Review

Never get involved with the daughter of the head of a Yakuza family. That would appear to be the lesson in UbiSoft’s Red Steel. Within the opening minute, a quiet first meeting swiftly turns into a failed assassination attempt by another family and without any prior firearms training you find yourself, gun in hand, protecting your father-in-law to be from dozens of heavily armed goons. Hardly the most original plotline I think you’ll agree, but it serves as a good excuse for the wanton violence that follows.

Out of all the games shown at Nintendo’s E3 press conference for the Wii earlier this year, this was the one that caught my eye the most. Surely if there was one genre that was going to benefit from the new controls then it was the first person shooter? Had Nintendo finally found the perfect replacement for a mouse and keyboard?

Well if Red Steel is to be believed the answer to that question is both “yes” and “no” and I need to go into a bit of detail to explain why. Using the remote for aiming works well at times but because you also use it to turn it’s impossible to shoot right while turning left. Having a lock-on button mapped to the remote compensates this a little but it’s very fiddly and takes far too long to get used to. It’s far from perfect and throws out a warning to the developers of Metroid Prime 3.

It’s not all bad news. Where the controls come into their own is when you put down the gun and pick up your sword. Swinging the remote attacks with the blade whereas any movement of the nunchuck wields the defensive strike from the other hand. You can also dodge to the side and move around with the joystick. It works well but ultimately doesn’t feel as satisfying as gunning down enemies with a shotgun.

Also disappointing is the linearity of it all. The age-old problems of locked doors and corridors blocked with rubbish mean that there’s usually only one way to go. As the levels get more difficult you’ll also find that there are more and more armoured vests to be picked up to aid your progress. Handy. Especially as dodging bullets becomes increasingly difficult in later levels.

Visually it’s fairly impressive at times: enemies fall brilliantly as they die and look good up close, explosions are suitably meaty and there’s no hint of slowdown but suffers from the type of glitches we thought we’d seen the back of long ago. An ill-advised attempt to add atmosphere by using comic-book style frames to tell the story between levels doesn’t work either and is all the more frustrating as you can’t skip them. As I mentioned before, the story is incredibly flimsy too and the script and voice acting leave a lot to be desired.

If you stick with it, you will get some enjoyment out of playing Red Steel as there are some inspired moments (a shootout in a car wash is a personal favourite) but it’s nowhere near as good as I’d wanted it to be. Let’s hope that other developers learn the lessons of its failures quickly.

About the Review

Platform

Nintendo Wii

Developer

UbiSoft Paris

Publisher

UbiSoft

Released

8th December 2006