Game #1229: Red Steel

 This game should not have gotten a sequel. 

 I think Red Steel 2 is one of the best games on the Wii. It looks fantastic and the gameplay is glorious, even if it will leave your arm feeling sore. The original Red Steel  however... Let's just say that it deserves the reputation it gets, and it should've never received a sequel... but thankfully it did.

 About the only thing that this game has in common with its sequel is the fact that it's a first-person shooter that involves guns and katanas, and that's where it ends. In this one you play as Mighty Whitey, a white guy that gets accepted by the Yakuza and you delve into their affairs, becoming better at everything that they do. It's a tired trope, but there's a certain charm to it, there's a reason the 'white American joins the Yakuza and becomes the best' plot keeps getting resurrected. The graphics are relatively good, all things considered, although the cutscenes are boring comic-book style cutouts, and the voice acting... is mediocre, the terrible dialogue doesn't help the voice actors.

 First things first, the menus are hideous. The icons are in Japanese, so you must hover over every option and read the fine print below on the screen. Why? And you must drag and drop whatever option, symbolized by an icon in Japanese, into the center of the screen in order to pick them. What a waste of time. Oh, and the disc is INCREDIBLY noisy. I thought it might be my copy, since I got the game used, but nope, the game sometimes spins like crazy and makes the drive blurt the most awful noises.

 The good news is that it's a first person shooter on the Wii. Aiming feels naturals, so shooting down baddies feels very satisfying. Sometimes. Y'see, I thought my WiiMote was dying, but it's a known bug... the aiming-reticule just bugs out when you move out of the center of the screen. It's very annoying. But I did some digging, turning off the Wiimote's audio fixes it. Or at least it did after I turned it off and gave the system a restart. It did alleviate it a lot when I first turned it down, although it kept happening a few times. Regardless, turn the Wiimote's volume off and the game becomes playable, and actually fun.

 ... Kinda. They overdid it with motion controls. Grenades? Swing the nunchuck. Reload? Swing the nunchuck. Open a door, and there are many? Swing the nunchuck. Press a button? Swing the nunchuck. Pick up another weapon? Swing. The. Nunchuck. The reload is particularly annoying, because if you are standing over another weapon, and don't notice it, you'll swap weapons instead of reloading. Very annoying in the middle of a firefight.

 On the flip side, there's a relatively neat mechanic, you can hold down A to 'lock' onto an enemy, so the camera will try to keep track of them for you. You can zoom into the screen by moving the Wiimote towards the screen. It's awkward, but it's not too bad.

 After a short while, you unlock focus shooting. Basically, killing enemies fills a gauge, and you can use that gauge to freeze time, by holding down A+C, and carefully aim your shots. This way, you can shoot at an enemy's gun to disarm them, then move the Wimmote up and down to force them to surrender. This gives you Respect Points, or as the game calls them, 'Respects'. 50 respects per surrendered enemy.

 As you amass respects, you can unlock guns at the armory, as well as new Katana moves at the dojo. You visit these two places in between most missions. There's one teeny tiny issue with the unlocked guns... you must slowly wait for them to respawn to fill your ammo. Take my favorite gun, you take it from the armory... and it comes with 3 bullets. And it caps out at 30. You must slowly wait for it to respawn 10 times before you get full ammo. It's completely idiotic.

 The rest of the game is, well, it's pretty much like most FPS of its era. You have regenerating health, although in this case it's displayed as a health bar instead of just the screen getting redder. You are also limited to only two guns.

 Up to now, we have a subpar first-person shooter. Shooting feels fun, the shootouts ARE fun... but the aiming glitch is inexcusable, and there's too much unnecessary Wiimote and Nunchuck waggling and swinging for my taste.

 But, y'see, every now and then an enemy will be waiting for you, an enemy wielding a sword. In which case you'll bring out your own Katana and engage in a duel. They are terrible. You have to Swing the nunchuck to block or parry, use the C button to dodge or swing the Wiimote to attack. First of all, the controls are super unresponsive. Plenty of times you'll swing either joystick and your action won't come out. But as you play through the game, these duels get incredibly tough, as you barely get time to react to decide whether to dodge or parry. Heck, you'll face against enemies that even if you dodge, if you try to immediately attack they'll block it, or worse, parry it and instantly counter attack. Add this to unresponsive swinging, and they wear out their welcome fast.

 Dueled enemies can be Spared or Killed. There's absolutely no point to killing them because you get NOTHING. Sparing them gets you Respects, which in turn unlock stuff such as new moves. Sometimes, sparing them will lead you to bonus goodies. Kill them and you gain absolutely nothing. The ending depends on a certain action at the end of the game, so you aren't even collecting Karma points.

 Red Steel misses the mark by a long shot. I get it, I do, they wanted to showcase the Wiimote's functionality... but they didn't, it only showcased its weaknesses. I mean, just by taking out the annoying sword duels it would've made it a better game, and when removing one of the signature elements of your game makes it better... you know you've got a problem. Really, had Ubisoft just focused on making a working first person shooter, with no Katana swinging, it would've made for a better game. Regardless, it all worked out for the best, as Red Steel 2 wound up making up for this game and then some. 

 3.5