Game Spotlight: Red Steel

All of the Game Spotlights have been focused on highly recommended games, until now. Now it’s time to talk about a game that no one should play… or possibly play just to experience how bad it actually is. Ubisoft made a lot of promises with this game, however the only thing anyone got out of it was a guide on what NOT to do with Wii development.

There seem to be many factors as to why Red Steel was made of so much fail. The use of the Unreal 2 engine, the obviously rushed development process despite much support from Nintendo… but mostly it was just the fact that Ubisoft wanted to make this game for as cheap as possible to try to prove that you can make cheap games on Wii that are still quality works. From Ubisoft’s point of view, this is a great thing. After all, Ubisoft did convince quite a lot of people to buy Red Steel, including myself. From the beginning of the game’s development, they were continually assuring people that they were the ones to lead the third party charge on Wii. Ultimately Ubisoft has become a source of “shovelware” for the system.

The game has a unique art style and tries to draw the player into some unique gameplay. And according to the magazine images coming straight from Ubisoft, a very good looking game. Unfortunately, there was quite a backlash when people realised the images shown in those magazines and later released on the net were touched up images and didn’t actually resemble the final product at all. To add to that, when the game was finally released people soon discovered that the gameplay wasn’t all that they had thought it would be. Turning was excruciatingly slow and the sword fights were a pain to pull off with the hit and miss motion controls.

Another great part of Red Steel are the many surprising glitches that pop up as you play, each more funny/annoying that the last. You start off with a few small AI glitches, and then a couple of moments where the animation for the enemies don’t load and they do that stiff stand straight with arms out default post thing and simply stand there. Sure, it starts small, but it soon gets pretty big and pretty had half way through the story mode. Here are the top three moments:

3. Invincible enemies: During quite a few moments throughout the game, enemy characters would spontaneously become invincible. Depending on the situation, you’ll either have to save your ammo and run for your life… such as it is, or simply restart the game, or die…

2. Never ending level: One of the levels has an ending where you have to get to the exit doors of the building for the level to end. Of course, you’re making your way to the end of the level, you’re being chased by a horde of henchmen all packing machine guns, ready to take you down. So, I get to the end of the level and suddenly nothing happens. I know the level is meant to end when I get to those doors, but… nothing! I immediately turned around and started having a shoot out with all of the henchmen that were chasing me. After awhile I decided that it was ultimately pointless to go on and simply walked out of my cover spot and let myself get shot. The level was…. COMPLETE! I had successfully finished the mission as soon as I died… well, whatever, I guess.

1. Again and again: This one is hands down the most annoying glitch in the game and almost made me stop playing altogether… though I know 99.9% of your are asking why I even bothered in the first place. Anyway, the #1 glitch in the game is a very simple one… The game works with a mission system and each new mission is given to you in a bar. There was one particular mission I completed which felt pretty long, so naturally I was glad to get to the next one… unfortunately, as I started the next mission I discovered that the next mission was in fact the exact same mission I had already finished! Why? I have no idea! It just decided to reload the last mission I played and have me replay it for absolutely no reason at all. The worst part is that I didn’t save in the bar, so I had to end up saving at the start of that mission and just turned my Wii off. I decided to spend a week or two playing some other games after that, it was just too much for me.

Yup, you either want to avoid this game at all costs, or actually try it just to see how bad it really is. Either way, you’ll ask yourself why anyone has bothered to play this game in the first place.

Despite the problems of the original, Ubisoft has decided that Red Steel deserves a sequel. Perhaps it’s their way of trying to make up for past mistakes and to try to give the series a second chance by reinventing it. So far what has been shown is that the game will be a little bit western and a little bit samurai movie set in a modern day city. They’re going for a new art style and are promising new things.

As crazy as it sounds, I’m currently neutral about Red Steel 2. I’m going to wait and see how things turn out. Ubisoft has made a lot of mistakes with the first Red Steel so chances are the sequel will definitely turn out better than the original… the question is, even if it’s better, will it be good enough for someone to actually buy and genuinely enjoy?