Buzzkill incoming.



Having played a few levels of Red Steel 2, the game that I heaped all my hopes of M+ onto, I have to say I prefer the sword fighting in Wii Sports Resort. Blocking seems more important and strategic in WSR, you have to move your sword in the correct direction to block the attack. In Red Steel 2, you just press "A" to block, how you hold your sword is seemingly irrelevant (at least in the first few levels, let me know if this changes.)

Add the terrible voice acting and cheesy story, and I have to say I much prefer Wii Sports Resort.

That's not to say RS2 is a bad game, it's by all means decent. I love the art style, the atmosphere, and the control options. The puzzles are standard FPS fare, the bosses are as well (hit the weak point for massive damage!) and the levels are tiny.  I'd give it a mid 70's or low 80's score, better than The Conduit but worse than MP3.  I was just hoping for something incredible that took the FPS genre in a new direction.

What's wrong with the sword fighting in RS2?

The movement portion of RS2's sword fighting is primarily based on how hard you swing, there's little to no concern as to what type of swing you choose.  Except in the case of finishing moves, but that to me isn't satisfying as there's no strategy in following what the screen tells you to do.  

In Wii Sports Resort, the direction in which you swung was as important as the velocity.  You had to actually watch the enemy and predict which way he'd block.

Yeah so I started played RS2 today and have to agree that this game is a winner. First off it looks great. I'm generally not a huge fan of cell shading but here it really works and plays to the Wii's strengths visually.

As stated the sword fighting is almost 1:1 but not quite, and yes this is a very good thing. Frankly this is the first M+ game that really drew me in. The precision is literally 100% which is awesome. Even other M+ games seem to often mistake one motion for another- not RS2.
The tutorials are quick to the point and in-game which makes learning quick and not boring. I was also thrilled to see a dodge command- something rare for a console game and certainly useful.

I would argue though that at times the game get a tad repetitive, but very infrequently. My only other complaint is the lack of control tweaks, but that is more philosophical because the presets are pretty right on.

Overall the presentation is great, the menu looks nice, the voice acting is surprisingly decent, and the graphics are great. For those of you waiting for your pre-orders (I am too) you won't be disappointed.

To begin with the direction you block and the direction you attack doesn't matter, but as the game progresses enemies posses strong attacks and strong guards. To guard against a strong attack (which you'll see coming via a red halo surrounding the sword) you'll need to hold the remote either horizontal or vertical depending on which way they're attacking. Strong guards are also used later on by enemies (although personally I think the design team have got things the wrong way around), to break a strong vertical guard you need to swing vertically with several hard swings to break it and to break a strong horizontal guard you need to swing hard horizontally. I'd personally prefer to swing horizontally against a vertical guard and vertically against a horizontal guard but it works fine once you get used to it.

Throughout the game light attacks by the enemies can be countered by just holding A, it's when strong attacks are used that you need to be more precise.

The game starts off really easy and gets progressively harder as you go along. The enemies start off being pretty stupid and are lining up to get chopped lol, but as the game goes on the enemies get stronger, have better armour and attacks/defences and you're brought to the dojo to learn new finishing moves, powers and skills. I'm playing on Master, the middle difficulty level, and I think they've got the difficulty just about right. As soon as you start thinking things are too easy it throws something else at you that'll make you thnk about how you're moving, defending and attacking. Miles better than Wii Sports Resort imo.

^^^ good to know that the blocking gets more advanced. Can't wait to get there.

How is the sword play?

Yup, you can also do a Tiger power thing by pusing the remote and nunchuck forward which blocks strong attacks and stuns the enemy but my timing is crap and I get sliced every time so I mostly just use the dodge frequently. Once I've completed the game I'm going to play it again on Ninja difficulty and try not to use the gun at all...The Bearded One said that the guys in his office struggle to beat the game in Ninja mode so I'm really looking forward to the challenge.

I just can't put into words how awesome this game really is, definitely the best Wii game available imo...although tbh I've never really liked Mario that much and can only play Super Mario Galaxy in small doses. There's only so much 'woooo hooo, weee heee' and 'Marioooooo' that I can stand before wanting to throw something at my telly lol.

You all are making me want this game after I disliked RS1

Great its 1:1 but with enough forgiveness to not require perfect precision. I also like that in most cases you get to choose whether to shoot it out or fight with swords, give the game some variety.

And to those who hate RS1 this is a totally different game. Red Steel 1 was a massive heap of ship of epic proportions, this game is quite good.