sword fighting |

Publisher: Ubisoft

Developer: Ubisoft Paris

Release Date: 3/23/2010

Available Exclusively On

The first Red Steel was a highly anticipated on-rails shooter. Back when the Wii came out, people were excited for the arcade-style FPS experiences it could bring home, but Red Steel failed on that delivery with bad controls, a bad story, and uninteresting enemies to kill. Ubisoft must have just thrown everything out the window because they took the same characters and put them in a Chinese/Japanese/Wild West format with a new art style. There’s still not much content, and it’s pretty bland, but the use of the Wii Motion Plus is top-notch and shouldn’t be missed.

The story is pretty quick and basic. You are the last of the Kusagari clan who is trying to stop the Katakana clan from getting a hold of ore to forge another powerful Sora Katana. Yeah, pretty boring; the characters are underdeveloped; and the whole story is a toss-up. Nothing memorable here at all. You’re here for the action. The game has two basic mechanics: swordfighting and gunplay. The game does a good job of auto-locking on enemies while you switch around with Z. Thanks to Motion Plus, you can swing with 1:1 accuracy, unlike any other Wii game out there. Hold your arm all the way back for a power attack; holding A+B allows you to charge your attack. Swing up to throw an enemy into the air, and swing down to throw them down. It’s pretty cool to see and do, but you unlock other powers and make moves along the way.

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The shooting feels great and works really well. Besides shooting enemies, you can break stuff open to collect gold, which is used to buy upgrades, powers, armor, and health. There are side missions peppered throughout the game, but they are pretty uninteresting, and by the end of the game, you will just want it to end. See, the whole 1:1 sword fighting is fun, but there aren’t very many moves, and the game is extremely hard until you unlock them all. The enemies are pretty generic, but there is enough variety to which you have to adjust your strategy. You can’t just go around flailing your arm and hoping to win. You also can’t use every attack on every enemy. There are finishers you can use, and you must use them to your advantage. Some moves are nearly instant kills on some enemies, so learn which attack works best on what enemy.

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The art style reminds me a lot of Borderlands, but it looks nice for a Wii game. While the art may look nice, it’s very bland. There are just a lot of blank, brown deserts and empty towns. The game is also very linear; while you can climb up a ledge to find some coins, it doesn’t go beyond that. After about 1/4 through, it just felt like the same thing and never ended. I wish there was more variety because the fighting system is excellent and shows how great the Wii can be. Once you beat the game, it’s hard to have a reason to come back. There’s no multiplayer, but there are challenge missions.

In the end, Red Steel 2 gives players a solid fighting system, but it’s wrapped around bland level design, linearity, underdeveloped characters and story, and a sheer lack of content. That’s not to say the game isn’t worth playing; by all means, go ahead. The Motion Plus tracking in this game is fantastic and really makes you feel like you’re sword fighting and shooting a gun. If only Ubisoft had spent six more months fleshing the game out more, it could have been one of the top games on Wii.

Publisher: Torn Banner Studios

Developer: Torn Banner Studios

Release Date: 10/16/2012

Available On

While everyone is playing Black Ops II and Battlefield 3, there is a little multiplayer game called Chivalry: Medieval Warfare. This knight-in-shining-armor online-only game pits players against each other and lets them have at it with deadly swords, crossbows, flaming pots, shields, and various other Camelot-era weapons. This is a different multiplayer game and will keep you hooked for dozens of hours.

There’s no story here at all, so don’t worry about that; this game doesn’t need a story. You open up the game, and you are greeted with a server list. There’s a tutorial that shows you the ropes of this game. There’s a bit more to it than just swinging around weapons. Each one has range, damage, and speed that you have to think about. In a small arena, you probably want a short and fast weapon, while on the more open maps, you should use a javelin and a giant polearm. There are three basic attacks: overhead, side-by-side, and jab swings. You can feint attacks as well to trick your opponent, which is a key move you have to learn to master. You block, but you have to time it, and you can’t just block aimlessly. You have to be looking at the weapon, or the block won’t really connect. This is really a knight simulator, and the game is just so much fun.

It doesn’t stop there, though; there are some projectiles. The bow is great to use and has an arrow cam that helps you adjust your aim. There’s also a crossbow, but reloading is very slow, and you can’t see around you when reloading. Larger classes get axes to throw, while smaller ones get knives and daggers. I found a strategy where I’d use up my projectiles and try to get some kills that way before going in. There are 4 classes: man-at-arms, knight, vanguard, and archer. The Vanguard is the biggest class and can kill in just a couple of hits, but it is extremely slow. He and the Man-at-Arms have a charging attack that will devastate anyone in its path. If you use a kite shield with these classes, it protects you from rear attacks, which is actually how I died the most. I would be battling an enemy, and I’d get creamed by two guys coming up from behind that I couldn’t see or hear.

Some levels have traps in them that you can activate to help your team or whittle down someone’s health before going in for the kill. Each class is a lot of fun to play, and I found myself constantly switching between them, unlike other multiplayer games. I just wish there were more classes. Four isn’t all that much, and there aren’t enough maps. Torn Banner is putting out free content, but it’s been slow coming since the release last year. However, I still find myself coming back and playing a few rounds at least once a week; the game is very addictive.

The game modes are also lacking. There’s just Team Deathmatch, Free-for-All (Deathmatch), Capture the Flag, and Dueling, which is 1v1. There are a couple more, but these are typical modes found in other games. One mode that is unique to this game is a siege-type mode where you use battering rams, trebuchets, and various other long-range siege weapons to break into the enemy’s fortress and take it over. That is probably the most fun. On one map, my team was trying to push a battering ram through a small village. We were trying to fight off the other team, and it was a constant back and forth. Once we got to the front doors, their archers made easy work of the battering team because their moat didn’t allow us to surround the team and defend them. We just had to do archery battles or hang back and wait for people to come out.

As it stands, Chivalry has proven to be a very popular and well-made multiplayer game. The graphics are fantastic, and everything looks superb. Hopefully, Torn Banner can continue to dole out new content to make players happy and continue playing.