Ush's Videogames review thread!

A while ago I opened up my 'Final Fantasy games on the Playstation' review thread. This was always something I had en eye to continuing, and indeed in due course I shall be able to review FFX, man of the moment as I am.

But it seemed quite fun being able to ***** about things I don't like about games, and the reviews seemed reasonably well received, so I am now opneing the field to all of videogaming! FF gaming was a bit of a curiosity to me, after all. I am primarily a PC gamer, though Nintendo has recently won me over.

A relayed forum post in my magazine of choice, PC Gamer, had a comment from a gamer that said "After two decades gaming, my tastes have become so specific that I don't actually like anything any more." This struck a chord with me. When you play games for a long time, in my experience, you see a heck of a lot more that you don't like than you do, and you start seeing things you don't like in just about everything you play, with no game being able to live up to the impossible combination of all the best things you saw in your head that you WANT in a game. Bad for enjoyment, but great for criticism, and this is in a genre where solid criticism has actually helped improve things over time. Therefore, I take the view that me reviewing negatively is a public service. Woo!

I'm not a professional game designer, but that's because I think it is a mistake to make your hobby your job. There is no real course in good game design, it's really down to talent and practice. I actually like to think I am fairly good in this area, and I certainly have some twenty years of practice and experience in hobbyist game design and implementation. Feel free to think my game design views are crap, but I stand by them and would be willing to put some of my designs forward as proof of how some things could be done bettter. If you want a character referece, ask my RP crowd. Note this is entirely about rules concept and execution. I know bugger all about game programming.

I'll comment about games, leave a mark out of ten (with seven being the reasonable mark for enkoying a game), leave a closing summary, and will also list any cardinal sins the game has. Cardinal sins are othewrwise trivial problems with games (i.e. not being down to bugs or massive gameplay mistakes) that nonetheless cause great and continuous irritation. The best example of this would be Unskippable Cutscenes, one of the greatest gaming sins in the book.

KNIGHTS OF THE OLD REPUBLIC

I’m kicking off with KOTOR because it has a bit of a god-like reputation in some quarters and my opposition to certain aspects of this has occasionally been of issue in the Star Wars and Role-playing areas. Here’s a chance to state my views on the whole thing definitively.

Let’s get something out of the way first. I liked KOTOR. It was a worthwhile gaming experience. My issue is not that it is a bad game, it is that it does not deserve deification.

For those of you who do not know, Knights of the Old Republic is a Star Wars game set thousands of years before the films, in the days when there were lots of Sith as well as lots of Jedi. This kind of fuzzy past is an area where George Lucas’ views and those of the Expanded Universe (those parts of Star Wars fiction not in any way created by GL, like the third party books) somewhat clash. To be sure, KOTOR is an EU influenced game more than a George Lucas one. Not necessarily a bad thing because it gives you a much more open playing field to build your game in, but unfortunately it includes some mistakes of mentality that I shall cover later.

KOTOR is a team-based computer role-play. You play an amnesiac force user who comes to on a ship under fire in the middle of a war; you must escape the ship onto the planet below, then work your way getting off the planet, and then go to various places in the Galaxy developing your force skills as a Jedi, finding out who the hell you are and why you were there at the start, maintaining your group of buddies and deciding between the Light and Dark Side. By the end of the game your power is more or less that of the Gods and you are in a position to affect the fate of the Galaxy etc.

KOTOR’s backdrop is in a Sith War led by the mysterious Darth Revan and his apprentice, Darth Malak (the use of the titles ‘Darth’ causing a small continuity war amongst the EU crowd). One of the central mysteries is the disappearance of Darth Revan, the war being led by Malak in the meantime. The Republic seems very much pressed in the game, the Jedi rather disorganised, partly as a result of the recent Mandalorian war which a lot of Jedi took part in even though officially they were meant to stay out.

KOTOR is made by the same people that brought you Baldur’s Gate and Neverwinter Nights, and likewise uses the D20 system. You get powers and feats and level up in ways that will be very familiar to any players of their games. KOTOR runs on a 3-d engine that was a more sophisticated version of the Neverwinter Nights one. You control three characters at a time; Final Fantasy style you pick the three you want whenever venturing out somewhere, returning to your ship to change when you feel it is appropriate.

KOTOR was a long time in the making and there is a great attention to detail in it which shows this. On its release, it was highly regarded by many, and its popularity since- including engagement with the backstory I mention above- has won it a lot of diehard fans. Your interactions with the other characters are many and varied and change according to your gender, in-game decisions and your moral outlook, as determined by your Light/Dark Side position. Many, many choices in game affect your position on the Light/Dark scale. This was also very popular. The game is well-constructed, easily playable and rarely frustrating in a gameplay sense. So, RPing with open motives in a Star Wars environment not fettered by the films, anyone like Jar-Jar and as many Sith as you can imagine? What’s not to like, hmm?

Let’s knock some of these things over, then.

1. Stylistic errors. Star Wars has a style all of its own. Obviously not everyone likes it, but a lot of Star Wars stuff becomes innately cooler and more enjoyable simply because it IS Star Wars. Games that go with this vibe do well, and KOTOR has done so in a lot of ways. But in several critical ways it has not- in many places it feels distinctly UN Star Wars. A good example of this is people using metal swords against Lightsabre users. Huh? The in-game explanation is fairly feeble- the metal swords are weaved with cortosis, a material that resists sabres. Cortosis in turn is a feeble EU invention created by unimaginative authors themselves going against the Star Wars style, but even they never let it be used in weaponry. And WHY go to the bother of putting in such melee weapons and so having to bother explaining them? When, in the films, ever, do things like metal swords get used in lightsabre fights? It’s completely against the vibe. And on a more practical level, game rule wise, aren’t Lightsabres going to be better weapons anyway? Well… yes. They are. The swords are magnificently pointless. You are going to use sabres or you are going to use guns. It’s only the vagueries of role-playing- wherein when you get shot you just take abstract damage rather than… well, dying- that makes metal swords possible, because in the films the use of Lightsabres is justified by their ability to reflect incoming fire alone allowing you to get close. Now… admittedly this is a small thing. But KOTOR is littered with such things and it really starts to make you think of this as far future D&D rather than Star Wars.

2. Massive, overblown EU-like approach. My problem with the EU approach is that much EU is exemplified by sloppy and unimaginative thinking. Death Star can destroy a planet? Well, this book has a weapon that destroys a solar system! And so on and so forth, always trumping itself in very juvenile ways. KOTOR falls directly into this trap. A central plot point is the power Battle Meditation, via which a certain Jedi can affect the results of entire battles by concentrating on it. Uh-huh. Even if this were not a silly and overblown thing, it’s simply really boring, plot-wise. But the most (General?) grievous errors are in the force powers. The EU has often taken the piss out of these things; in the films the most powerful of the most powerful have, on occasion, flung lightning as a moment of sheer drama. In all other places the force is relatively subtle; just in these small, dramatic moments do the most powerful of all push the limit, and even then only to limited effect. The EU tends to take such things as the starting point and build up from there, rather than building TO it, and this approach has infected the computer games. Now, ok, in your First Person Shooters and what-not this is more forgivable on the grounds of them being arcade games. But KOTOR is an RP, and it is banking on re-creating the Star Wars experience. It should get it right. Instead, at a fairly early level you can fling around enough Lightning to de-populate most planets, and that is just a start. With the Force you can paralyse, stun, create shields, drain hitpoints… and what in the name of Yoda is ‘Force Destroy Droid’ meant to be? The power of the Force to… err… magically destroy droids? And ‘magic’ is the key word here, because very quickly you notice that this is simply a converted D&D magic system with Force names mapped on. No great attempt has been made to really create a system that makes you feel like the Jedi you have seen in the films and want to re-create. Lazy, adolescent stuff.

3. And talking of D&D… the system is bust. KOTOR uses the D20 system. There is a tabletop Star Wars RP that uses D20, hence the license working out. A lot of the class and force power names have been taken from this, but curiously the rules are almost entirely D&D. Star Wars d20 has large differences in areas like armour and hit points that the makers of KOTOR have ignored, using the old D&D system instead where magic Full Plate is the only way to go. This causes all sorts of weird anomalies where they have to create Jedi Robes that act like suits of armour, else all the Jedi will just die from being too easy to hit (in D20, armour affects how hard you are to hit, not what damage you can take. Star Wars d20 sensibly changed this as it did not suit Star Wars… clearly KOTOR should have stuck with this). Still, that’s small fry really because the problem is more fundamental than that. D20 is a poor system. The skill system is appalling, it is designed really for miniature work (being almost a war game than an RP), it involves too much dice rolling and it is too slow. Oddly, some of these aspects are improved by translation to computer- all that damn rolling gets done for you- but it still doubles up the problem. D20 isn’t very good, the doubling is that tabletop systems do not work properly on the computer. They depend on adaptation and implementation by a Games Master controlling the game, who does not exist in a computer game. They are also designed for an environment of discussion, and choice with dice rolling, which also does not exist on a computer game. On computer, the system is slow and clunky and flows badly, with a lot of pausing and a lot of issues in the movement (real-time computer game movement is utterly different to tabletop miniatures movement and the two do not meet well) and worst of all the way that something important only happens every six seconds- the length of a round. Great in role-playing, TERRIBLE in a computer game. Worse still, because there is no arbitration, the system is terribly abusable. All RP games have abusable rules, but GMs stack rules, enemies and the acquisition of abusable powers to make sure it doesn’t get too bad (good ones do, anyway). It’s because there is a certain way in which RP games work which means power-orientated players find gaps in the system. There is no arbitrator in KOTOR, and basically the game is ridiculously easy. Stack up a Jedi with the power flurry and watch all enemies die when you click the attack button. Pretty much just like that, from halfway through the game onwards. It’s really a bad idea to simply adapt a tabletop system. Final Fantasy games work MUCH better than this because they are designed, from the ground up, for computers. Ditto other major RP franchises. KOTOR fails here on so many levels and the stark comparison of how bad it is compared to purpose built games is breathtaking. And as a final addendum to that… D20 combats can be likened to two cavemen with clubs taking turns to hit each other until one falls over (again, off-line, you can find ways to make this exciting. Not in a computer game). I just wanted to add- this style makes for the dullest lightsabre duels imagainable. One of the best bits of Star Wars… ruined.

4. The plot is NOT all that. KOTOR’s plot seems to get a lot of kudos from people and I cannot imagine why. It’s a fair plot. I am glad they put the effort in, and I have played much worse. But it’s only ok. It’s been done a ton of times before and basically people only like it because of the twist, other than that it is all flim-flam and background. What about important elements of plot, like characterisation and development? The people all develop in such boring ways- again, Final Fantasy presents FAR more interesting characters with plotlines for those characters that draw you in so much more. Even FFVIII was making the effort with the characters, much as its main plot was shite. But yes, KOTOR’s plot is affable B-Movie stuff. Quite frankly, role-playing wise, I have written and run much, much better plots. One other comment requires spoilers:

Spoiler:
The big twist is that you yourself are Darth Revan, recovering from injury/force induced memory loss. You get to choose between becoming Revan anew or being a new Light Side… guy. One VERY streange thing here- which I think reveals a faulty mentality behind a lot of the people that like the KOTOR plot- is how hugely popular Darth Revan is as a character. How is that possible? All you get is a lot of people saying Revan is hard. Other than that, all you ever see Revan do is… well, stuff that you yourself do, becauwe you are playing him. It’s not even like Final Fantasy where you play people like Cloud or Squall or Tidus and love or hate them according to how they act. You are in complete control; your character has no personality and performs no actions other than those you give him. So to say Darth Revan is, as some do, the best SW character ever… is to say that YOU are the best SW character ever, because that’s all he is. It is a strange new form of narcissism. It’s the EU mentality again- adolescents being attracted to huge, overblown and pointless power trips, rather than anything interesting.

5. Finally, my big issue with KOTOR is its showpiece good/evil Light/Dark system. I will quote here from an earlier post on this subject I made:

SERIOUS issues there. This whole 'start neutral and change by your actions', first used in Jedi Knight, does not work right.

Well, first of all, to make it work, they had to start both games with your character as an amnesiac. Lazy.

Secondly, the decisions are banal. Turning to the Dark Side seems to have absolutely nothing to do with the issues of gravity and destiny and fear that the movies have it as. Light Side seems to be about not accepting money for missions, and Dark Side seems to be about stealing money and maybe going on a spontaneous kill rampage for no explained reason. It's trivial, it is an utterly surface treatment of what should be a deep issue and it is not appropriate for what is meant to be a deep RP game.

Thirdly, the benefits are mis-judged. It actually gives BONUSES for reaching the maximum of either end of the spectrum. What the hell is that? For the Light Side, especially, there should be NO reward for getting anywhere. Being good IS the reward, and yeah, that might well suck if you are obsessed with seeing your character development in terms of how many +s to hit you get. Suddenly, people are not trying to do good or evil because it is part of a reflected personality, No, they are being bribed into it by power. Yay! I topped the Light Side, so I get loads of cool bonuses! Honestly, what kind of Jedi is that?

Fourthly, it is deeply and fundamentally backwards. It assumes what you do makes you what you are. No! What you ARE causes what you DO. This is especially important in Star Wars. A true Dark Sider could do every single nice thing in the game, if the whim took him, but it wouldn't make him any less of an evil bastard. Yet the game would score him up the Light Side for doing that.

It's really not an opposed spectrum that counts up good deeds and evil deeds and produces a balance sheet. That reads Light and Dark side all wrong.

In my opinion, sophistication to make Light and Dark work is probably still beyond a computer based RP. They should do intertwining plotlines choosing Light or Dark from the start. There, they could do REALLY well. Then they could explore what kind of Light/Dark Sider you are, which would make things work much better.

This kind of issue permeates KOTOR- the writers have not paid attention to the source material. Their treatment of Love in the game is almost a slap in the face to what George Lucas specifically says about it. This kind of thing really irritates me- if you don’t like a fictional background, then fine, but don’t work with it. Make one of your own, even. When you are making work set inside SOMEONE ELSE’s fictional background, you should have some damn respect for it, and make the effort to keep to it.

So, that is Knights of the Old Republic. Well put together, detailed, fun to play. But based on a flawed system, far too easy to exploit and beat with no challenge, and not living up to the promise it had in really allowing you to live the Jedi experience,. Instead, you are living an experience of their own making, that belongs in another setting, not Star Wars.

Cardinal Sins: I can’t remember that well, but the loading times were offensively long on anything other than super-powered (for the time) computers.

Rating: 7/10

Summary: Good. But only good, nothing close to spectacular.

Nice review. very detailed. I can tell you're a star wars fan and honestly trying not to bash the game. 👆

Thanks muchly.

You may note that in my 'earlier post' quote I do above I refer to 'both' games.

This is because the issue applies just as much to the sequel. having mentioned that, I'll do a quick review there.

KNIGHTS OF THE OLD REPUBLIC II- THE SITH LORDS

KOTOR II is very similar to the original, to the point where it should have been a data disc. Indeed, such things were released for both Baldur's Gater and Neverwinter Nights, and it is galling to see that this got a full price release.

You play a different character in KOTOR II, set a while after KOTOR with the main character from that game having gone missing. A few of the companions from KOTOR turn up either as cameos or, in the case of your droid, as a party member once more.

By this point in the plot, although the Revan wars are over, various other Sith Lords have virtually exterminated the Jedi and are poised to take over. I must say, the KOTOR writers have a VERY low opinion of the Jedi, who are constantly outmatched, both as warriors and, apprently, morally. They look like feeble imbeciles, really. Creatively I take objection to that- Jedi should look like a force to be reckoned with. Again, I think EU mentality is seeping in here.

But you are basically doing the same thing as in KOTOR- go around, fnd out about yourself (you are fairly clueless about the issues in your past again), level up, go Light or Dark, and have companions following your moral lead in the same manner, until the end where you have the power, pretty much, of a God and can affect the destiny of the Galaxy... err... getting the slightly repetitive picture?

KOTOR II has famously received a lot of flak for being unfinished. The game ends so abruptly that you feel you forgot to install a disc. The issues are more fundamental than that- many of the areas are lifeless and boring, with poor textures and no detail and not much plot. empty spaces seem to be the theme, with even Nar Shadda, a famous EU world meant to be a vast (and famously deep) city, a bustling amoral metropolis wheree everything can be brought and sold, is reduced to a few dark empty screens of vectory buildings with the occasional person wondering around. Criminal, really. It feels sterile and lifeless throughout.

It is indeed true that KOTOR II was rushed and came out before it was really done, although to be fair the detail of character interaction is even more in-depth than the original (their development and plot interest is still very low, though). Various people have tried to re-create the original intended experience, having found data files relevant to entire sections of the game cut out, and that made sense of apparently pointless things that happen near the end (they were simply left in unfinished).

Unfortunately this has given rise to the myth that KOTOR II would have been the best game ever if it had been properly finished. No. It could hardly have failed to help it, of course, but KOTOR II's problems are far more fundamental than that. It is simply NOT, in any way, an improvement on the original. All my above criticisms apply (if anything, it is even easier to rule abuse and hence have no challenge), and added to that are the criticisms of overpricedness, lack of imagination in trying to advance the franchiose... and it basically being sheer repetition. If the plot had been 100% finished, all these issues would still apply.

And so again, because many parts of the basic game design flow well and can be enjoyable, you are not going to gnaw your own hands off in sheer despair playing this game. But it's not good enough, and wehreas I can fondly remember KOTOR as a good game with flaws, KOTOR II is a botched opportunity, simple cash fleecing with no advance. Boo.

Rating: 6/10

Summary: Just as KOTOR. Loses a mark for being rushed and for repetition

Hey, Ush? Can other members post reviews? I'd quite enjoy that.

It might look a bit weird in my "I seem to hate all games" thread, unless you really dig my style. I guess there is nothing to stop you opening a thread of your own, though if it became crowded it would need its own section.

Lana should handle this one, of course. It's her section.

I quit KOTOR2 a quarter through because it was so boring.

Aaaaaaaaaaand I can certainly vouch for Ush's skill and talent in both game design and writing very good plots 😊

And now I'm just wondering what game will be torn into next. Hehe.

And on the reviews thing (that's a lot of ands in a row), I think there actually was a game review thread at some point in time but I'm too lazy to look for it at the moment. So while I'd rather the forum not get too cluttered with review threads, I also can't be bothered to dig out the original. Meaning, I'll decide later what to do.

Originally posted by Ushgarak
It might look a bit weird in my "I seem to hate all games" thread, unless you really dig my style. I guess there is nothing to stop you opening a thread of your own, though if it became crowded it would need its own section.

Lana should handle this one, of course. It's her section.

I like your style but it certainly isn't my own. I'll just wait for Lana's word on this one...

Originally posted by §P0oONY
I like your style but it certainly isn't my own. I'll just wait for Lana's word on this one...

Ush, curious what games, if any, you'd give 10 out of 10, or 9 out of 10.

They'll come!

Doh, the suspense, and so on.

bugga!
suspence always kills me..

Can't wait to see what Ush will say about FPS. 😉

Interesting, have you ever reviewed Star Wars, LOTR or Matrix movies, Ush? And I would like to see your review of Baldur`s Gate 2 or Fallout.

And are new RPG`s worth upgrading my computer to play them?

I'll be honest, I've not seen a "get a new computer" value RP for a while.

I've never done in-depth movie reviews, no.

RED STEEL

I can relate very much to the UK ign review here. When I heard and read about Red Steel- Nintendo’s flagship shooter for the new Wii console- I was not at all impressed or excited. It struck me as an unambitious shooter built entirely around the new control system which would probably be novel but inferior to the good ol’ mouse and keyboard.

I bought it anyway. Funnily enough I got exactly what I predicted, plus a few bugs. But I don’t regret the purchase.

The plot of an FPS is unlikely to have the detail of the plot of an RP, of course, so that can be dealt with quickly. You play a bodyguard, Scott, who is about to meet his fiancee’s father. Your girl obviously hasn’t given away that much- say, that her father is a major Yakuza boss in LA. You find it out the hard way when a rival faction gatecrashes the big meet, starts shooting everyone in sight and kidnaps your girl. After getting a little battered, you pick up a gun and go looking for her, getting drawn into various Yakuza plots in LA and Tokyo, and learning the ways of the noble Samurai on the way as you try to become a warrior worthy of respect. Apparently. Anyway, you know the deal even without seeing anything of the game. Lots and lots of bad guys to kill for between 10 and 12 hours (not counting bits you have to re-do when you die) until you have put the world to rights. Also a lot of appalling voice acting, though the Japanese sounds better than the English. But heck, I am enjoying Final Fantasy X and I think that takes a few prizes for bad voice acting too, so let’s not hold that against it. It’s not what you would buy the game for, anyway.

Let’s get to the heart of things. The two points of Red Steel are a. the whole movement and shooting thing is done using the remote/nunchuk combo, using your off-hand to move yourself about/open doors/scenery interact/reload with the nunchuk, and your on-hand to point and shoot with the remote… and b. the fact that every so often you have a swordfight, using your on-hand for your attacking blade and off-hand for your shorter, defensive blade, both controlled with the motion sensor and a button pressed used only for dodging rather than parrying with the off-hand. Red Steel is totally unremarkable in every other way, so these two areas are where the game lives and dies, so I’ll deal with them primarily.

The control system is absolutely fine. Obviously it takes a good amount of time and effort to get used to. But I remember mouse and keyboard being a long adjustment for me as well. Maybe others took to it more naturally, but I suspect that people who complain about having to adjust to controls might have a fuzzy memory about how long it took them to get good with what they are used to. Aiming seems totally impossible at first until the zoom function is introduced, by physically pushing your arm forwards and backwards whilst holding down the aim button. This push/pull zoom mechanic is actually the most awkward part of the system but it is bearable. As time goes by you find yourself getting better and better at firing without the zoom too, but it’s still very handy for some situations. Once you are used to it, shooting and moving are instinctive and work fine, but there is a very predictable and inevitable problem. Your aiming point is independent of your facing- a plus point over mouse and keyboard, where your gun is only ever pointing where your nose is. But the analogue stick’s left/right function is for sidestepping; the only way to turn is to aim far to the left or right (or up or down) and drag the screen with you. It’s adequate but totally useless for fast reaction situations to the point where you feel your capacities are severely diminished compared to what you remember from, say, Half-Life. This control mechanism is becoming the default for Wii fps. Hmm. I hear rumour it is less bad elsewhere, but I am waiting for someone to come up with a better approach somehow.

The swordfighting takes place at pre-determined points,. You cannot (effectively) sword gun-using enemies (not that you would want to), or shoot sword-wielding ones. Meet a swordsman, and you auto-draw your swords and move forwards to join him in the fighting arena for it- effectively a swordfighting mini-game. From a game design point of view, my opinion is that this is absolutely the right way to do it. A free-form design might sound superficially attractive but the moment I first saw a Jedi Outcast deathmatch I knew that approach was doomed. Dramatic swordfights need some choreography to be good, and this provides the means to do that. Star Wars games on the Wii, take note!

Some have complained that the swordfighting feels wrong because your movements are not directly translated on-screen; instead, an upwards sort of motion will translate into the fixed up-slash move on screen, likewise all the other directions. An odd complaint. When I saw the Wii Remote and its advertised possibilities for the first time, I knew at once those dreaming of ‘true’ lightsabre duels were doing just that- dreaming. There are far too many subtleties of foot movement and hand position for that ever to be even vaguely possible. Just think, an idle twitch on your right hand, and literal movement should, by rights, cut your own head off. And how would the game know when I am twisting my body from side to side or back or forwards in time with my sword strokes? No, the literal approach would be rubbish- I am sure it was probably playtested and found wanting. Instead, the swordfighting is actually a system perfectly feasible using a standard controller- up, down, left, right, buttons to do things… but translated for use with the Remote, where upon it feels MUCH better.

And I must say, I felt very good swordfighting. Strike right, block left- it is mostly to do with timing. Early fights with enemies tend to favour the “just wave around like a maniac” approach, but then you start to read them and the moves they do and it feels great to judge your reaction and countermoves just right. Possibly it’s a little too easy, but I won’t fault it for that. You have a tactical choice of either trying to cut down your foe or break his weapon (I preferred to think of the weapon-break as a disarm instead; it certainly would have looked cooler if it was); different foes favour different approaches.

There are various special moves available but they work less well. This is for two reasons- first, they tend to require certain combinations with the rather sensitive system makes very hard even in practice (because what you think is a clear left or right movement very easily becomes a diagonal instead and ruins your move), let alone mid-fight. Second problem is- most of them simply aren’t necessary to win any fights. I stuck to a rigid weapon-break strategy every time and won out.

So, what else is there to say? Well, the controls seem to have satisfied me, but on the whole the game is pretty dull. Mid-game it tries to liven things up by having selectable missions, but the approach is not used well. It has training sessions between missions at that point also, including a firing range, but it’s all actually rather pointless. Contrast Perfect Dark, where learning about weapons you found was great fun. Not so here, and there is also an unreasonable amount of time involved in moving between the sword and gun training locations. At no point does the game give you a sense of shock or wonder at events, and nearly all levels are pretty dull and standard stuff, the best being the ‘Tetsuo’s Games’ chapter where you have to win over a boss by playing through his lethal hunting game. These levels are done with a great sense of humour, colour and sound, and good use of light and darkness too, with Tetsuo’s commentary emerging from deranged toy rabbit models scattered around. Over all too quickly, alas. The music, incidentally, is pretty good throughout. The visuals, less so. Red Steel is a purpose built Wii-title but clearly from the Gamecube era. We’ve yet to see how well the Wii can try and push its graphics- not its priority, of course- but it will have to be better than this, especially with the texturing. One fears the lack of anti-aliasing may be a permanent issue. One area that works not badly is you only being able to carry two guns, forcing tactical choice. Countering this is the awkwardness of changing weapons, and also that a game which allows you to carry a pistol sideways if you want (by twisting the remote) doesn't follow through this action film logic and allow you to wield dual pistols. Ah well.

Later in the game you get a time freeze option whereupon you fill a gauge for rapid kills and can expend it to freeze time and mark enemies for subsequent quick kills when time resumes again, Cool enough, if mostly taken from Max Payne. You can also, if they are visible, shoot weapons out of bad guy's hands and beckon to them to surrender afterwards. Causing a leader to surrender also makes his cronies give up in an Italian army style mass capitulation, complete with almost comical rattle of weapons being dropped to the floor. You score Respect points for such non-lethal takedowns- an option also available to you every time you win a swordfight, choosing to strike down or do a stylish sword twirl and let your defeated opponent live. Fair enough, but Respect points, in of themselves, don't seem to get you much. What would have been great was if the game offered tangible differences, either in game plot or hidden options, between those who spared and those who slaughtered.

There's a mutiplayer option- deathmatch only, but if you have four players there the the great option of having secret instructions to you 'phoned in' via the speaker on your remote. But I haven't had a chance to try any of this to tell you how well it works. I can only guess that control is much more awkward when you only have a quarter of the screen to point the remote at.

Overhanging all of this is one gloomy spectre- Red Steel is bugged, the only noticeably bugged game I have played thus far on the Wii. There are many small glitches of graphics and sound and weird enemy behaviour, either in AI or breaking physics. Sometimes the physics break for you as well, getting you totally stuck and forcing a re-load. Once or twice the game actively crashed on me. The biggest bug of all is one nicknamed the ‘rubber band’ bug, a bug wherein your aiming point keeps bouncing back to the centre of the screen when near the horizontal axis. This makes Red Steel the only game thus far where the Remote does not work at full function, and in a game requiring precise aiming, anything that throws it off is somewhat of a disaster. The bug defies much rational analysis, occurring at almost random moments in random degrees of severity. Strangely, turning off the sound from the remote (which otherwise makes nice weapon reloading noises) seems to defeat the bug. No-one can explain why, and even there I cannot offer a guarantee because although it completely cured it on my profile, when my brother started playing with a new save, the remote sound was off but the bug kept happening again. Don’t ask me, it’s weird but most irritating of all is Ubisoft’s apparent refusal to acknowledge the bug exists, despite an increasing mass of evidence that it does and the easy elimination of all secondary factors (people have replaced their remotes, copy of the game, sensor bar and, indeed, their Wiis, played the game at different locations with different light and sensitivity levels and the bug occurs with 100% regularity).

So. Hmm. Well, I enjoyed playing Red Steel. It wasn’t a waste of my money, and it’s also the game I could play casually on my Wii when I wanted some no-thought mindless violence. Objectively, though, it is only partly successful as a project, it’s too short… and the bugs really take the gloss off.

CARDINAL SINS: Unskippable cutscenes! Game breaking bugs!

Rating: 6/10

Summary: Enjoyable, though shallow, action blaster with a new and partially successful approach. Drops a mark due to bug issues that seem to have no prospect of being solved.

I agree with your last review 100%. clap