Tiny Diggers – An iPad Construction Truck Game for Kids Age 2-5

“So, you’ve come to save us all!” So begins Red Steel 2, the latest attempt to make shooting on the Wii fun, not a chore. If anyone out there had the misfortune of playing the first Red Steel game, a dire mix of bad gunplay and even badder swordplay, don’t worry. This is a sequel in name only because Ubisoft have thankfully decided to divest the game of anything at all to do with the first, and you know what? It’s really rather good!

The game is set in a mysterious hinter-world where East meets Wild West, in a town called Caldera (at least initially). You, the nameless protagonist are a member of the Kusagari clan (I think that’s how it’s spelled, and you begin the game attached by a chain to a motorcycle, being dragged across the desert floor. Your rock-hard abs render you impervious from injury, and after extricating yourself from the chains and dispatching some clueless goons, you bump into your old master, who tells you the town has been overrun by fiends called The Jackels re-teaches you the way of the sword and of the gun, and from then on, you go out and kick some ass. The plot seems concerned with revenge and swords and ninja, but I’m not really concerned with the plot. It’s not as terrible as it could have been, but it’s not that fascinating either. However, some of the dialogue is truly atrocious. Lines like “I’m gonna kill you with your own katana! Ain’t that ironic!” really have no place… anywhere.

The big question is, how do the sword and the gun work this time with the Wii controls? First up, this game asks, nay demands you use Motion+, so if you don’t have it already, you need it to play this game. Consider yourselves warned. As far as I can tell, though, the Motion+ works brilliantly. The 1:1 control could have been easy to mess up, but it seems like Ubisoft hit it out of the park; fluid, smooth controls which make playing the game a joy, even if it does end up hurting your wrists. The controls are an important part of Red Steel 2, actually; they’ve taken what could have been a convoluted mess of a system, and refined it, categorising attacks into strong and weak, horizontal, vertical and stab, making blocking as simple as holding a button, and creating combos easy enough for an idiot like me to remember but allowing you to feel awesome for pulling them off.

One of the game’s star attractions is the new look. Cel-shaded, but not in a ‘cartoony’ way, this game manages a level of visual fidelity most Wii games would give at least two minigames to attain. I’m aware ‘prettiest game on the Wii’ is like ‘sanest person in the asylum’, but the game’s visual strengths derive less from the number of polygons or the HD fabrics, but rather from the style, the art direction, in a way similar to Metroid Prime: Corruption, and there’s more artistic imagination at work in Red Steel 2 than in most AAA blockbusters.

The game progresses through a series of stages: you start in a hub, and get sent out for missions, going further and further into the world (full of bonuses and collectibles if you’re looking for ‘em) until eventually you reach a Point of No Return, and you get a new hub, new missions, etc. It’s fairly linear, but true open-world gameplay would have hampered this title – not nearly enough to do in a deserted city. Weapons and powers can be bought and levelled up at the hub worlds. Just wait until you get your hands on the Johnny-Gun!

Some irritation comes from the irritating amounts of backtracking some missions require, although for the most part these missions are optional, to be done for cash, and since the inhabitants of this city seem to store an awful lot of their money in bins and crates in the street, lack of money isn’t a problem. What can be a problem is the game’s Mass Effect tendency: i.e. rather than presenting the player with a load screen, we get a rather jarring door-opening animation. Yes, it’s a petty quibble, but loading-screen doors are plentiful in this game.

So, buy, rent… what? Well, if you’re a Wii owner, there’s probably not a better game coming out for Wii this year, first-party titles excepted, and I doubt you’ll find a much better use for Motion+. If you’re looking for a healthy dose of unique fun, you can’t go far wrong with Red Steel 2.
Four and a half Aeropauseonauts.