Red Steel Impressions Roundup

Ubisoft is working on one of the more 'adult' titles slated for the early days of the Wii launch, and there are lots of folks with opinions. From IGN's Red Steel hands-on: "Another important element to the gameplay, which is closely related to the story, is the idea of choice. In Japan, the Yakuza are not senseless killers -- they will only do so when forced into the position. With your girl in possession of the Yakuza, you'll need to become part of the culture, and earn opposing groups respect to get where you need to be. So you'll have to make choices with both your sword and your gun; you may want to perform a headshot or slash a guy's throat, but you can also force them to surrender. In the Yakuza this mutual respect and honor, this admission that one is beaten, is a real thing." More views below, if you Read More.

I played it at E3

[Zovreign]

The demo needs more polish, the game still looks like a dreamcast/gc game graphics wise [not from screen shots but actually physically playin it], the control is neat, but the whole experience came off as some sort of cheesy virtual cop clone. Not in that its a shooter on rails, but its a shooter with limited exploration. Maybe the final game won't be like this, but at the Wii booth, you started in a building, go through some simple sword fighting tutorials [where the first guy is just standing there letting you him them. The second guy you fight with the sword actually attacked you back, but its nothing like what was shown in the wii demo videos.

After some sword fighting you spend the rest of the game going down narrow alleyways where guys pop up ala virtua cop, and you have to mow them down. The enemys were shaded kinda odd, their lighting and shading didn't fit the environment they were in, you could be fighting in a panchino palour, and the environment can be full of red and purple neon lights, but the guys wwere being shaded bright tan or yellow with a really harsh rim light, making them look like they were just cut and pasted there.

I'm really trying not to be mr. negative here, and I'm sure I'm going to get a ton of people calling me a poo poo head, but it was one of the weakest titles that was in the living room subsection of the wii booth [yes I'm counting Tennis and the Conductor game in that assessment].

So hopefully the final product will actually be a good title, but as it stands right now, it feels like hype.