Red Steel Impressions Roundup

Ubisoft is working on one of the more 'adult' titles slated for the early days of the Wii launch, and there are lots of folks with opinions. From IGN's Red Steel hands-on: "Another important element to the gameplay, which is closely related to the story, is the idea of choice. In Japan, the Yakuza are not senseless killers -- they will only do so when forced into the position. With your girl in possession of the Yakuza, you'll need to become part of the culture, and earn opposing groups respect to get where you need to be. So you'll have to make choices with both your sword and your gun; you may want to perform a headshot or slash a guy's throat, but you can also force them to surrender. In the Yakuza this mutual respect and honor, this admission that one is beaten, is a real thing." More views below, if you Read More.

Comments

I want this game!

[Stormwatch]

from the article:

There are breaks in the gameplay where cutscenes roll, but they will be untraditional in that you will be able to look around as you please, and even interact in some cases.

*cough* Half-Life *cough*

But seriously, the Red Steel videos are impressive. That sword duel part was really exciting. There is another first-person swordfighting game, Maken X for the Dreamcast, and great as it was, its problem was that no control pad could ever have the precision for a "real" swordfight. I think Red Steel may end up being the Wii's killer app.

Effect on Nintendo's target customer base?

[AK__64]

Nintendo claimed it was targeting the Wii to a wider audience, old people, little kids, so on. Will this title advertised all over Wal-Mart's electronics aisle, and the demos running at Best Buy drive all but the geekiest gamers away?
I think Nintendo needs titles like this to avoid being relegated to the casual market only, but I'm wondering how they will market it when they are also trying to sell to non-gamers.

Re:Effect on Nintendo's target customer base?

[JustJon]

Simple. Different commercials for different audiences.

You run commercials for Red Steel during wrestling and other male oriented programming. You run commericals for more casual games during more female or generic audiences, like American Idol. Advertise the kid oriented games during cartoons and other childrens programming.

Multiple advertising plans for multiple audiences.

Re:Effect on Nintendo's target customer base?

[danbeck]

"I think Nintendo needs titles like this to avoid being relegated to the casual market only ..."

Good Lord, more of this garbage from people about how Nintendo needs senseless violence, hookers and people killing cops in order to "break away" from the casual gamer. Go back to playing your GTA LLVIII and I'll handle the casual gaming for you.

The casual market (read Nintendo DS, et. al.) is KICKING THE FUCKING SHIT out of anything around. The 'casual' market is what made a title like the Sims one of the #1 selling games in history. The casual market has more money in order of magnitudes than the hard core gamers that want their "mature" titles. Someone just needs to find the next Sims or the next "Sims" console for these people to spend that money on.

Now the question is, has Nintendo done this with Wii? Time will obviously tell.

Re:Effect on Nintendo's target customer base?

[AcidLacedPenguiN]

isn't Ubisoft in charge of marketing Ubisoft games on Nintendo's platform? So simply put, Nintendo is targeting Wii to a wide audience. Ubisoft (being mostly "hardcore" games maker) is targeting the hardcore audience, presumably to get a foothold as the "killer app". On a side note, When's the last time you heard a casual gamer say "killer app"?

DBtS

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder, does anybody else remember the game from Interplay called "Die By the Sword"? I remember playing this in the late nineties wasting many hours in the arena knocking limbs and heads off of other humans, kobolds, orcs, and ogres.

It's main claim to fame was its sword control system. It allowed you to directly control a melee weapon with the keyboard, mouse, or joystick. It included force-feedback effects, which is how I played the game. Nothing like feeling the clash of your sword against a shield, or the resistance of someone's neck as your blade cut into it... ;)

Too bad I couldn't get it to work in any NT based system (2000 or XP), but I was heavily reminded of "Die by the Sword" from these Wii articles.

Its true!

[CarnivoreMan]

The Yakuza are respectful. On an episode of The Simpsons when one of them accidently came flying through a window, he bowed before heading back out to rejoin the gang fight. He could have just killed everyone in site, like ninja's sometimes do, but no. He took the time to show the respect and bow. The're sweeties!

I played it at E3

[Zovreign]

The demo needs more polish, the game still looks like a dreamcast/gc game graphics wise [not from screen shots but actually physically playin it], the control is neat, but the whole experience came off as some sort of cheesy virtual cop clone. Not in that its a shooter on rails, but its a shooter with limited exploration. Maybe the final game won't be like this, but at the Wii booth, you started in a building, go through some simple sword fighting tutorials [where the first guy is just standing there letting you him them. The second guy you fight with the sword actually attacked you back, but its nothing like what was shown in the wii demo videos.

After some sword fighting you spend the rest of the game going down narrow alleyways where guys pop up ala virtua cop, and you have to mow them down. The enemys were shaded kinda odd, their lighting and shading didn't fit the environment they were in, you could be fighting in a panchino palour, and the environment can be full of red and purple neon lights, but the guys wwere being shaded bright tan or yellow with a really harsh rim light, making them look like they were just cut and pasted there.

I'm really trying not to be mr. negative here, and I'm sure I'm going to get a ton of people calling me a poo poo head, but it was one of the weakest titles that was in the living room subsection of the wii booth [yes I'm counting Tennis and the Conductor game in that assessment].

So hopefully the final product will actually be a good title, but as it stands right now, it feels like hype.

Re:I played it at E3

[justchris]

I agree it needs a lot more polish, but I'm not sure if this version is anything to judge by. It had the feel of being mostly a controller demo. I doubt that demo will make it into the game intact.

Re:I played it at E3

[Castar]

I agree, and I'm worried that this will hurt the Wii. Since Red Steel is one of the highly anticipated games for the console, if Ubisoft messes up (like in the demo, which I also played at E3) many people will write off the console for similar games. Nintendo's first party games showed that the controller worked well for a lot of stuff, but Red Steel just left a bad taste in my mouth. I hope Nintendo makes them polish it a bunch before release.