Box Art

So amongst my pillaging of Just Cause 2 over the weekend, I managed to squeeze in a little time for Red Steel 2, and while I haven’t finished the game yet, I did learn a few things about it that I thought worth sharing.

In all the coverage leading up to the release of Red Steel 2, I was drawn to the art style, I do like some cell shading in my games here and there to mix things up. And the idea of sword play on the Wii is now and will always be appealing to me, because deep down I am a ninja… The deciding factor for me was going to be that mechanics of the sword play actually working, and after the reviews went up saying that they did I went ahead and pulled the trigger and picked it up.

I concur with the findings that the controls are solid once you get used to going from swordplay to shooting/navigating, however the swordplay still feels closer to gesture controls than a true implementation of MotionPlus for the most part which was somewhat disappointing to me, but sort of understandable. Performing special attacks is easy, and makes it fun to mix up your combat. While you’re in combat the experience is very immersive and because of the controls interactive nature, you really do get into it especially during boss fights where you’re dodging heavy attacks and looking for weaknesses and openings.

Unforutnately however, once combat stops you realize that you are in a pretty small area with a few doors, and each time you go through one you need to wait for 15-20 seconds before you get into the next, which may or may not have some action for you. Instead, you frustratingly try to smash boxes and barrels for loose change. This is a problem because it completely takes me out of the experience. Instead of being so wrapped up in the action that I don’t realize how much time I spent, I am pretty much saying ok, one more room then I’ll play something else. It’s shame really, but I think this gives more credence to my opinion on Move. And while I still think this game is pretty good so far, and I will probably give it a strong recommendation for Wii owners, I think if this game weren’t on the underpowered Wii it could have been much better.