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GAF, is the Red Steel series dead?

Red Steel 2 is amazing. Its pretty telling who hasnt played it/payed attention to it by their remarks on the franchise.

Red Steel 2 has almost nothing to do with Red Steel 1 and it alone justifies the franchises existance.

I would've taken Red Steel 3 over Zombi U in a heartbeat. Some of the best/fun gameplay I've experienced all gen.
 
At this point they would probably be better off taking whatever gameplay ideas they had for Red Steel 3 and making a new IP with it.
 
I think it probably is, but I want to know what Jason Vandenberghe's been up to. I met that guy at E3 in 2010 and he was really cool. I thought Red Steel 2 was a lot of fun and think it's a shame it didn't have more of an impact on the adoption of the motion plus.

EDIT: Ah, he was the narrative director on Far Cry 3.
 
Not only did Red Steel look, control and run like absolute shit but the devs (and by extension the games press) were massively dishonest about how the game looked, handled, etc before release. I can't remember a more blatant example of bullshotting than the ones that preceded this game, or an example of the games press giving them a free pass.

Moreover, I'm convinced that Red Steel is directly responsible for the terrible market for "hardcore" games on the Wii--not all on its own, of course, but I wonder how many of the million-plus people who were burned by Red Steel ever bothered to try anything else. It sucked so much that it poisoned the well, so to speak.
 
@MUWANdo said:
Not only did Red Steel look, control and run like absolute shit but the devs (and by extension the games press) were massively dishonest about how the game looked, handled, etc before release. I can't remember a more blatant example of bullshotting than the ones that preceded this game, or an example of the games press giving them a free pass.

Moreover, I'm convinced that Red Steel is directly responsible for the terrible market for "hardcore" games on the Wii--not all on its own, of course, but I wonder how many of the million-plus people who were burned by Red Steel ever bothered to try anything else. It sucked so much that it poisoned the well, so to speak.
Click to expand...

Man, the first "hardcore" games on the Wii were the worst shit ever. Remember Far Cry Wii? What a disaster that was.
 
Rush2thestart said:
Red Steel 2 is amazing. Its pretty telling who hasnt played it/payed attention to it by their remarks on the franchise.

Red Steel 2 has almost nothing to do with Red Steel 1 and it alone justifies the franchises existance.

I would've taken Red Steel 3 over Zombi U in a heartbeat. Some of the best/fun gameplay I've experienced all gen.
Click to expand...
It controls very well, especially the gun that isn't used so often as in the prequel.
However I've found it a bit boring after awhile, outside the combat mechanics there is very little game around it.
 
Red Steel would have been a more enjoyable experience if they simplified the sword fighting, tightened the bounding box, and optimised the engine and assets so the famerate was consistent. Aiming guns sucked due to the huge bounding box and lack of tweaks. Sword fighting sucked because Ubi were, believe it or not, over ambitious, and tried to tie too many directional functions to the Wii Remote's single gyroscope. And the erratic framerate just made things worse.

I don't think the game was amazing by any leap of the imagination, but I honestly feel if those issues were resolved, which are actually quite simple on paper, Red Steel would have been received far better even with the shipped encounter and level design. When you spend the game shooting and slicing, and both of those things are hard to control, then the rest of the game naturally falls apart. Fix those and you're on your way.

Red Steel 2 was much, much better. I don't feel the Metroidvania style level design, pacing, and variety came together as well as it should, and the balance was shot to shit. Felt like almost all effort went into controls, mechanics, and art. And it's not a surprise that all of those things are great. It controls extremely well, and I've argued it's a superior motion control experience to Skyward Sword. It's responsive, accurate, and tightly designed, making switching between shooting and slicing almost second nature. The emphasis on full, weighted swings really helped immerse you in the combat. The little contextual special abilities, like stabbing, finishing, grapple head shots, and so on, made you feel like a bad ass with wild motion controls that never fucked up. In terms of a pointer based shooter with full body motion controls for melee combat, it is as far as I'm concerned the standard to which all other motion control games should be judged. And sadly it will be forgotten and ignored.

And it looked gorgeous. Great art, great style, with a solid framerate.

Red Steel was a mess of dumb ideas and over ambition, though good intentions. Red Steel 2 was much of that over ambitious design properly realised almost to perfection, with a better though incomplete framework of a game. Ideally, a Red Steel 3 would finally see all elements of the game hit their peak.

Alas, it will never happen.
 
You can't do true swordplay with motion control unless you have a blade that slides through anything. The resistance from a parry or cutting off a head is just lost.
 
The problem with Red Steel 2 is that was a half-baked game. A good game, but still half-balked.
A lot of interesting ideas, but a lot of glitches too. And the fact that
all the money you can get in the final level is useless, because there is NO NEW GAME+ and so you can't spend it
still irks me. Oh, and why every time I learn a new move, the video of a Ubisoft booth babe pop up to show it? It's nice, but where is visual coerence?
And everyone praises the cel-shaded look, but I can't help to notice the effects were almost completely missing, with almost no shadows and a very FLAT lighting; in the first Red Steel (using Unreal 2.5) I was impressed by the lighting in some scenes, but the Dunia engine seems incapable to render every prop that's far more than 15 meters, including sometimes even parts of background!
 
I really loved Red Steel 2 but it bombed so hard I doubt we'll ever see a Red Steel game ever again. Which is really a shame as RS2 had awesome controls, I hope that the Wii U won't kill pointer based controls in FPS games, now that the console has a twin stick controller as default.
 
Red Steel 2 was a victim of piracy I think... I remember reading an article that said it was one of the most pirated Wii games the year that it came out. Shame, since it was such a great game.
 
EatChildren said:
Red Steel 2 was much, much better. I don't feel the Metroidvania style level design, pacing, and variety came together as well as it should, and the balance was shot to shit. Felt like almost all effort went into controls, mechanics, and art. And it's not a surprise that all of those things are great. It controls extremely well, and I've argued it's a superior motion control experience to Skyward Sword. It's responsive, accurate, and tightly designed, making switching between shooting and slicing almost second nature. The emphasis on full, weighted swings really helped immerse you in the combat. The little contextual special abilities, like stabbing, finishing, grapple head shots, and so on, made you feel like a bad ass with wild motion controls that never fucked up. In terms of a pointer based shooter with full body motion controls for melee combat, it is as far as I'm concerned the standard to which all other motion control games should be judged. And sadly it will be forgotten and ignored.
Click to expand...
100 percent accurate.

Also, it did need to have a New Game + at a higher difficulty level. "Hard" was just challenging enough to make the game awesome.
 
I'm one of THOSE people that actually enjoyed the first Red Steel more than Red Steel 2. No, it wasn't perfect, and I would have like to see it updated with WM+ controls once the accessory was released for the Wii, but I liked the levels and game-play mechanics a bit more (flipping over tables, nice destructible environments that made gun battles fun, disarming the enemies, etc.).

Not sure if anybody watches the reported game-play data for Wii games, but here's the recent data for Red Steel 2 from U.S. Wii owners:
Red+Steel+2+Wii+gameplay+hours+data+report.jpg


Full report I posted, here.
 
LonelyGreyWolf said:
Well, this was an odd bump. Is ^ an advertisement?
Click to expand...

No, it shows the reported game-play data for Red Steel 2. The numbers in the image are from the Nintendo Channel (the soon to be gone, Nintendo Channel). I did a search for a Red Steel 2 thread, but this was found this one (on page 3) with my search.

Would there be a better spot to post the data?
 
EatChildren said:
Red Steel would have been a more enjoyable experience if they simplified the sword fighting, tightened the bounding box, and optimised the engine and assets so the famerate was consistent. Aiming guns sucked due to the huge bounding box and lack of tweaks. Sword fighting sucked because Ubi were, believe it or not, over ambitious, and tried to tie too many directional functions to the Wii Remote's single gyroscope. And the erratic framerate just made things worse.

I don't think the game was amazing by any leap of the imagination, but I honestly feel if those issues were resolved, which are actually quite simple on paper, Red Steel would have been received far better even with the shipped encounter and level design. When you spend the game shooting and slicing, and both of those things are hard to control, then the rest of the game naturally falls apart. Fix those and you're on your way.

Red Steel 2 was much, much better. I don't feel the Metroidvania style level design, pacing, and variety came together as well as it should, and the balance was shot to shit. Felt like almost all effort went into controls, mechanics, and art. And it's not a surprise that all of those things are great. It controls extremely well, and I've argued it's a superior motion control experience to Skyward Sword. It's responsive, accurate, and tightly designed, making switching between shooting and slicing almost second nature. The emphasis on full, weighted swings really helped immerse you in the combat. The little contextual special abilities, like stabbing, finishing, grapple head shots, and so on, made you feel like a bad ass with wild motion controls that never fucked up. In terms of a pointer based shooter with full body motion controls for melee combat, it is as far as I'm concerned the standard to which all other motion control games should be judged. And sadly it will be forgotten and ignored.

And it looked gorgeous. Great art, great style, with a solid framerate.

Red Steel was a mess of dumb ideas and over ambition, though good intentions. Red Steel 2 was much of that over ambitious design properly realised almost to perfection, with a better though incomplete framework of a game. Ideally, a Red Steel 3 would finally see all elements of the game hit their peak.

Alas, it will never happen.
Click to expand...

Hopefully they will do a move-supported HD-remaster of the second one for PS3 or PS4 cheaply.
 
CoffeeGames said:
I'm one of THOSE people that actually enjoyed the first Red Steel more than Red Steel 2. No, it wasn't perfect, and I would have like to see it updated with WM+ controls once the accessory was released for the Wii, but I liked the levels and game-play mechanics a bit more (flipping over tables, nice destructible environments that made gun battles fun, disarming the enemies, etc.).

Not sure if anybody watches the reported game-play data for Wii games, but here's the recent data for Red Steel 2 from U.S. Wii owners:
Red+Steel+2+Wii+gameplay+hours+data+report.jpg


Full report I posted, here.
Click to expand...
Oh man, Nintendo Channel disappearing means that the aggregate play data can no longer can be accessed, right? :(

Good run, CwG.
 
I passed on RS2 because it apparantly does away with everything good about RS1. the art, the effects, the more even blend of shooting/swordplay, etc. I'll give it a whirl someday, but it's a shame they went in such a different direction rather than building on what they had.
 
big youth said:
I passed on RS2 because it apparantly does away with everything good about RS1. the art, the effects, the more even blend of shooting/swordplay, etc. I'll give it a whirl someday, but it's a shame they went in such a different direction rather than building on what they had.
Click to expand...

You think this:

00407056-photo-red-steel.jpg
Click to expand...

is a better artstyle than this:

161680-RedSteel2_ExclusiveUbiNintendo_JackalTank-620x.jpg
Click to expand...

?

Interesting, cause I thought the total opposite. Give RS2 a shot, the gameplay is fantastic. Probably the closest to a 'holodeck' experience we are going to get in terms of sword-play for a while.
 
Red Steel 1 was an incredibly great concept poorly executed.
Red Steel 2 has a decent gameplay but removes all the charm of the first one.

RS1>RS2

To the op: Yeah i think it's pretty much dead, the second one sold incredibly bad IIRC. That's a shame though i would love a proper sequel to the first one but with a gameplay that actually works and in glorious HD.
 
Moosichu said:
You think this:



is a better artstyle than this:



?

Interesting, cause I thought the total opposite. Give RS2 a shot, the gameplay is fantastic. Probably the closest to a 'holodeck' experience we are going to get in terms of sword-play for a while.
Click to expand...

well you chose a mediocre picture of RS1 and a very nice picture of RS2. I watched a lot of gameplay videos when RS2 released and I distinctly remember the art lacking detail. also people tend to forget how incredible the effects were in RS1, especially for it's time. the beams of light shining through the trees, glass shattering, water spilling out of fish tanks, etc. shooting that fish tank (somewhere in the first half of the game) was a true holy shit moment.
 
Chittagong said:
red-steel.jpg


It will live forever like this in my heart
Click to expand...

LOL

i remember those scans. iwata was right, it made me say wow.

too bad it wasnt what the game looked like..

i must be the only person who loved Red Steel 1. i thought the voice acting was cheesy as hell but it was a really fun FPS which, when you nailed down the controls, was a really solid game. had some genuinely great levels like the haunted bunny house and the forest level
 
Neo Child said:
LOL

i remember those scans. iwata was right, it made me say wow.

too bad it wasnt what the game looked like..

i must be the only person who loved Red Steel 1. i thought the voice acting was cheesy as hell but it was a really fun FPS which, when you nailed down the controls, was a really solid game. had some genuinely great levels like the haunted bunny house and the forest level
Click to expand...

it's funny how everything came together for the final level. i wish the whole game was like that, with wide open spaces, the option to be stealthy (even if it was just an illusion), multiple short cutscenes that develop the story, the fantastic sun beam effect, ambiance of the river, etc. the game definitely ends on a high note.
 
@MUWANdo said:
It doesn't matter that the second game was a million times better, they should not have marketed it as a sequel to the original--not only was it completely different in all but name and developed by an almost entirely different team, but associating it with Red Steel was only gonna keep people from buying it. Sure, RS may have sold ~2m copies, but the vast majority of purchasers didn't actually enjoy it, and it was so bad that I suspect it probably kept a lot of people from bothering with other Wii games generally.
Click to expand...


Yeah, you are exactly right and it's really too bad. Red Steel 2 is one of my favorite Wii games. It suffered due to being a sequel to the most overhyped and disappointing launch titles.
 
keeping the Red Steel title probably helped just as much as it hurt. The problem with RS2 is it never found the spotlight. It reviewed well, but not great, required WiiMotion+ soon after it came out, and by 2010 Wii was cemented as a casual console, with core gamers jumping to 360 and PS3.
 
RS2 was a dramatically better game than RS1 but also sold dramatically worse IIRC.

Now that there is the Wii U, I don't understand why Ubisoft doesn't release RS3 for Wii U and PS3 + Move.
 
Not generally a fan of shooters but I do like pointer controls, so Red Steel 2 was really nice for me. The game was pretty half-baked, but it sounds like it still didn't manage to hit even lowered sales expectations, so that's probably the end of the franchise.

Hopefully the can at least salvage the gameplay and make a spiritual sequel. There's lots of room to improve:

- Either make the areas look more distinct and make missions more interesting or make the game munch more streamlined. It's basically a beat-em-up: you don't have to shoehorn in the non-linear open world stuff.
- Give the guns their own niche. It's fun to mow down enemies with the tommy gun every once in a while, but the sword is almost always better.
- Give the player some moves from the start. Being stuck with the basic slash isn't just boring, it can also be a little uncomfortable.
- Instead of flashy finishers, try to give the players more dynamic combat. Maybe environmental hazards or something. Hell, if you want to make the game violent, at least let the player enemies apart however they want using their motion controls.
- Do something with the game's plot. I don't know if you should have less or more, but it wasn't good.
 
big youth said:
it's funny how everything came together for the final level. i wish the whole game was like that, with wide open spaces, the option to be stealthy (even if it was just an illusion), multiple short cutscenes that develop the story, the fantastic sun beam effect, ambiance of the river, etc. the game definitely ends on a high note.
Click to expand...

I put together some videos before RS2 came out, about what I liked from the original and hoped RS2 would keep:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aLUGdkLz70c
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vym_lnYfp6A
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QAtrrlA7A5c

I do wish they would have given Red Steel 2 a different name, so they could revisit the original Red Steel's setting/storyline again, without it being weird for new comers to the series.

Did you get both endings to the game? As for my favorite levels though, it would probably be the "fun park". Dinosaur eggs. Crazy announcer. Just crazy/hilarious level design.
 
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