During E3 I was fortunate enough to get my hands on the new Nintendo Wii in order to try out a game that just may be one of the system’s killer apps. Red Steel is a first person shooter set in modern day Tokyo; it is being developed by Ubisoft. The game makes excellent use of the system’s unique controller (affectionately referred to as the Wii-mote) for aiming, moving, and shooting.
The Wii-mote took a little getting used to, as it is extremely sensitive and responsive, but after a couple minutes it became very intuitive and natural to use. I was easily using the Wii-mote to aim and fire my gun onscreen. Also, at one point in the game I was able to use a Samurai sword to combat my enemies and again the controller performed flawlessly as the sword slashes on screen matched my hand and wrist movements.
The game itself played well and looked fantastic.
For being a Wii game, I was surprised with the amount of detail that went into the lighting, shading, explosions, and environment. Visually it looked about as good as Perfect Dark Zero for the Xbox 360. The Wii is certainly not as lacking in the graphical department as reports would lead you to believe, plus it looked fine on the HDTV that I was playing on. Overall, I was thoroughly impressed with both the game and the Wii in general and I had to keep reminding myself that what I was playing is only a demo of a game that is still months away from release. In closing, Nintendo is proving that they are still very much a force to be reckoned with and all I can say is that I can’t wait to buy my own Nintendo Wii so I can immerse myself in games like Red Steel.
