Hands-on with Revolution in the next GameInformer - Ubisoft's Red Steel, aka "Katana"

[DemoCoder]

X-Play had many of the same complaints, plus big complaints about muscle fatigue and accuracy of aiming. Most of the criticisms I made of the Wii controller long ago seem to be coming to pass. I just don't think the accelerometers and IR tracking is good enough for FPS aiming. It may be useful for other games, and it may work for secondary moves (dodge, parry, lean , etc) but positioning the reticle? I think it's a losing idea for an FPS, just as a light-gun is.

I wish the major console players would seriously look at some kind of trackball/mouse/trackpad controller for consoles. When I saw the Xbox1 controller prototype, I thought the green plastic blob in the center was a trackball. I don't see any reason why the right analog stick could not be replaced, or supplemented with a small trackball. Admittedly, I prefer mice to trackballs, but it's a reasonable compromised. I've already used mini-trackball "mice" with notebooks and they worked well.

The Wii looks to me like a looming disaster, unless some killer games save it. Nintendo will have to seriously cut the price. At $250, it's not significantly cheaper than an Xbox-360 but has vastly inferior graphics, online, and A/V support. At maybe $129, it would seem reasonable to me, but $250 is way overpriced. I could buy a GC with tons of fun games for far less. You don't get to charge a premium for your system if your hardware is not next-gen, you don't support large screen displays, and your graphics aren't noticably better than the previous GC HW. Charge a premium for the games themselves if you want, but the razor should be cheaper than the blades.

A Wii next to the XB360 and PS3 at Gamestops and BestBuys just looks ridiculous, especially since the XBOX360 kiosks are usually running on a Samsung LCD display, and the Wii displays I've seen are small low-res LCDs, and the textures still look blurry, and frames still aliased to hell.

 

[tongue_of_colicab]

I just don't think the accelerometers and IR tracking is good enough for FPS aiming

Both CoD3 and FC:V are reported to have very good aiming.

I wish the major console players would seriously look at some kind of trackball/mouse/trackpad controller for consoles.

That isnt gonna work. I use small trackballs and it sucks. You say you think it works good, just try playing a fps with it. I didnt even found it pleseant in windows not to mention games. Unless you make it very sensitive you need a couple of thumb strokes to move it across the screen, wich is just way to slow for FPS games not to mention that its anything but comfortable plus it would be impossible to aim good because the sensitivitie is just too high.

The Wii looks to me like a looming disaster, unless some killer games save it. Nintendo will have to seriously cut the price. At $250, it's not significantly cheaper than an Xbox-360 but has vastly inferior graphics

1 word. PSP. DS would be to expensive and nobody would want the crappy gfx. Well.... Iwata is probably laughing his ass off everyday on DS sales while swimming in a pool of money.

A Wii next to the XB360 and PS3 at Gamestops and BestBuys just looks ridiculous, especially since the XBOX360 kiosks are usually running on a Samsung LCD display, and the Wii displays I've seen are small low-res LCDs, and the textures still look blurry, and frames still aliased to hell.

Yes we know that by now. But all games are devved on GC for the most part so atleast wait untill second gen games before judging about the gfx. Wii is faster than GC so its just the devs fault for making games on Wii that look worse than GC games.

 

[Shark Sandwich]

I don't get what all the fuss is about. Maybe that review has a couple silly points in it, but the overall gist of it seems pretty right-on, as do most of the other reviews I've read.

I've played Red Steel and I would give it about a 6/10. The control scheme is slightly better than using an analog stick, although I never once felt like I was actually aiming a gun, and it still doesn't come close to a mouse/keyboard in terms of precision and accuracy. The way you turn is also extremely annoying.

Nothing else about this game is particularly remarkable. The story, environments, weapons, gameplay, etc are nothing special. Red Steel is just a totally mediocre FPS that happens to have a decent, but flawed, new control scheme.

If this sounds like an 8.0+ game to you, then get it. You might actually like it.

 

[Teasy]

X-Play had many of the same complaints, plus big complaints about muscle fatigue and accuracy of aiming. Most of the criticisms I made of the Wii controller long ago seem to be coming to pass. I just don't think the accelerometers and IR tracking is good enough for FPS aiming. It may be useful for other games, and it may work for secondary moves (dodge, parry, lean , etc) but positioning the reticle? I think it's a losing idea for an FPS, just as a light-gun is.

Your making those kind of statements based on one launch game which is said to have nowhere near as good controls as other FPS's on Wii?

Also I can't believe anyone can have muscle fatigue playing this game. They must have been watching too many Red Steel ads and taking them far to literally. You don't actually have to stand around holding the Wii controller out like a gun or jump over your chair when your hidding from enemies

The Wii looks to me like a looming disaster, unless some killer games save it. Nintendo will have to seriously cut the price. At $250, it's not significantly cheaper than an Xbox-360 but has vastly inferior graphics, online, and A/V support.

What can I say, you must be living on another planet if you think Wii looks like a looming disaster. Why should they need to drop price significantly when they can't even make anywhere near enough Wii's to keep people happy at full price?, and won't be able to at least until well into next year. Basically all your looking at is graphics, graphics seem to be your world, but they're not everybodies world... I love great graphics, obviously since I'm a member of Beyond3D and have been for ages. But I'm not obsessed enough with graphics quality to believe that its the be all and end all for everyone or even the majority of gamers (never mind people who don't usually play games..).

A Wii next to the XB360 and PS3 at Gamestops and BestBuys just looks ridiculous, especially since the XBOX360 kiosks are usually running on a Samsung LCD display, and the Wii displays I've seen are small low-res LCDs, and the textures still look blurry, and frames still aliased to hell.

Again with the graphics are everything argument. Instead look at it this way. Put next to a 360 and PS3 at Gamestop or anywhere else Wii looks unique. It looks like something different to the other two samey consoles, something new that, believe it or not, has the potential to impress and excite a lot of people far more then shinny new graphics.

I'd have loved it if Wii had much better graphics. But I have to say despite my initial problem with it the console is winning me over more and more as the UK launch approaches

 

[Rolf N]

Red Steel is a nice shooter

Wii!

I'm not through yet, but as the pompous wise-cracker I am, I will splurge my preliminary evaluation onto the internet anyway.
Good solid fun. Very cliché (shoot people with guns duh!). Somewhat creative in the situations it throws you into. Careful application of backtracking to reuse level assets (with freshly spawned enemies). Good difficulty, you really do get killed if you're not careful, even though the game is quite fair and forgiving.
The sword fighting is good. Think of it as a non-optional minigame, but one that is actually worth playing.

There's some rudimentary cover system, and most cover can be destroyed. In practice it's effective enough to just hide behind corners or columns, so it isn't all that relevant, but here goes a nod in appreciation. Speaking of which, lots of scenery detail can be shot to shreds, and many items can be blown up.

Red Steel is a violent game. I think the 18+ rating is justified for once, though the game discourages the killing of non-combatants.
The music is good.
The menu navigation is terrible.
Sound effects out of the Wiimote speaker are now officially a misguided gimmick -- I wish I could at least control the volume!

Now the important parts.
Graphics: the banding is pretty extreme and the framerate is disappointing. It gets the job done though. It's not ugly IMO and it's well playable.

Controls: there is definitely a learning curve, during the first twenty minutes you might feel kind of helpless but it gets better. The control scheme is quite effective. I don't like the zoom-in mechanic, but I don't want to use it anyways (it does a lock-on and causes the camera to follow the enemy around, which I don't want) and the game doesn't seem to force the issue -- yet.

This game might have needed another three months of polish, but fortunately the correct parts have been finished first. The gameplay is there, it just works, the content is nicely varied and well built. The base technology (framerates, color depth, menus) seems to be much more launchy.

For now I'd give this a +/-0 out of [-2;+2]. I.e. you can let yourself be entertained by the game, you won't have to bite your own arse off for paying money for this but if OTOH you miss it, no big deal.

Addendum:
I'm now at 45%, whatever that means, and feel inclined to increase my rating to +1. It's varied, it's well designed, the artistry is great, and with the "focus" moves and the ramped-up challenges it even gets a little strategic now. It just got a little crazy, too. I'm picking up Max Payne 2/NOLF-level vibes here. Good game IMO. And it's shaping up to be a long game too.

I even learned to appreciate the lock-on feature now.

 

[thatdude90210]

Sound effects out of the Wiimote speaker are now officially a misguided gimmick -- I wish I could at least control the volume!

Press the home button, click on the wiimote picture.

I have mine set to the lowest. At that level, it works very well as intended.

 

[Rolf N]

Press the home button, click on the wiimote picture.

I have mine set to the lowest. At that level, it works very well as intended.

I hadn't noticed that the Wiimote was clickable. The sound effects still honestly remind me of Doom 1, but it's much less intrusive now.
Thanks!

 

[Corwin_B]

Red Steel has lots of good ideas, but often falls short in execution. It's still not bad for a launch game, though. Graphics are technically not good (banding, framerate drops, some very low-res textures, aliasing), but depending on the level can be saved by very good artistic direction (the dojo is very nice, for example).

Controls definitely need some time getting used to. Red Steel seems to be somewhere between a lightgun game and an FPS. Once you stop trying to use the Wiimote like a mouse in a PC FPS, you get better. Sword fighting is pretty fun, but relies too much on patterns. Level design is solid, only regret is that sometimes you get a checkpoint followed by a long speech sequence, which means in case of death you'll get to listen to the speech another time.

I really love the music. I'm hoping for a Red Steel 2 that will fix the problems of the first, many of which can probably be linked to the rush for launch.

 

[Rolf N]

After finishing the game ... I'm basically still happy with it. Red Steel does so many things right. The things that really need improvement aren't central to the game and they are just a few:

• The introduction/tutorial level
  At the start of the game the whole thing feels pretty forced and awkward, control is taken away from the player way too often for a few seconds of cutscene. It doesn't make sense IMO to have a tutorial where the player can feel around a new control scheme only to randomly deactivate parts of the controls.
  This stops being an issue starting at mission #2.
• The sword combo controls.
  It can be very imprecise, and you have to "buffer up" moves to perform the long combos. Combos are pretty frustrating to pull off like this, even though it should be noted that they aren't necessary to win any sword fights in the game.
• The menu
  Drag-and-drop to enter cascaded sub-menus is not only a novel approach, it's also useless.

IOW the elements they quickly tacked on at the end of the development cycle are poor, but the core game is still there, and it's healthy.

This is not an entirely rushed game. The game shows such a strong care for design and direction. Maybe most gamers won't even appreciate it but in Red Steel you can always tell where to go next by simple lighting hints. It's all flowing forward naturally.

The shooting controls are very effective and give you enough room to build up some skill. It also has very nice balance and difficulty. It's long enough and varied.