Red Steel is a game about a man whose girlfriend, whom had previous relations with the Japanese mafia, is kidnapped, thereby dragging said main character into a long adventure of rescuing his girlfriend (and unearthing more than a couple evil schemes along the way). Once you get past the slightly tacked-on pretense of traveling to Japan, it's not so bad.
This definitely gets points for its graphics rendering. I was especially struck by an unexpectedly good-looking render of sunlight through tinted glass windows. I am fully aware of the Wii's shortcomings when compared to other consoles powered by greater jet engines, but this is far above the "acceptable" line for me and well into "exceptional" as far as I'm concerned. Sound is well done too, but nothing earth-shattering.
Controls are slightly less stunningly good. Aiming is a bit wonky, most notably when using a rifle with a zoomed-in scope. Dipping the chuck down to execute the generic "action" command is awkward at first, but not hard to get used to. The biggest issue is going off the screen too quickly--it causes the game to lose the reticle entirely and your character ends up moving in bizarre ways for several seconds while you wag the Wiimote at the screen, attempting to force it to reorient itself.
The game is definitely enjoyable, it certainly could have used some improvements (mostly in the techinical department), but I find it...shall we say, recommendable, especially given it's the Wii's first FPS. I'm honestly not much into multiplayer, and I'd not be too thrilled with trying to play this game splitscreened (thanks to Nintendo for their enormous enthusiasm toward online gaming). But, that's a story for another day.
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