In a Wii-related rant I posted last month, I trashed the Ubisoft launch title Red Steel. I referred to the game as “half-assed”. In all honesty, at that point, I hadn’t even touched the game. I was in no position to call it anything, really.

So, when I signed up for a GamezNFlix membership, Red Steel was the first game in my queue. Let me tell you, I can say without any doubt that this game is indeed NOT “half-assed”. Far from it, this game is completely and totally full assed. And I mean that in a good way.

First of all, the FPS part of the game is completely phenomenal. To put it simply: it makes you feel like a badass. Moving the remote around to target enemies feels fluid and pulling back on the underside B button is so much more satisfying than a left-click on the mouse. Holding A and moving the remote forward will allow you to zoom in. It sounds strange, but I guarantee you that after a few minutes, it will feel like second nature. Especially once you grab the sniper rifle. The A button zoom on the sniper rifle zooms in to eyeball distance, and gives you a handy green reticle that blocks out everything else in your peripheral vision. Slick. In case you were wondering, I’m always carrying a sniper rifle.

Recoil on the guns is also well-done. I feel a slight, almost imperceptible buzz on smaller guns, and bigger, more powerful assault guns give me a more satisfying jolt.

The story is actually a lot of fun. Sort of a modern-day retelling of the classic “ninjas have kidnapped the president”. The references to your character being nothing more than a “worthless gaijin” are enormously entertaining as you continue to wipe the floor with every Yakuza bad guy that dares to cross your path.

There are some complaints. I can’t seem to skip cut scenes, which isn’t huge, but an annoyance nonetheless. The sword-swinging (much like boxing in Wii Sports) doesn’t seem to follow my arm movements the way I would expect it to. I swing left and right, and the sword just slices right once. It isn’t intuitive. However, other related sword fight movements work perfectly, such as defending with the tanto. The special sword moves you learn through the game also respond very well to your gestures and gyrations (my favorite being the “Sato Hammer”). Movement speed seems a bit slow, but that apparent negative becomes a blessing in some of the more substantial firefights.

All in all, this game is an excellent example of how an FPS could be implemented on the Wii. In future iterations (and I’m sure Ubisoft will make a sequel), I’d like to see the sword fighting cleaned up a bit. But I don’t want to see them touch the gun handling. That was very nearly perfect.

I’m not sure what some critics’ motivations were, or what kind of game they were expecting, but I truly feel that this game did not deserve the low scores it received. Overall — I am enjoying it immensely!