The original Red Steel was released alongside the launch of the Wii, and although it got mixed reception, I thoroughly enjoyed it – it wasn’t perfect, but its use of Wii-mote controlled FPS gameplay, mixed with some semi-decent katana fights was enjoyable – and the game had some really memorable moments, such as the scary fairground level. Seeing as the title felt like one that had a lot of potential with some tweaking, I was eager to give Red Steel 2 a shot when I heard it was appearing at Eurogamer.

Red Steel 2 focuses on a completely new storyline, where you play as a silent protagonist known as ‘The Swordsman’. Looking somewhat like a modern cowboy crossed with a samurai, I thought he looked fairly cool, if not a bit cliched.

The demo started with an interesting section – where the Swordsman had been tied by his hands to a chain attached to the back of a motorbike, and I had to control my movement to avoid taking damage whilst he dragged me around some barren landscape. Although different, the section was fairly easy and a little long, so I assume it’s there more for storyline purposes. After a little while there was a crash, and I found myself in a flaming wreckage, where the regular gameplay began.

I soon got hold of a fairly old-looking gun, and a similarly aged katana, which were both lying around nearby. The demo felt like a large tutorial of sorts, having me shooting locks and such to progress. The game’s gun controls are simple aim and shoot controls, which work well enough – although I felt as though the larger gun didn’t obviously react to my hand movements as well as the guns did in the first title, which had me holding my guns ‘gangsta style’ simply because I could. Switching to the sword (which can be done at any time, as opposed to the first title) allows you to perform various melee attacks with sword movements.

The game utilizes Wii Motionplus, although to be honest I didn’t find it any more responsive than the first – anyone expecting 1:1 motion control will be sorely disappointed, and I really didn’t find it worth the addition of the controller add-on. For instance, in combat swinging the Wii-mote vertically or horizontally will do a matching attack, but to do a heavier strike it required you to do a wider motion with the Wii-mote. However, this didn’t really feel natural, as it felt instinctive to just swing the Wii-mote harder and faster, whereas to do a heavy attack actually required a wider swipe at the same speed. This attack was necessary in order to break the armour of certain enemies, and felt more of an awkward gesture than a fluid gameplay mechanic.

As you may be able to tell, it wasn’t going particularly well in my eyes. The game did offer a few little special actions such as flicking the remote to push doors open, and interacting with certain walls in order to scale them in an inhuman fashion, but aside from that it all felt quite generic. The game has opted for a completely different visual style from the original, going with a more cel-shaded design, but I didn’t really find it to look particularly breathtaking – the enemies being equally boring with simple designs which didn’t really help my enjoyment.

I can tell that Red Steel 2 has attempted to incorporate the sword fighting into the general gameplay a lot more, which was perhaps the one thing that was missing from the original title, but in the visual conversion it seems to have lost a lot of its beauty. Whereas the original was a dark and gritty modern title, RS2 seems to be a completely different style and loses much of its old-meets-new feel in place of a rather western feeling title with a few armoured baddies thrown in.

Red Steel (left) opted for a realistic style, whereas Red Steel 2 (right) has attempted a cel-shaded design

Perhaps the game would be better further in – with a few more abilities and perhaps some more interesting places and opponents, but I really felt as though RS2 has scrapped many of the nice aspects of Red Steel’s atmosphere, and replaced it with a cartoony bland design. The main protagonist looks cool, but has no real personality – and seeing as it’s a first person title, appearances are very much irrelevant when it comes to the gameplay.

I was really disappointed by my impressions of the demo, it felt very much a matter of adding one or two new features and scrapping far too much of the original style – it didn’t really feel like a sequel, more a complete rehash of the original concept done far worse than the first attempt. With the Wii-Motionplus equally disappointing, I’ll be steering clear of this game until I see something worth playing it for. For now, I’d point people in the direction of the original, or Metroid Prime Trilogy for some of the best Wii gunplay if you don’t mind the sci-fi style.

-Leon