EGX 09: Red Steel 2 Hands-On
I got the opportunity to play some Red Steel 2, and while the graphical quality of the game was high, unfortunately, I can’t say the same for the game itself.Nintendo had a lot on show at the Expo, and Red Steel 2 was just one of the games available to play on their console. However, despite advertising four screens for Red Steel 2, only one was available to play the game on. When the game became available, I jumped in, hoping that the wait would be worth it.
Presentation-wise, it was. The game looks great, a Borderlands style animation to the environment and surroundings, the full extent of the Wii’s graphics power being used (that’s not a joke, by the way…). The game’s detail is better than most games I’ve seen on the Wii, so that’s always a positive. The Wii isn’t a console designed to have stunning visuals, so it’s always a nice surprise to play a game where the graphical quality is high.
The graphics are very good for a Wii game, but unfortunately the graphics don't redeem the average gameplay.
This is where the praise ends though. When playing the game, you’d expect the Wii MotionPlus, touted for its improvement on the Wiimote’s functionality and responses, to work its wonders, but the game felt awkward to control, and the movements of the sword weren’t where I wanted them to be. The aiming cursor also had the tendency to be over-excitable, leaping across the screen, which made aiming at enemies quite difficult.
Along with this, the blocking system wasn’t intuitive enough, so I’d find myself getting hit a lot because I didn’t block in time, even if I’d moved the Wiimote into the block position in time. This was quite frustrating, but the game gave me a lot of health, so in the long term, it wasn’t necessary to block, which is another problem. The enemies have armor, and they take a lot of slices before you actually start taking health off them. You take very little damage from their hits, but it’s a little frustrating hacking away at the enemy with no reward.
In general, the game looked the part, but that’s as far as it goes. It’s a very good looking game, but every aspect of the game beside this disappointed me. I was expecting the game to be intuitive, with fast responses and an enjoyment factor, but I found myself annoyed at its sometimes clunky and slack control mechanics. You can see what was being tried, but the finished product is a very beautiful mess.
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