Market - Conceptual Art

I get to spend the day with the Red Steel 2 team, and get to play the Wii-exclusive, MotionPlus powered game that everyone will be talking about.

Red Steel was one of the release titles back when the Wii was launched in December 2006, and was the first FPS (and slasher!) to be available on the platform. It was mostly very impressive stuff – lots of new motion-controlled action, point-and-shoot based input, and Wiimote sword waggling.

However, it wasn’t a perfect game and suffered from numerous problems; from gameplay elements such as overuse of the gesture controlled mechanics, forced gun and swordplay and buggy gameplay, giving it an almost ‘rushed’ feeling. When the dust had settled, Ubisoft were very happy with sales and players were left wanting more – more sword and gun action, and to play a more polished game.

Last week I was whisked off to a secret event held at the Ubisoft Headquarters in Paris, France, to experience Red Steel 2 before E3 got it’s sweaty hands on it. The game – which has been wrapped in a shroud of mystery ever since it was officially announced to exist – was available to play in all of it’s cell-shaded and Motion Plus powered glory.

The day started with us arriving at the Ubisoft offices on a gloriously sunny Paris day. After being greeted by the Ubisoft team, we then had to hand in our cameras and mobile phones to prevent any leakage, before being presented a fantastic breakfast. It was then time for the fun to begin, which started with a presentation of why we were there, followed by a presentation of the franchise and history of Red Steel.

Prepare to be chopped!

Next up was a presentation by the Creative Director, Jason Vandenberghe, on Red Steel 2. He gave us a background into the setting, hero, villain, controls and everything in-between. Jason is a highly-excitable guy, and you can tell how enthused about Red Steel 2 he is just by listening (and watching him) talk about it. The roots of the game are very simple; everyone has at some point had a pretend sword fight in their back garden with makeshift swords made from branches of trees, and it was fun. Red Steel 2 is based on the same premise; “Hitting things is fun”.

Jason went on to explain that the game practically created itself – the hero was based on ‘The Unnamed Hero’, the guy who wonders into town seeking revenge and accidently saves the day. The setting was also based on a mash up of Western and Japanese culture, and fit with the sword and gun slinging hero. Finally, the cell-shaded art style, with distinct shadow effects and lots of dust floating around clipped into place. The final piece of the puzzle was using MotionPlus, which after prototyping with and without the accessory, it soon became apparent that the level of sword control needed to make the game fun just wasn’t possible without it; hence the fact Red Steel 2 requires the MotionPlus accessory, and won’t work without it.

After an hour or so of talking about what we had all travelled quite a way to see, Game Designer, Roman Campos Oriola, was then invited to step up on stage, load up the game and give us a walkthrough. This was the very first time we had got to see Red Steel 2 in action and the room was full of very excited journalists and smiling Ubisoft employees.

I warned you!

We got shown a demo by Roman, but watching a game is no substitute to actually playing it! After the demo finished, we all were then given the chance to spend an hour or so with the game, with someone from the Red Steel 2 team on hand to help us with the controls, answer our questions, and enable some of the secret things available through their demo developer menu.

The demo starts with a cut scene as most games of this type do. In this case, you see the game from the perspective of the Hero, who is tied by a long rope from the wrists, and on the other end of the rope was a bad guy on a motorbike. After a minute or so of being dragged through the desert environment, being narrowly missed by a truck, and then through a storm drain, you eventually work a hand free, reach for your gun and then you get the chance to shoot the guy on the bike, causing a lovely cell-shaded explosion and him to crash his bike.

You wake in a room, with the guy who fell off his bike screaming in pain and shouting for his guys to get you. Fortunately on the floor in front of you is your gun, which will be your first weapon. To use it, you just point at the screen with your Wii remote and press the B button. That’s it – no selecting it from your inventory.

You then get your first experience of moving in the game, as you try to find your way out of an industrial-type building. At points you have to shoot the bolts off the doors to open them, which feels very much like Metroid Prime, which is definitely not a bad thing! After shooting open a few doors, you find yourself in a room which seems to contain no way out, until you notice the scratch marks on the walls which indicate a place where you can climb up or down with a simple press of the Z button. In the room is also a bit which requires some clever Z button usage to earn you a gold bar. Apparently the money in the game in going to be used to buy extras such as sword skins and ammo in the in game shop, however Ubisoft quickly changed the subject when we tried to find out more.

After escaping the building, you soon find your own weapon of choice – the katana. The sword is the obvious weapon of choice due to the games almost first person brawler feel to it, and the satisfying feeling of all your actions being recreated on screen almost perfectly certainly add to the fun.

Thanks to Motion Plus, the controller now not only knows exactly how you are holding the sword, but also can gauge exactly how much power you put into a swing, which is lucky as some of the enemies you meet are covered in metal armour meaning that you need to give them a fairly powerful whack before you can hurt them with either sword or gun.

Upon entering the courtyard, you find a few wooden dummies dotted around to test your chopping skills, and show off the accuracy of the Motion Plus based controls. I can tell you that there is a huge amount of pleasure in being able to calve up a wooden figure in whatever way you want – my personal favourite was to decapitate it before chopping it’s remaining body in two vertically! There is also a dummy with the metal armour to teach you about how putting in more power into your swing actually makes a difference and a strong swing shatters enemy armour but a weak swing just bounces off.

The Unnamed Hero

Chopping down a few bamboo fences with your new sword shaped friend, you soon find yourself in the thick of it when you are attacked by multiple enemies. Fighting just comes so naturally to take control of, and being able to combine sword blows and gun shots without needing to swap weapons makes for some fantastically deadly combos. Targeting is assisted by a Z targeting type system – you automatically lock onto the enemy in front of you so you can concentrate on your swordplay, but with a simple press of the Z button, you can quickly switch enemies and defend yourself from multiple targets.

Parrying and countering blows also uses a very easy system to master. To parry a blow, just hold the A button and hold the remote in either a horizontal or vertical orientation, which will cause your enemy to bounce back off your blade and give you chance to hit them back. You can also pull off some well timed swings in the opposite direction to their strike to cause the blades to smash together, again resulting in the enemy being ever so slightly stunned.

Each fight (or series of fights) has its own health bar, so once you have cleared an area of enemies, your health returns to full before making your way to the next skirmish. This means that you don’t have to go around looking for health packs, which is a nice addition. Enemies also have a similar level of health, as once you have hit them a few times, their target cursor will begin to flash orange, meaning you can now perform a finishing blow on them, instantly putting them out of their misery. This is performed by pressing forward on the nunchuck stick and pressing the A button. All of the finishing moves look very painful to whoever receives them, but due to the teen rating Ubisoft are aiming for, you won’t be seeing any Mad World style blood spurting – you in fact will find that there is no blood at all in game, but this shouldn’t been seen as a negative.

After clearing the area of bad guys you then get a chance to freely hit things with your sword and watch them get destroyed. Hitting things like phone boxes causes them to break open and dropping the coins on the floor. In the first fight area there is also a safe which you get to open using some clever Motion Plus and Wii remote controls. To open the safe, you have to hold the Wii remote to your ear, and move it ever so slightly around as if turning the dial on the safe. When you reach the right spot, you’ll hear a ping noise and you’ll have to turn the controller in the other direction. Repeat until the safe is open, and collect its contents as your reward.

It's hammer time!

The final battle of the demo is between you and a big guy wearing a lot of armour and wielding a big hammer. The idea of this fight is to wait for him to charge at you, perform a quick dodge (by moving the stick in a direction and pressing A), get behind him and hacking him to bits. Shooting him has little effect other than making him flinch as the bullet bounces off his armour, although it doesn’t mean you can’t throw a couple of gun shots into your combo whilst behind him. Once he’s down, the demo ends and you are presented with a very pretty Red Steel 2 logo and you are left wanting more.

The day finished with a sneak preview of the E3 trailer which I’m sure you’ve all seen by now – the Wii styled one with the guy bouncing around his very modern living room whilst playing the game. After a round of applause there was just enough time for a group photo, before we had to grab a taxi and start the long journey home.

Overall, Red Steel 2 looks like it’s shaping up to be a fantastic game. The gameplay with the Motion Plus add on really makes it feel like you are in total control of both sword and gun, and the graphic effects are impressive to say the least. The original Red Steel did a great job of launching the franchise, but Red Steel 2 looks like it fills all the gaps Red Steel left, and I cannot wait to get my hands on the finished game!