Red Steel is an average game in nearly every catagory
-Good level environments including one outstanding level
-The controls are pretty good
-Well paced action between shooting and sword fighting
Complaints:
-Subpar graphics
-Bad voice acting
-A lot of little bugs and quirks
Red Steel is a pretty good Wii launch title but is nothing more than an average FPS at its core with a few variations along the way.
Red Steel follows an American who gets mixed up in Yakuza affairs after his Japanese girlfriend is captured and flown to Japan. The girlfriend's father is a high ranking Yakuza official, and the kidnappers want his family's sacred sword the Katana Giri. After a brief stint in America the playable character goes to Japan to protect the Katana and to save his girlfriend. The story is not bad at all, but at points it seems just like another generic FPS.
The big draw for this game is the ability to use the wii remote and nunchuk to shoot and slash your way through many foes. The controls are pretty good, but there still were a few problems with them. You aim with the wii remote on screen, and shoot with the B button. While doing this pressing the A button locks on to targets so you know where they are when they take cover. In order to zoom in you must hold down A and move the wii remote forward. This mechanic is kind of neat but does not work very well. Another problem with it is that using the focus shot(similar to Max Payne slow down time) it is the same control as the zoom function. Therefore, when you want to just zoom the focus shot kicks in automatically, which is an issue. The wii remote and nunchuk are also used for sword fighting and both mimic the actions of swinging a real sword, but the controls are not responsive enough.
The game spans the length of about 12 hours with each mission lasting anywhere from 20 minutes to an hour and a half. I thought some of the missions were too long at points, and the game does not save your progress unless a mission is complete. The gameplay is the same throughout just shooting your way through a large number of enemies, and then the generic sword fight thrown in here and there. Overall the game was fairly easy, but the sometimes non responsive controls added unnecessary difficulty.
The graphics and audio in the game are pretty bad. Nearly every aspect of these categories from character models to horrible voice acting is under achieving. Throw in a few bugs and glitches and you have a very unpolished game.
Overall Red Steel was a fun play even through some of its flaws. The controls work well enough to make this a decent FPS shooter on a console designed for that genre. Throw in the fact that you can get the game for 5$ nowadays at gamestop, which makes it worth a purchase.