Off the Shelf: Redsteel

Way back in 2001, Max Payne switched the theme of action-shooters from aliens and abandoned space stations of Doom/Quake to gritty urban settings (to the point where this itself has become a clich?), stylish slow-motion and mafia enemies.

In many ways, Ubisoft's FPS Red Steel is its spiritual successor. The Wii controllers are the next step along from the dives and slides Max made with the mouse on the PC, and gun-toting Sicilians are merely replaced with sword-wielding yakuza (That's the plot pretty much summed up right there). However, though enjoyable, it doesn't quite blow the proverbial bloody doors off.

Some pessimists have seen the Wii itself as a gimmick, and it's hardly surprising that the first games off the shelf make excessive use of the innovative control system. Constantly flicking the nunchuck to open doors and pick up guns really is gimmicky when a simple button press would suffice, and I hope to see more sophisticated use of the Wii controller by developers as more games drop.

Sword play, an integral component of fighting in Red Steel, suffers similarly. In a move wasting Wii's technology, slashes do not reflect your exact movement, but rather your desperate swipes with the Wiimote trigger one of only a few pre-programmed motions, which is hardly as exciting. While these segments are still fun, it seems a pity things haven���t really moved on much from that lightsaber game you used to play in the arcade when you were a kid.

By contrast, after a few hours up a smooth learning curve, the gunplay mechanics work a treat. With the Wii controllers, targeting becomes even more intuitive than with a keyboard and mouse, and makes the idea of analogue thumb pads seem as dated as 80s shoulder pads. You'll be feeling like Neo in the Matrix as you dispatch hordes of enemies with one flick of your wrist and a spray of uzi bullets. Here more than anywhere else you can see the potential the Wii has to revolutionise console gaming.

Graphics are very much a mixed bag. Characters look positively terrifying in their full, tattooed, almost photographic glory (with decent AI to boot), as do some of the levels. But quite why the developers spent so much effort making some into a lavish and sumptuous aesthetic feast and left some others areas to rot in 8-bit, untextured NES hell is beyond me. The thumping music meanwhile adds to an immersive experience, even if the enemies' battle cries ("You bastard!") become somewhat tedious.

You may well have noticed this review has concentrated on the practical aspects of controlling your character in the game: interface aside, Red Steel doesn't break out from FPS conventions. The linear single-player game will take you fifteen hours or so to complete, and the split screen multiplayer is little different to the format set by Goldeneye over a decade ago.

But that doesn't mean it's not damn fun. It's solid in every respect and does what a launch game sets out to do: get your thumbs itching for the games on the horizon. And with Metroid Prime 3 almost ready to blast off, Red Steel will leave you craving for more Wii action.

Ben Sillis