Red Steel 2

Red Steel 2 is played in a first-person perspective where players can alternate between shooting and sword fighting. Players are able to fight up to six enemies on-screen, though enemy packs can go up to twenty, and can deflect opponents' bullets with their swords.[2] Tougher enemies have specific vulnerabilities that can only be exploited through the use of Wii MotionPlus technology; some enemies can parry off sword attacks with a defensive stance that the player must circumvent either with a slash parallel with the enemy's blade or three consecutive heavy strikes performed with large, fast swings of the Wii Remote, and some enemies wear armor that makes them immune to damage unless they are removed with heavy strikes. Attacking enemies in certain ways will stun them, giving the player a brief chance to finish them off with a particular Wii Remote gesture. The player begins each enemy encounter with full health that automatically replenishes once all enemies are defeated; should the enemies overwhelm the player to the point where all health is lost, the game ends and play can be resumed from the last checkpoint passed.

As the player progresses through the main missions, new techniques, armor, and weapons become available for purchase from safe houses established by non-player characters who ally with the main protagonist, but are not considered part of his clan, while additional side missions, represented as wanted posters in the safe houses, are available to play, earning the player a monetary reward upon their completion. Money can also be earned by destroying many small objects throughout the game world with equipped weapons, opening chests or defeating enemies, with double money earned for performing finishers correctly and triple for doing so with a combo. New techniques involve inputting a series of attacks that can significantly damage, stun or launch enemies into the air, and every time one is purchased, the player must go to a training area in the current safe house to practice it. Another source of money is a separate challenge mode that allows players to revisit previously cleared story chapters.

Red Steel 2 is the first game besides Wii Sports Resort to use the Wii Motion Plus Accessory, as well as only one of three third-party Wii games to require it, with the others being My Personal Golf Trainer and B-Units: Build It!. The game features an expansive amount of movement with the Wii MotionPlus allowing it to be quite an interactive game, including certain hands-on minigames such as opening combination lock safes.

Red Steel 2 features a vastly different art style from its predecessor

Development of Red Steel 2 began in the summer of 2008. Red Steel 2 was announced by Ubisoft executive director, Alain Corre in July 28.[4] The game uses Nintendo's new accessory, Wii MotionPlus and was included in a bundle.[5][6] It was developed using the proprietary LyN game engine.[7]

Red Steel 2 features stylized, cel-shaded graphics, in contrast to its predecessor's more realistic aesthetic. The visual style is similar to Ubisoft Paris' own XIII, released in 2003. The game is also free of graphic violence, like its predecessor, save for occasional unrealistic blood-like splash effects when enemies are slashed or finished off with a stab, before vanishing in a cloud of dust upon defeat.[8] Creative director Jason Vandenberghe justified the removal of graphic violence because he felt that bloodshed would make the Hero appear less heroic and cited how stories about iconic action folk heroes like Robin Hood and Zorro, who influenced and inspired the Hero's concept and creation, would become distasteful if their dispatching of foes were told in more graphic detail.[9]

An early version of the game that Ubisoft conceived and later abandoned out of dissatisfaction before the Wii MotionPlus' announcement was planned to have a setting similar to the first game and support online multiplayer via Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection.[10] Vandeberghe also explained that the decision to make the sequel's setting completely different from the first game mainly pivoted upon the need to fully capitalize on and play to the strengths of the system, citing how the first game's effort to reproduce realistic, urban environments hurt the gameplay and controls, particularly the sword fighting. When it came to carrying over the recurring theme of mixing Eastern and Western culture, his approach for doing so would be to juxtapose elements from both rather than closely fusing them together. One example of this was having the Hero wield both a katana and a revolver in tandem, the latter which Vandeberghe felt was an well-contrasting counterpart to the former in a few ways and influenced his decision to make the game set in a Wild West-style world.[9][11]

One feature that did not carry over from the first game was a multiplayer mode. Vandenberghe explained that his development team did explore the possibilities of including one, but determined that it would never fit in the development time window, and that they preferred to deliver a great single player experience over a mediocre multiplayer game.[11] He also stated that plans to enhance the challenge mode by adding new enemies and unique objectives were also similarly scrapped due to technical and developmental obstacles.[12]

Red Steel 2 received favorable reviews according to video game review aggregator Metacritic.[13] IGN praised the "awesome style and energetic gameplay" and called it "one of the top titles on Wii".[23] Official Nintendo Magazine praised the MotionPlus controls, visuals and audio, but criticised the mission design, referring to it as being "average".[29] Eurogamer praised the "thrilling set pieces" but called the game's character "flawed, certainly, but entirely honorable with it".[16] 1UP.com were considerably less impressed, stating that while "occasionally exhilarating" the game was "mostly unremarkable".[30] GamesRadar praised the controls and "the engaging, intuitive combat". GamesRadar also noted that the game was drastically superior to Red Steel, noting that there was "no comparison between the two".[31] Classic Game Room received the game well. Bussler claimed that this was the best motion controlled first person shooter that "I ever played".

Not all non-video game publications gave the game moderate success. The Escapist gave it four stars out of five and said: "Over three years after the Wii hit store shelves, Red Steel 2 finally delivers the motion-controlled swordplay we expected from the original Red Steel, and it more than makes up for any niggling flaws in the level design".[28] The Daily Telegraph gave it seven out of ten and called it "effortlessly likable".[27] Chris Kohler of Wired also gave it seven stars out of ten, saying: "I've never played anything quite like Red Steel 2, which lets you use swords and guns simultaneously, switching back and forth between wild swinging and precise aiming". He criticized some occasional lapses in the game's technical stability, such as rare game-crashing bugs and occasional moments where the game is forced to halt briefly to read the disc.[32] The A.V. Club gave it a C+: "Though the pesky lag is largely gone, all too often, gameplay still devolves into breathless, embarrassing exercises in flailing".[33]

Ubisoft originally expected to sell 1 million copies of Red Steel 2, but after poor sales of James Cameron's Avatar: The Game, they slashed their sales predictions in half. According to Jason VendenBerghe at his keynote speech at the 2010 European game developers conference, Red Steel 2 has sold approximately 270,000 copies worldwide.[34]

In April 2010, a French website spread a rumor that a sequel was in development, according to a Nintendo magazine.[35] Vandenberghe expressed interest in making the sequel and previously floated the possibility of bringing the Red Steel series to the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 when motion-control add-ons for those consoles, the PlayStation Move and Xbox Kinect respectively, were announced during Red Steel 2's development,[36] but ultimately concluded that the current state of the motion control market does not yet justify continuing the series. There were rumors at the time that such sequel would likely be a Wii exclusive and make use of the Wii Vitality Sensor,[37] and he confirmed that he wanted to take advantage of the eventually-cancelled accessory if a third game were to be made.[9] There has been no further word on the possibility of a sequel after Nintendo shifted focus towards subsequent successors of the Wii.

• Official site