As a follow up to Red Steel, the sequel Red Steel 2 didn’t have to do much to be an improvement. But to say just that would be a disservice to the hard work the people at Ubisoft have done to the franchise. Red Steel 2 has stepped away from the modern setting and taken a dive into the surreal with a cowboy punk setting including new stylized graphics and saloons to match.

Going to the stylized approach has done wonders for the visual appeal of the game, allowing the lower polygons to be cleverly hidden in artistic strokes the game instantly feels less visually dated than some of it’s competitors, however despite their efforts the limitations still manage to shine through in the settings and repetitive character types shown in the playable floor demo.

When speaking with Jason Vanderbourghe on the show floor he indicated that he felt the game was more of a brawler than a FPS, and it shows simple actions such as opening doors are shifted into sword swiping actions, and regular armored opponents requiring sword combat over gun combat show the emphasis to the developers dream of “remembering what it was like hitting things in the back yard with sticks”.

While a great dream it is, the Ubisoft team still hasn’t mastered the Wii controls well enough to make the swords feel right during the hands on demo. I often felt like I was flailing ineffectually as my broad strokes were ignored even with the Wii Motion Plus enabled controllers.

While not a bad game, without a lot of work on the controls Red Steel 2 will probably not excel to the great game they want it to be when released in the holiday season 2009.