You see a warning sign, that an enemy is about to attack you from behind. You do the spinning attack and kill him instantly with a backwards stab. So awesome.
That brings us to the final part, level and mission design. The level design is kinda a weird mix between Metroid and a linear experience. You see lots of alternative doors, that you cannot open until you have chosen the correct mission. You always see a green arrow that shows you were to go, but there are side missions that require exploration. The missions are chosen in certain missions hubs, the more you complete the more that level opens up. Until you reach the end of that level and move on to the next level. The game warns you that this is the point of no return, so if you want something to do, go do it.
The level design goes like this. You get a mission to save Tits, I mean Timiko. You succeed, and in her hideout you can accept a missions. You do them and you will reach Jud's hideout and accept another missions, sometimes multiple ones at the same time. One of them is the main missions and the others are the side-missions. Slowly and surely the level opens up until you reach the end of the point of no return. Some missions take place in Zelda like dungeon, but with very simple puzzles. So an Okami like dungeons then.
The side-missions are usually destroy 8 cars, get rid of the wanted posters, find stolen money. little boring, but they do give you money that can be spend upgrading you weapons RE4 style. Exploring the levels required to complete these side-missions, but exploring in itself is enjoyable. The environments look lovely, and there are plenty of things to smash. Bottles, trash cans, telephones, fans, lockers all hide money. Money is sucked towards you Okami style, very addictive and weird. Why is there money hidden in strong liqueur? But honestly the level design and missions are just excused to get to the awesome battles.
So in short, It is like a mix between a brawler, Metroid and Zelda with an added sprinkle of WM+ awesomeness.
Great:
Theme
Graphics
Battles
Good
Level design
Meh
side missions
story
characters
Bad
It is associated with that crap that is Red Steel 1
conclusion: this is what we have been waiting for when we first saw the unveiling of the Wii. this is the sword fighting game we all want. Striking is not 1-1, but close enough to be effective. Hit is horizontally, then diagonally, then upwards is all possible. Blocking kinda works like a simplified version of real sword fighting. And later on an even learn a parry move. You really do feel like an badass sword fighting samurai cowboy while playing this.
Played 1 and a half hours-ish. Maybe 2 hrs.
Visuals are wow, the frame rate really helps and it's like concept art come to life. I curse HDTVs though because I get some jaggies around edges where it would be smooth on an SDTV.
FPS controls are excellent. It's so smooth and there is a very slight, almost imperceptible auto aim when you want fine tuned control. Very clever and works very well. In fact the shooting controls are so good I almost want this to be a straight up FPS.
The story so far is bleh, the game is a setting and great gameplay not really a story based game. It's very arcade like, you go and get missions at a dojo and then go kick ass, go back to dojo and learn new moves and get new weapons.
Sword controls are ace. It's not 1:1, even when defending or holding Z. But actually playing this game makes you appreciate our folly even wanting 1:1 sword games. Sure you get a kick seeing the sword hilt move with your every twist, but playing a game with that kind of fencing like intricacy would be literally impossible.
Like completely impossible. Not until 3D works so well its like real life depth perception and not until they invent force feedback so advanced that it will literally jolt and stop a controller in its tracks, 3D positionally. And also, if an AI attacked you with that sort of fencing like 1:1 it would be nearly impossible to defend unless you had a big old shield auto block. Which defeats the purpose entirely.
However what you do get is very fast and very accurate motion control. It works like this for the slashes.
But not the same for when he's just moving it about to look cool. Really accurate. One problem I initially had was when breaking items in the environment, because the wii remote is used for aiming as well as sword motion, if you make small movements the game is half caught between thinking you want to turn quickly and whether you want to slash so your view is unsteady for a moment. Simply holding Z when slashing makes all the difference.
I already had the Halo like experience of enemy mixing and it works really well, having to adapt to different AI and strengths. The level design isn't bad either, there is vertical design in there and the gameplay is so satisfying. It really is like a first person brawler, they are in your face and the combat plays like Metroid Prime with a sword, copying many of the controls and lock on systems. Which means that it plays like a first person zelda, in gameplay terms.
It's really good so far, just got to the payne boss fight.
One thing I dont like is the pre-rendered cutscenes which are jarring compared to the cleaner, sharper looking in game graphics. Maybe its because there is a little compression on the video?