Red steel dissapointing..

Ace Pace · Post by **Ace Pace** » 2006-11-18 11:32am

Red Steel introduces a promising control scheme both for shooting thugs and for slashing them with samurai swords, but wraps it in a buggy, thoroughly unimpressive game.
The Good: Interesting take on first-person shooter controls; nice explosions and destructible environments.
The Bad: Clunky sword-fighting sequences slapped into the middle of all the shooting; inane story chock-full of painful dialogue and voice acting; numerous noticeable bugs and glitches.
Red Steel is like a typical PG-13-rated, straight-to-DVD action movie: It can be fun for a while, but it's probably going to leave a bad taste in your mouth. The analogy runs deeper than that. In the game, which is rife with bad dialogue and generic shoot-outs, you're an American bodyguard who must learn the way of the samurai so that he can defeat the Japanese gangsters who've kidnapped his girlfriend. Of course, you'll be spending much more time gunning down yakuza thugs than engaging in any swordplay, and unfortunately, neither aspect of the game is particularly good. Nor is the game's presentation, which looks dated and downright ugly in spots. Red Steel basically proves that the Wii Remote, in spite of its unconventional design, can do at least an adequate job of letting you control a first-person action game. And to some extent, the controls do feel novel, enough to help make a mediocre shooter seem at least somewhat special.

It continues on, but thats the wrap.

Brother-Captain Gaius · Post by **Brother-Captain Gaius** » 2006-11-18 11:40am

So it's like Die by the Sword?

General Zod · Post by **General Zod** » 2006-11-18 11:44am

On the other hand, IGN gives the Twilight Princess fairly good marks and is fairly objective about it. Promising enough for me to go about picking it up this January.

Praxis · Post by **Praxis** » 2006-11-18 12:44pm

To be honest IGN's TP score annoyed me a little, compared to their other scores.

Basicly, the only thing they could find to complain about was "no orchestrated music!". I've seen other reviewers that actually pointed out that Nintendo went with MIDI because MIDI can be dynamically adjusted so as your situation changes so does the tone of the music, and those reviewers actually decided perhaps for this game MIDI was a better choice.

IGN docks two full points in two different categories because they keep whining about lack of orchestrated music, and it got a lower score than Metroid Prime.

But oh well. The final scoring is all that annoyed me; the entirety of the review itself is actually fairly objective.

Qwerty 42 · Post by **Qwerty 42** » 2006-11-18 04:27pm

Praxis wrote:To be honest IGN's TP score annoyed me a little, compared to their other scores.

Basicly, the only thing they could find to complain about was "no orchestrated music!". I've seen other reviewers that actually pointed out that Nintendo went with MIDI because MIDI can be dynamically adjusted so as your situation changes so does the tone of the music, and those reviewers actually decided perhaps for this game MIDI was a better choice.

IGN docks two full points in two different categories because they keep whining about lack of orchestrated music, and it got a lower score than Metroid Prime.

But oh well. The final scoring is all that annoyed me; the entirety of the review itself is actually fairly objective.

IGN and Penny Arcade both say that the controls are perfectly alright, so the confusion that GameSpot aroused in me is dispelled.

Post by **weemadando** » 2006-11-18 04:28pm

No, not at all like DBTS. It looks like its all canned fighting moves. Not free-form like DBTS.

Now if someone would just update DBTS and re-release it I'd be a happy man.

Stark · Post by **Stark** » 2006-11-18 05:04pm

I don't believe anyone who says a) that they could play DBTS properly and b) that they actually liked waving their sword around like a feather dusters. It looked RIDICULOUS, your hardcore fight-man and his rigid arm-swinging...

Post by **weemadando** » 2006-11-18 06:38pm

It didn't work that well, but I still preferred it to canned animations.

I feel it was far and away better than Severance, Rune or any other medieval melee game for the PC. I had about 14 specially designed macro moves that just kicked arse. And certain characters worked a lot better than others with the mouse. Ogres for one.

DPDarkPrimus · Post by **DPDarkPrimus** » 2006-11-18 06:45pm

Praxis wrote: Basicly, the only thing they could find to complain about was "no orchestrated music!".

That, and "no voice acting!"

Not that you'd understand what they're saying anyway.

Vendetta · Post by **Vendetta** » 2006-11-18 07:19pm

Stark wrote:I don't believe anyone who says a) that they could play DBTS properly and b) that they actually liked waving their sword around like a feather dusters. It looked RIDICULOUS, your hardcore fight-man and his rigid arm-swinging...

I could play DBTS properly.

If by Properly you mean running around waggling my sword around and giggling like a lunatic whenever bits got chopped off of me. Which was, I felt, rather the point of the whole endeavour.

Stark · Post by **Stark** » 2006-11-18 08:03pm

Hey, that's how *I* played it!

Arthur_Tuxedo · Post by **Arthur_Tuxedo** » 2006-11-18 08:29pm

I played it by waving my sword wildly, wondering why the controls were so sloppy, and then raising my eyebrow when my sword was brought directly across the neck of an unarmored goblin, but only caused his health to become yellowish instead of severing his head. I mean, honestly, if you're going to have dismemberment and so many different hit locations, why was it not one-hit-kill on vital areas?

You know what I'd like to see? Bushido Blade 3 on the Wii.

Post by **Vympel** » 2006-11-19 08:54am

No, I'd like to see Bushido Blade 3 on the PS3.

And, what a surprise, Red Steel is as crap as it looked in the gameplay videos.

Archaic` · Post by **Archaic`** » 2006-11-19 09:15am

Opinions are apparently quite mixed there, Vympel. Never trust the score of a single solitary review. Wait until some other people have actually had a chance to play it and talk about their experiences.

This guy for instance.

Post by **Vympel** » 2006-11-19 09:41am

An anonymous guy claiming to work for a magazine on a bbs? He apparently works for Nintendo Magazine UK or some such, but really, his criticism of the review strikes me as defensive.

"They're not focusing on the key factor of Wii gaming, fun" ?

Come on. It's as if the apologies for the shitty graphics (god is that an ugly game) never stop. Just take the licks. The review was quite clear that the game wasn't fun, graphics were a single paragraph mention.

Arthur_Tuxedo · Post by **Arthur_Tuxedo** » 2006-11-19 10:48am

Vympel wrote:No, I'd like to see Bushido Blade 3 on the PS3.

And, what a surprise, Red Steel is as crap as it looked in the gameplay videos.

I'd like to see Bushido Blade 3 period, but one-hit kill sword fighting with the Wiimote (assuming it's implemented much better than Red Steel apparently was) would be gaming heaven.

Post by **Ghost Rider** » 2006-11-20 12:07am

And if SquareEnix EVER dares to try again with another game that isn't FF....you might see a glimmer of Bushido Blade 3.

But honestly? When cows begin flying is closer to reality. Bushido Blade 1 & 2 weren't big hits and Square has steered away from most alternate materials ever since the PS2.

Stark · Post by **Stark** » 2006-11-20 12:47am

Ever since they lost piles of money and switched to fanservice, you mean?