In retrospect the Wii had a decent launch, coming out alongside eighteen titles ranging in quality from Twilight Princess (middling) to the Ant Bully (kino). The exclusive FPS Red Steel was poised to satiate the hardcore gaming crowd once they beat Twilight Princess (and got sick of playing Wii Sports with their relatives/roommates). The viability of motion controls in first-person shooters was a common talking point in the discourse leading up to the Wii's launch, and all eyes were focused on Red Steel after an impressive trailer at E3 earlier that year. And if there's one thing Ubisoft is known for, it's truth in advertising.
But Red Steel largely failed to impress critics, settling at 63 on Metacritic. (And keep in mind that score is inflated by the baffling 91 and 90 the totally unbiased Nintendo-oriented rags ONM and NGamer handed out.) It's one of those pathetic flops that isn't funny-bad enough to be remembered by anyone besides those of us closely following the Wii at the time; a game doomed to the rubbish bin of history, only to be dusted off as a curio to gaming aesthetes such as myself. Nearly twenty years later (oh how time flies) I decided to to give Red Steel a look, against my better discretion.
Red Steel was the first of many attempts to justify the Wii's motion controls while also appealing to the supposedly blue-balled hardcore gaming audience. You're put in the shoes of the bodyguard Scott Monroe, tasked with rescuing his kidnapped fiance Miyu Sato and getting tangled up in inter-yakuza politics along the way. Honestly I'm hard pressed to remember any of the finer details of the plot other than a valuable katana being involved. Major cutscenes are told through comic book-esque stills but they feel more like cut corners than a deliberate stylistic choice. There are a few amusing moments ("Hey man," one NPC quips in a hot tub sandwiched between two strumpets, "when they said I'd see some action I thought they just meant with the girls!") but overall you'd have a far better time muting the audio and turning on the Whitney Houston/Kevin Costner flick the Bodyguard in the background. The first act takes you from level to level, the second act lets you choose the next four levels in the order you wish, and the final act is back on rails. During the second act you're taken to two hubs between missions, both of which are underwhelming. The first hub is a dojo where you can learn new sword skills as you progress through the story, but they're frustrating and deeply unsatisfying to perform (more on that later). The second hub is a fancy bar where you can select your next missions and unlock new weapons by completing target practice, but these are the same weapons enemy drop on missions so there isn't much reason to bother unlocking them as they aren't even fully loaded.
Of course, a shitty plot doesn't count for much in an FPS, and it's easily forgivable when the real meat of the genre is shooting people in the face. In that regard, the gunplay of Red Steel is... serviceable... mostly... I suppose. The motion control accuracy is a bit spotty and never makes good on the promise of its supposed "liquid movement", although the hit detection on enemies is fairly lenient and ameliorates some of the frustration. Reloading is handled by shaking the Wii nunchuk to the right, and I have to admit that actually felt pretty satisfying. In fact there were some points during the heat of battle where I could feel myself having something approximating a good time. Like any good shooter of the era, Red Steel also features a bullet time gauge that fills when you kill enemies. But on top of slow motion, bullet time gives your weapons hit scans and marks enemies for death when you exit slow motion. It's not the most intuitive mechanic, but I'll give them credit for trying something a little different. Sadly your arsenal of weapons is pedestrian fare, with the only standout being the shotgun since it can kill enemies from way across the room (as shotguns are known for). Otherwise the pistols, SMGs, and automatics feel like pea shooters, and while the sniper rifle packs a punch it's far too finnicky to be as effective as it should be.
Yet the motion controls, while not dreadful, cause enough trouble to feel like a detriment to the overall gunplay. Movement feels stilted since you have to move the pointer in tandem with the control stick to turn around. Zooming in requires you pointing the Wiimote closer to the television and this almost never worked. In fact, it was more effective at making the pointer freak out, requiring me to pull up the Wii pause menu to reorient myself. This is somewhat mitigated by the focus mode, which allows you to zero in on an enemy by pressing A while aiming in their vicinity, granting you a moderate zoom and aim assist in the process, but it's still far from ideal. Another point of contention is how grenades are handled - you're supposed to hold down on the D-pad and flick the nunchuk to toss them. That might sound fine on paper, but in practice it's far more awkward than it needs to be, and the wonky physics make it just as likely the grenade will fall a couple of feet in front of you.
Level design is a mixed bag. The bulk of the game play consists of shooting baddies, going to the next room, shooting more baddies, and then getting interrupted by a sword fight. If the developers are feeling feisty, you might have to activate a button or find a keycard to progress to the next area. I will say that some of the locales are pretty neat, like the one mission that sees you shooting your way through a fish market until you wind up on a boat that reminded me vaguely of the Frigate mission in GoldenEye. Another level has you blasting goons in a financial center while completely destroying the building in the process, which is quite frankly cathartic. The most unique mission takes place in an underground game center while some weirdo puts you through a gauntlet of gameshow-like challenges. While they aren't particularly exciting (and sometimes frustrating), the spectacle of murdering grown men clad in pink wigs and matching seifuku was enough to keep me entertained.
What really drags Red Steel down from mediocrity to garbage is its main gameplay hook: the sword combat. As mentioned above, when you enter a sword fight the action slows to a crawl. If your opponent steps out of the Designated Chambara Zone the action pauses so they can slowly shuffle themselves back into position. While this motion only takes a few seconds, I found it happening several times a fight and it only dragged out what was already a tedious experience. Most fights can be handled by desperately flailing at the enemy, but when you're expected to play the game in earnest things completely fall apart, and sometimes I wanted to throw my Wii remote at the television in frustration as a I had to redo an entire section just because I failed some bullshit sword fight - by the end of the game when enemies with inflated health bars are able to parry 95% of your attacks, it truly felt like the worst sword-based combat I had encountered from any game in my entire life. Never have I so acutely resonated with Indiana Jones. But I guess if there's one positive thing I can say about the sword combat, it's that your awkwardly flailing arm reminded me of the swinging animation in the PS1 King's Field games. So there's that.
It took me a few weeks of on and off gaming to finish Red Steel, and each session I had to physically force myself to sit down and play (making damn sure I got my twelve dollars worth). By the second hour I had saw everything the game had to offer, which doesn't bode well for a seven hour campaign. Given more time in the oven - I suspect Red Steel was rushed to meet the Wii's launch - I think it could have been competent, or at least a decent weekend rental back in the day. But that would be in an ideal world, and as such, I can't recommend Red Steel in any capacity; the most entertainment I got out of the whole experience was writing this postmortem.
Pros
- + Serviceable gunplay
- + Unique locales
Cons
- - Atrocious sword fighting
- - Shoehorned motion controls
- - Bland level design
- - Mediocre production values
3.2
out of 10
Overall
Red Steel is an aggressively mediocre shooter that's dragged down into depravity by awful sword combat. There are occasional glimpses of inspiration but those are far and few between. It serves as an interesting historical relic of a bygone era, but nothing more. On the infinitesimal chance you were considering playing Red Steel at some point, stay far way.
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