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Giddy Up in Red Steel 2

Have you ever wanted to play a ninja cowboy in the Wild West?  Sure you have.

March 24, 2010
You won't like this if...

you don't like swordfights, mediocre gunplay and weak plots.

Red Steel 2 Review
Credit: Ubisoft

As a Wii launch game, Red Steel bore a lot of expectations, if not responsibility, in delivering a first-person action game that would properly use the Wii Remote as an accurate gun and sword for use in combat. Needless to say, it didn't work out. Red Steel 2, however, has nothing to do with the first game other than the name: It's a rough-and-tumble adventure in an alternate-universe Wild West where a cloaked ronin from the Kusagari clan is called to save a town from a power-mad rival ninja. Not quite the bog standard yakuza clan war from the last installment.

But let's get right to the big question mark that hovers over Red Steel 2: Does requiring Wii MotionPlus support deliver on old promises? There's clear intent from Ubisoft to improve on the first Red Steel's sword fights, which weren't perfect, as mentioned, but they offered a nice break from the rest of the game's iffy gunplay. And while the MotionPlus noticeably improves the sword mechanics in Red Steel 2, they're still not perfect; despite what the back of the box says, playing with a MotionPlus simply doesn't feel significantly more "real" than the last game. To its credit, the accessory does offer greater recognition of movement -- particularly with diagonal slashes -- than in similar games, but it's not like our nameless hero's katana waves in front of his face in real time as you move the remote. In other words, this isn't Wii Sports Resort. You still need to adjust to an inherent delay between your motion and the onscreen action.

 

Metroid Prime game that takes place outside -- except there's no outside to the outside. It's the only time I wanted invisible walls in a game just so I could see a horizon every now and then. (Granted, there is one level that takes place on top of a speeding train with plenty of landscape surrounding it, but the level map itself just further reinforces the narrowness.)

If it sounds like there's nothing good about Red Steel 2, that isn't the case. As superficial as it is, the game's comic book art style is a marked departure from the first Red Steel. And while "gunslinging ninja cowboys in a slightly futurized Wild West" is an absurd concept to begin with, it's different, and you don't see it taken to such lengths all that often in games. Plus, the suitably Western twang of the music is pretty listenable on its own. The perceived risk in rebooting Red Steel winds up as a success in that regard, because it is a much more appealing product, and the rest of the changes do make for a basically better game.

Click the image above to check out all Red Steel 2 screens.

There can be a good amount of stupid fun to be had in just mowing down thugs, even when, like me, you find yourself maxed-out on health and strength well before the end of the game (it's easy to find money, you see). But other things that lack in substance -- the story, the nigh-unncessary melee combos -- negatively affect the touted sword control improvements. Altogether, you get a mostly unremarkable, occasionally exhilarating run through a dystopian Nevada. Just don't expect a long, drawn-out action adventure -- if it was, you might put your arm under serious stress from all the swinging.

Originally published on 1UP.com.

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