Short version...
Long version:
Any game I play for five straight hours on its first boot-up is a good one in my book. Especially when it requires a very physical style of play. (believe me, I can feel it this morning) If you're going to play, you're going to play standing up and with your boots on.
The Wii drought is a distant memory for me. I've been gaming non-stop for the past year, always with some disc or WiiWare on the go but it's rare that a game comes along that reminds me of the initial excitement we had when the Wii concept was first revealed. For me, Red Steel 2 doesn't just live up to that excitement it manages to do things that I hadn't expected at all.
- Red Steel 2 is so good it almost makes me want to replay the first game. If you played RS1, you know what an achievement that is. :)
- The WM+ lets you aim outside of the boundaries of the screen and turn faster the further you go. The bounding box style of play is so ingrained in me now that I had to relearn how to play with a Wiimote. But this is so much more instinctive and controllable. Every FPS should support WM+ from now on.
- Consistency. We've all played Wii games that don't respond how you expect. Even the best ones, the games that defy waggle and have definite actions you're supposed to make, leave you frustrated when they don't register what you're doing. Red Steel 2 isn't like that. You stab forward, your character stabs. You slice in whatever direction, your character slices. You guard against attacks in different directions, the game doesn't let you down. You swing harder and wider for extra damage, it works. You mix moves and button presses into a combo and a finisher, consistent results everytime. It's practically a revelation.
- No gimmicky wrist flicks. Hey, you want to play a sword fighting game but you don't want to swing your arm? Fuck you. This isn't Wii Sports Tennis, this is a physical combat simulator. If you don't perform natural motions, if you don't wind back before you swing, you will get eaten alive by the bad guys.
- One calibration per game. Red Steel 2 only requires you place the WM+ on a flat surface once when the game boots up. Then that's it. Ubisoft and Nintendo/Retro said they were working on new, invisible ways of calibrating the WM+ during play and apparently they suceeded because this isn't like Wii Sports Resort where you always have one finger on the D-pad for recalibration. It just works.
- And the big thing I wasn't expecting... I can play an action brawler game, with combos and combat strategy and finishers, without ever feeling like I'm throwing moves and hoping for the best. This is possibly the best action game I've played in terms of how you're given an expanding set of moves and they all have their uses, their variations, and they don't get muddled up in my head or forgotten. Maybe it's the benefit of using muscle memory instead of just a list of buttons, but I am loving being able to use everything that the game gives me as it was intended. I can't tell you how many action games I've played through while favoring just the flying kick, or one or two specific attacks. :D Red Steel 2 makes you feel like a bad-ass, not because you're tough and strong, but because you can more easily decide what you want to do in any given split-second of a situation, and then do it.
-=-
I've heard suggestions that the game isn't that long overall and I guess that means I'll have played through it before too long, but I am loving what is there. I'm sold on the future of this as a franchise now. Hell, a lot of other developers should be standing up and paying attention to what Ubisoft has achieved here. A great looking, great playing game on the Wii that treats its audience like gamers, not suckers.
Everyone here should get the chance to play it. Don't miss out!
