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Red Steel 2 Hands-On

Ubisoft's Red Steel sequel was playable at E3 09, and we wasted no time jumping on the game at the company's booth.

Red Steel 2 is an interesting proposition. It's the sequel to a game that was poorly received upon release, but the developers genuinely seem to have learned a lot from the experience. The sequel has a completely different story to the original, and, in fact, the only thing that the two games have in common is the gun/sword-based combat. We managed to play the game for the first time today at the LA Convention Center, as well as find out more about it with lead designer Roman Campos Oriola.

Red Steel 2 is a Western/Japanese hybrid, with a storyline that mixes ninja swordplay and a Wild West setting. As the main character, you decide to return home after many years, but you're captured by a rival gang and are dragged into town by a rope attached to a motorcycle. You manage to shoot your captor and make your escape, and the tutorial introduces you to the basic movement and combat controls.

You aim and move just like you did in the original Red Steel, but Wii MotionPlus support means that the controls are much more refined than before. You push your aiming reticle to the side of the screen to turn, for example, but now the farther you push, the faster you turn. The support for Nintendo's latest peripheral also really improves the sword combat, which is much more accurate than before. You really need to make huge swipes with the remote for strong attacks on enemies with armour, while holding the A button lets you perform highly accurate parrying moves.

While the controls are an obvious improvement to Red Steel 2, we also have to compliment the game on its looks. It could be described as cel-shaded, although the game manages to retain a gritty edge, but it certainly has a distinct visual style all its own. Even better, it's running in 60fps at this stage, although that could change according to the technical limitations placed on the final build. Sadly, the same can't be said for the violence--while you can hold A to perform finishing moves, such as a sword-based execution, there's not a drop of blood to be seen in any of the game.

One of the coolest things we did in the game was break into a safe. You hold the Wii remote up to your ear and then tilt the remote to turn the wheel on the safe. When you hear a click through the Wii Remote, you know that you've hit the correct combination, and you have to do this three times to open the safe. It's definitely a cool little minigame, and even over the noise of the show, we still managed to get into the safe.

Developer Roman Campos Oriola left us with one final tease from the demo, which he showed us after we'd played through the first level. He showed how, about one hour into the game, you can upgrade your sword with special powers, such as the ability to fling enemies into the air. Once they're in midair, you can shoot them or jump up in the air and smack them down to earth. Finally, he told us that Red Steel 2 is going to be a strict single-player experience, so no multiplayer features will ship in the game.

We really enjoyed our time playing Red Steel 2, and even though we played it on the show floor, we didn't have any problem getting into the new swinging mechanics of the swordplay. We hope to bring you more on the game post-E3.

70 Comments

  • Dragonite97

    Posted Aug 6, 2009 12:28 pm PT

    god hopefully this wil be ALOT better thn the first!!!

  • curtdoggLP5

    Posted Jul 26, 2009 1:21 am PT

    no blood and no multiplayer... Hmm. I dunno, I'll see how it turns out...

  • Derekgilreath93

    Posted Jul 5, 2009 8:58 am PT

    Looks good no blood is week but that i dont get i cant watch the video on GS cuz i am 16 but there is no blood -_- ya GS yall really need people there that know what they are doing

  • raptor400k

    Posted Jun 30, 2009 2:49 am PT

    No blood doesn't kill gameplay(though it does seem odd that a game named Red Steel doesn't have it). Anyways, game looks cool, hope it doesn't become a generic hack n slash.

  • freeofkings

    Posted Jun 28, 2009 12:26 pm PT

    @cecil highway now that you mention it yah.

  • Cecil_Highwind

    Posted Jun 26, 2009 10:24 pm PT

    Does anyone else think of Marsuvees Black when they look at the progatonist?

  • BLuFAlc0n

    Posted Jun 23, 2009 2:23 am PT

    Awesome, No blood is fine for me. I bet when enemies come out, they'll say: "Die you B******"

  • kieran-o

    Posted Jun 17, 2009 2:40 pm PT

    Already looking better than the first one. It's on my shelf and hasn't been opened for about a a year now.

  • Nercis

    Posted Jun 16, 2009 1:54 pm PT

    Looks very interesting to me. The first game was not to bad, i think

  • commander_mp

    Posted Jun 16, 2009 12:10 pm PT

    they are trying to show that you don't need blood and the f bomb to make a good game

  • Phwalalabah

    Posted Jun 16, 2009 8:14 am PT

    There's probably no multiplayer because it'd be hard to make the player's fighting animations look good from a third person perspective. It would look strange with only a limited amount of pre-set animations trying to predict where and how the sword hand controlled by the player is going to move.

  • Evil_Robo

    Posted Jun 16, 2009 6:42 am PT

    No blood doesnt really mean anything. As long as the gameplay is good, thats all I care about.

  • Derekman

    Posted Jun 15, 2009 7:28 pm PT

    There'll probably be blood in the game. It's probably not built that far yet or they had it on no blood in the options menu and you have to be 18+ to see it with blood or something. Let's not forget there are games like that, that allow you to change the game's visuals dependent on age. I think that's the case.

  • gnrlstuart

    Posted Jun 15, 2009 6:33 pm PT

    no multiplayer? sword duels? boo .

  • Wolfman_chopper

    Posted Jun 13, 2009 2:14 pm PT

    sound like it's going to be a lot better then the first one.

  • thunderhorse55

    Posted Jun 13, 2009 12:11 pm PT

    wow, this looks really cool. the first red steel looked cool to, but turned out terrible. luckily, they seem to have fixed this one up a bit. besides the conduit, this is the game on wii im looking forward to the most

  • Mr_Monkdawg91 posted Jun 13, 2009 2:06 am PT (does not meet display criteria. sign in to show)

    Mr_Monkdawg91

    Posted Jun 13, 2009 2:06 am PT (hide)

    I wonder if it will be as terrible as the first

  • The_Milton

    Posted Jun 12, 2009 9:25 pm PT

    dude I think they made this game perfect I'm glad there isn't blood, and multiplayer isn't too big of a deal, bioshock didn't have it and it's one of the best fps's ever so buy this and red steel 3 will have it but trust me there are plenty of violent multiplayer fps's I'm glad they aren't afraid to do something different.

  • TrueGamer23

    Posted Jun 12, 2009 7:37 pm PT

    no blood? so what does REDsteel mean?

  • star77241

    Posted Jun 12, 2009 1:38 pm PT

    No multiplayer in a game at this point is kind of a bad move. If you want to focus on single player that's fine, but at least add some online leaderboards and some multiplayer. And on the box, just put that you didn't focus on the multiplayer so it's probably not that great.