1. LarknokL

   10

   This game is quite something. Quite something indeed. The first 20-30 minutes of breaking crates and trying to get that last bottle is very tiresome, until that is, I figured out I could customize my controls and learned the Storm. (So for all you people complaining about crate breaks, just learn the storm.) The rest of hte game (as I have played so far) is awesome. Some may say a few enemy types, but I'm good at counting: Double guns (no armor), Sword (no armor), Sword (armor), Double guns (armor), Hammer trooper, power up soldiers (flash things red), Katakara machinegunners, and Katakara samurai is everything I've seen and I JUST got the third gun. (That's 8 so far, and I've seen footage of guys that twirl their swords.) This game gives you amazing amounts of adrenaline once you figure out how to perform awesome combos (my personal favorite so far: A - Forward Thrust (Rush), then A - A - Down Thrust (Guillotine) Its absolutely beautiful to watch yourself stab the sword into the enemy. The controls are great (CUSTOMIZEABLE), graphics awesome, gameplay begins simplistic, actually requires you to try to swing hard (can be customized too), but gets way more fun. I really suggest this game to anybody who can figure out how to customize controls after 20 minutes for something truly awesome. Great buy. … Expand

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2. JohnRayJr

   6

   Red Steel 2 showcases some good ideas and the potential for a great game, but falls well short. It was released in a bare-bones state, arguably unfinished, and definitely unpolished. Some copies contain serious bugs that can break save data and require chapter resets, wiping out an hour or more of progress. Essentially the main character of this game is a samurai gunslinger who was banished wrongfully from his clan and is now on a quest for revenge when he learns that another clan has killed all of his former clansmen. Why did they do this? They want the mythical katana held by his clan for generations, which he carries. That's about all you'll get as setup for RS2, and the game is sparse even with the basics. There is no development for characters, no changing motivations, and only three NPCs. These NPCs are never developed in any meaningful way - even at the end of the game you'll hardly know who they are, and care little about them. So as far as story and character goes, the story is never elaborated on past the very basic premise, and the game is essentially one big ghost town. There is no one to care about or interact with. It's hard to shake the feeling that this entire layer of the game was planned but cut during development. The presentation of the game is well done, with strongly honed aesthetics and a nice progression of desert environments (it is a Western, albeit a Samurai Western with some technology thrown in). However, the levels themselves are weighed down by three awful design choices. First, there's no overworld map, and the game badly needs one. Second, there is the illusion of exploration, but in fact the progression requires a linear approach that's reminiscent of the 8-bit NES days. In other words, despite the choice to wander around, things must be done in an exact order. The game uses green arrows on the minimap to guide you around, and the game is best played following the arrows. It's odd, because you'd never follow these paths by any natural means. There are doorways everywhere, but you can never interact with them until the relevant objective opens up. The main issue with the levels, though, is that they are filled with generic junk. Crates, barrels, phone booths, vending machines, and inexplicable lockers of some sort - these are scattered about and one of the main means of obtaining cash if breaking random junk. It gets old fast. There is never anything new to find. A safe found in the first 20 minutes of play will contain the same gold bars as a safe found in the last 20 minutes - because the developer created may 10 pieces of junk and populated every single level with them. There's no sense of place and no reason why this crap would be so ubiquitous. There's certainly no explanation why for you find money by slashing open garbage bags and the like - it's the Zelda principle of money-making, but far dumber. The the levels are weighed down by forced and unnatural linearity, ubiquitous and generic junk, and a complete absence of interaction with objects or people. So what doesn't suck about this game? Well, the combat is pretty slick and upgrading your character is fun (and clearly inspired by RE4). That's really what it comes down to. It's a pretty game to look at, plays at a reasonable pace if you beeline from A to B, and has a good variety of swordplay and gunplay. Even here, though, there are major annoyances, and signs that the game was released in an "workable" state, but only just. For example, near the end of the game, there's no indication that you've encountered a shop for the last time. So you can enter the final level having no idea that you should have just spent every penny you had - and there's no way to back this up. Even more bizarre, the final level is filled with hidden money stashes that are completely unusable. The final boss is also identical to the midboss from hours earlier, so of course he's much easier - a total joke at that point, killable in less than a minute, without expending much ammo or taking any damage. And then the game ends - literally with a tacked on "the end" screen. The game features a "challenge" mode that is a basically a non-functional save+ mode. You can't play more than one chapter a time, tutorials are still required, and money from the endgame is lost, and upgrades are still parceled out in the original order even though you have more or all of them. It's not worth more than a quick look. Red Steel 2 would have been a promising launch title for the Wii. As is, it's barely playable. You'll get some fun hours out of this but only if you speed through and don't expect any lasting value or depth. It's pure rental fluff, all potential and no follow-through.… Expand

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3. TwinkleToes

   4

   I bought this game with high hopes, and after the first 30 minutes or so, thought it was brilliant. Sadly the shine soon wore off. The problem was that it was so repetitive. You essentially play the same 3 or 4 missions over and over again. Learn a move, collect, kill, move on. There are loads of weapons, upgrades and techniques you can get, but you never really get any time to enjoy anything in comparison to what you had previously. Another thing that annoyed me was the "point of no return" bits. Why? Why can't I return? The area is tiny, with about 4 sections, with each section being a street. There are only 4 kinds of enemies as well. Easy, medium, hard and boss - essentially - with no break in repetition. Why are there so many weapons and sword techniques when by 2 hours in you have figured out how to kill everything effectively? Also, the majority of the secret techniques you get taught don't actually work on the bosses - so why learn them? They only work on the grunts and low-rankers, and you can kill them just by mindlessly swinging your remote from side to side. Why can't I buy ammo when I need it (I never, ever find JohnnyGun ammo), rather than endlessly walking in a circle through the tiny hub looking for yet more crates? Another thing that irritated me is the fact that the wii motion plus doesn't really seem to add much. You only use if for sword fighting, and within that, the only time it matter is when blocking or breaking blocks, and you can just switch your style from horizontal to vertical by holding B, so why do you need it? If anything it just complicates matters. In a game where, pre-release, the main hype was about how awesome the combat was going to be, why did they make it so repetitive? The only things I genuinely like about this game are the concept (cowboy samurai things), the graphics and, I suppose, the story.… Expand

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     0 of 0 users said yes

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