Through Nintendo’s discretion, Ubisoft unveiled Red Steel a few weeks back, but little information was available at the time. A bare amount of details surfaced and needless to say, people were left hungry for more; some even questioned the whether the game should have been shown at that point or not.
Nintendo was right to designate Red Steel as the first Wii game to be revealed for several reasons, some obvious at first, but now that the veil of secrecy has been lifted it become even more apparent that this was the game to show. Red Steel is going to be a killer-app for the Wii, no question about it.
The basic gameplay principles were revealed before E3 2006 -- players will be able to slash a sword with the remote, and walk around using the analog stick on the nunchuku attachment. Gunplay is also handled with the remote; the game will switch to the proper combat mode automatically. What was unrevealed was how big of a part the accelerometer in the nunchuku would play.
By twisting the nunchuku players will be able perform several actions. For instance, to open a door you’ll twist the controller like a door knob; during swordplay twisting at the proper moment will parry an attack leaving the opponent vulnerable to a counterstrike. It seems like a small addition, but the accelerometer makes a huge difference and adds a lot of depth.
It’s important to note just how well Red Steel controls. Any worries I had about the Wii and its remote were washed away after several seconds; it’s spot on. It works just as you’d imagine it to. During gunplay the remote looks around like the right analog stick on a dual-analog controller would. The sensitivity is sharp, and there’s absolutely no lag in looking around whatsoever. Naturally, pulling the trigger on the bottom of the remote fires the gun.
During swordplay the view locks onto the opponent, so there are no camera worries. The remote is then used as a sword, and strafing is controlled through the nunchucku’s analog stick. As I mentioned before, twisting the nunchucku will parry attacks. You can choose to slash narrowly or widely, but it seemed to work best with wide slashes as pointed out by the Ubisoft representative at the booth.
Gunplay is handled with expert care, so the game plays as well as any top-tier first-person shooter. The guns feel properly weighted, and there’s something satisfying about actually pointing where you want to shoot and having it happen. In the demo alone there were three weapons available, and while there isn’t an official count on how many will be available having that many in the demo says good things.
The environments are extremely interactive. All the basic FPS interactivity is there -- vehicles explode when shot enough, lights can be shot out, and boxes can be tossed around. In fact, destroying certain elements in the environment will damage and sometimes kill enemies. Most every surface covered in glass breaks when shot and bullet holes riddle almost everything if shot as well. I didn’t see any exploding barrels, but how could they miss an opportunity like this to make them available? While there are body specific shots, it feels like enemies don’t react as realistically as they could. Bodies react as well as they do in any other FPS, but for some reason felt like they should have been doing more. Perhaps it’s because of the control scheme being so new.
Using the Wii remote takes some adjusting, but it becomes natural quite quickly. It’s a similar feeling as to the first time you play an FPS with a mouse and keyboard, or the first time you ever used dual-analog. After around five minutes anyone should feel comfortable enough with the controls to play through several levels.
While there was a lot of talk concerning the power of the Wii, the graphics found in Red Steel are nearly as good as anything found on the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 show floors. The game shows some really nice effects, which will surprise a lot of people. The streets have a reflective sheen and enemies are animated fluidly. Shooting holes in the doors allows light to trickle through in streams -- one for each of the bullet holes -- and the effect is absolutely stunning. Even small details such as flies hovering around garbage cans add a level of detail to the games look not found on the Gamecube.
There were a couple times the physics did some funny things, for instance, after blowing-up a car a near by enemy killed by the blast was left floating in the air above the fire, but all in all the game looked great and most issues are likely to be smoothed over in the final product.
Red Steel is one of the most mature games to ever grace a Nintendo system. This is the type of game that Nintendo themselves would never develop, so it’s good they turned to Ubisoft to fill the gap in the line-up. Red Steel is a first-person shooter at heart, but the extremely unique melee-combat not possible on any other system do wonders for the game. Anybody questioning whether the Wii will have both stellar and mature games needs only to look towards Red Steel; it proves the console isn’t just for kids.
