Red Steel

 

    The mere concept of motion controls makes imaginations run wild, as pretty much any movement can be turned into a game in some way. Of course, some ideas end up being far more popular than others, and it didn't take long for people to look at the Wii Remote and go “could this be used to shoot things?” Some of the most common ideas tossed around for the controller from the moment it was unveiled were to either use it as a gun or use it as a sword, and with it the desire for more hardcore games on the Wii that would go with those ideas. In comes Ubisoft with Red Steel, a launch title that combined both ideas into a first person shooter, excitedly showing the game's possibilities with unintentionally hilarious trailers in hindsight. Of course, when the game came out, I'm pretty sure that's the moment where most interest in hardcore games for the Wii completely evaporated.
    You play as the rather generically named Scott, a pretty typical silent protagonist that lives in New York and works as a bodyguard for a Japanese woman named Miyu. One day, Miyu is kidnapped by a yakuza gang, and holds her for ransom in exchange for a sword from a rival yakuza gang, the also rather boringly named Katana-giri. The rival gang entrusts Scott with the sword because he shows great prowess with it or something, and he goes off to Tokyo in search of his girlfriend. If this plot is already hinging on the side of uncomfortable, don't worry, it gets worse. Every single Japanese character speaks with exaggerated stereotypical accents, and will randomly insert stock Japanese phrases into otherwise English sentences, like a middle schooler that just discovered what anime is. It's all just grossly dated in a way that isn't even worth dwelling on long; were it a film, it'd be a two dollar DVD at the bottom of a Wal-Mart bargain bin.
    So about the controls, since it's what the game was sold on most. Credit where credit is due, the shooting controls aren't actually that bad, and are mostly standard to how FPS games on the Wii would be controlled going forward. You use the Wii Remote and Nunchuk, using the analog stick on the Nunchuk for movement and the Wii Remote for pointing and shooting. To turn, you point the Wii Remote towards the edge of the screen you want to turn to, and you can perform auxiliary interactions with a simple flick of the Nunchuk. It's a setup that actually works rather well with an FPS, especially since it grants the unique advantage of being able to aim at targets without having to physically turn, like with a mouse and keyboard. To get one thing about the game clear straight away, the game is at its best when you're in smaller rooms with enemies close by, since you can find creative cover spots where you can pick off multiple enemies at the same time; it's in those moments where Red Steel becomes at least decent.
    Unfortunately, the game isn't at its best most of the time. The game as a whole is very drab and ugly-looking, with muddy desaturated textures and unimpressive character animations. Despite this, the framerate is constantly chugging trying to maintain it all, and in larger levels with more enemies, it can sometimes slip into single digits. This makes any more open area an absolute nightmare to deal with, as not only do you have a bunch of enemies all shooting at you, but the framerate makes it impossible to react with the speed necessary to counter it, if the enemies don't decide to just teleport behind you. When the game introduces sniping sections, it can become almost unplayable, as not only do you have to deal with the previous issues, but the enemies are placed way out in the distance, meaning you're often left sitting in one location for minutes on end trying to find the one single speck of pixels that keeps instantly killing you.
    Of course, that's not all that's offered on the one-way train to mediocrity station. Sometimes the game will randomly stop you from using your guns to have a one-on-one sword fight with someone. During these, you swing the Wii Remote to swing your sword, use the analog stick to dodge, and fling the Nunchuk to parry attacks. The game tries to introduce more complexity on top of it with special moves and maneuvers to use against stronger foes, but I found that simply flailing the sword randomly was the most effective strategy a lot of the time. When you defeat an enemy, it brings an element of moral choice to the game, as you can choose to either kill them or spare them, with sparing earning you “respects”, plural noun. From what I can tell, this respect system effects absolutely nothing, so it makes me question what the point of it even was.
    I think you get the point by now that Red Steel is simply a buggy, poorly-aged FPS that was clearly rushed to make it out in time for the Wii's launch. Even if they had had more time to fix up things like the framerate, it would probably still be a pretty sour experience on both a story and gameplay level. On that note, I should bring up the bug that made me stop playing; during one of the many combat encounters, one of the enemies clipped through the floor and remained there indefinitely, long after every other enemy was defeated. Something about this enemy must have been important, because not being able to kill them meant I couldn't progress any further, effectively softlocking my game. I guess he must have been desperate to escape from this game, and honestly, I can't blame him.