Preview: Red Steel

It’s a game for the Wii. With guns. You’re thinking about how the controller will feel, aren’t you?

We’ve been getting a slow trickle of sample screenshots and other snippets of information about titles that are in the pipes for Wii. One that keeps popping up is Red Steel, one of the first FPSes that will see for the system.


Red Steel was showcased at E3 (RIP) this year. It turns out that the developers only had a Wii for a month before E3. Up until then, they were working with PCs and Gamecube kits, so an insane rush for playable, ported code at E3 may have been responsible for the lacklustre reports it received at the time. We’ve heard it’s gotten better since then, and the screenshots look very promising.



The developers have acknowledged that in comparison to other new consoles, the Wii has a power ceiling. This was what encouraged (read: forced) them to go for a stylised look instead of realism for the game. Everything is dark and moody, with the visual impact coming from the blurry and bright neon signs and colourful backgrounds.



The neon surrounding is fitting, because the game is set in Japan. It takes a cue from the Kill Bill films, so the Film Noir theme that carries through the game should be full of stereotypical Yakuza fare. Which is highly inaccurate and misrepresentative of modern Japanese culture. Which is why we want to play it.