While I like the art style and the more accurate motion-sensing, thanks to its predecessor Red Steel 2 still has to prove itself in my house, in my hands before I make any final decision on whether I like the game.

But if you're sick of us telling you that — or you'd just prefer to hear it in the developer's own words — check out Ubisoft's new Red Steel 2 Insider video. You not only get the background technical explanation of why MotionPlus is a must, but some actual footage of sword-swinging gameplay.

Red Steel 2 is out sometime next year.

It is a game that will be as fun as the motions needed to control it. If arm-swinging can't be your thing — if you want to play your games stoically — then stay away.

The build of the game in Tokyo required space (Just like the potentially sternum-cracking Gamescom one). I needed room to get into this game, room to try some new combination attacks. We were at a stage halfway into the game, set after the game would have — hopefully — introduced each move to the player one by one.

Risking having to learn and execute all the combos on the fly in Tokyo, this is what I was able to perform:

Swinging my arm with the required (and bundled) MotionPlus accessory caused my first-person hero to swing his sword. Small motions generate wimpy strikes. Big motions — the MotionPlus isn't fooled by waggling cheaters — causes big, heavy swings. But pinching the remote's A and B buttons combined with an abbreviated Frisbee-style hurls of the device emitted stunning knock-back blasts.

Holding Z with my left hand while doing a big remote swing caused a more dramatic slow-motion slash. That was good for cutting across a group of enemies. Tilting the analog stick, tapping A and swinging sent me into a charging attack. Another combo had me doing side-step slip that cut to a strike.

I've played the game at two press showcases and not seen much level variety in this game. All of the sequences I've witnessed have been in the same wild-west-with-ninjas town. And while the game looks good thanks to its cel-shaded and simple design, it is not the graphics but the gameplay that I expect to solely justify this game. I'm into that gameplay for now. The swings feel good. The shooting does too, though its controls are more standard and function as expected. I'd want to play a longer session to ensure the game's combat isn't tiring or repetitive. What I do sense, thankfully, is that the game's creative director Jason VandenBerghe is correct to say his team is avoiding waggle controls. The moves feel big and right, sweeping and effective.

One extra note about my favorite part of the demo in Tokyo: During a boss battle against a guy named Payne, the person playing the game got their hero knocked in the air. I'd never seen this effect before. In a first-person view, locked onto his enemy, my guy got lifted from his feet, rocketed several stories into the air. The closest thing I can describe it to is what it looks like if you swing back on a swing really high while looking down at the ground the whole time. That move that was being done to the player is a move that, after vanquishing Payne, the player will be able to do to enemies. As a bonus, Payne or the player will be able to leap into the sky to chase the enemy they knocked up there and beat them back to the ground. If that's the kind of dynamism the rest of the game contains, I will happily play more.

After getting a brief overview of what's new in Red Steel 2—including ninja, some fancy new moves like that spinning katana chop and the ability to launch enemies into the air—from creative director Jason Vanderberghe, we got a chance to strap on the Wii Remote and Nunchuk and try it for ourselves.

My stab at Red Steel 2's expanded arsenal of moves—including that finishing move stab that's so fun to pull off—wasn't nearly as easy as Vanderberghe and crew made it out to be. Nor were those bullet-deflecting ninjas, some armed with machine pistols, easy to dispatch.

In fact, I never did successfully pull off that knock-back and lift move, allegedly performed by holding the Wii Remote's A and B buttons to charge, then requiring a Wii MotionPlus-powered lift of the remote. I mostly stuck to using the shotgun and exploding barrels nearby with very limited success. The spinning sword slash, that I did manage to execute once or twice at the risk of elbowing some European press folks in the sternum.

My displays of failure prompted Vanderberghe's colleague to take up the controls to show me how to properly violently jab at the screen—unfortunately with my wrist still in the Remote's strap. These are the dangers of being thrown mid-level into the sequel to a Wii game you've never played.

Despite the clumsiness, Red Steel 2 looks a lot sharper than its forebear, running at a smooth 60 frames per second and showing off a newer, slicker art style. Judgment about how Red Steel 2 plays for now will be reserved, until such time as we can come to grips with fighting cowboy ninjas with a Wii Remote.

I am excited that I'm finally going to get a chance to go hands on with the Wii MotionPlus title. I was so excited about Red Steel and so, so, so very let down when it finally hit.

This time I'm reserving judgment.

This was a weird week, as a story I was chasing didn't quite come together. New facts contradicted old facts. It was a wash. Plus, I did an interview on Monday that I still haven't gotten to publishing and am facing a week next week that'll have me in the office for about a day and a half, spending the rest of it playing Sega's fall line-up and then attending Quakecon in Dallas.

Still, a few things fell through the cracks...

For The Hardcore: I ran a Red Steel 2 story yesterday, built around an interview with the game's creative director, Jason VandenBerghe. During the interview, I had to ask him about his expectations for his game, given the unspectacular sales performances of House of the Dead Overkill, MadWorld and some other games I described as games for "hardcore" gamers. It seemed like Red Steel 2 was aimed at the same players. VandenBerghe smiled and said, "I don't get into the 'Is-there-a-hardcore-gamer-audience-on-the-Wii?' question. There are gamers who have the Wii. And this game is for gamers."

Shopping Mama: This one goes back to last week, but pertains to a posting decision I made this week. I had visited a publicity firm's office in New York to play some of Majesco's games. That included Boy and his Blob, which I did preview. I was also shown Cooking Mama 3, the upcoming DS game in the popular cooking series. I've played the core cooking parts of the series before, using a DS stylus and a Wii remote to slice, dice, stir and all the rest. I was told that one of the new things Mama 3 has is shopping. But I didn't understand the shopping sequence I tried, nor did the PR folks showing me the game. They had just received the non-translated build from its Japanese developers. I used the stylus to direct Mama through a top-down view of a supermarket. The store was filled with people walking in set paths, up and down aisles. And there were tomatoes that I needed to lead Mama to. If she bumped into the people in the store, I had to play mini-games that had the same rapid pace of standard cooking moments in the series. Shake a rattle for a crying baby. Keep sandwiches from falling off a deli counter. That kind of stuff. If I walked Mama over to the tomatoes, I was a success. But why? What does it gain Mama? Certainly she doesn't have to now shop for any ingredients that she's going to use in a recipe? Flummoxed, I decided I couldn't write a full preview of the game.

That's all I left out this week, for better or worse. And now I'm off to get some Prototype into my weekend. And maybe some de Blob too. Yes, it's the time of year when I can catch up on neglected games. Have a good weekend everyone.

I wanted the technical answer, of course.

But first Jason VandenBerghe, a man who was soon to impress me with the fact that he lead the team that developed my favorite post-GoldenEye James Bond game, Everything or Nothing, gave me the marketing answer.

He adopted his marketing voice, which was higher than his normal tone, and accompanied by waving of arms and the wobbly body language of a dishonest man. The marketing answer was that it would make the game more amazing, more terrific, more awesome.

He straightened himself out and took the Wii Remote from my hand. I was about to get the technological answer.

This was all happening in the basement floor of a downtown hotel in New York, last week during a rainstorm that stabbed the sky with lightning and flipped my umbrella inside out. In from the storm and amid the Ubisoft holiday line-up, I was playing the early portion of Red Steel 2. It's a cartoon-shaded first-person-shooter/sword-fighter. The opening bit had my character being dragged on his belly by a guy on a motorcycle. I shot free and was in a gunfight, pointing the MotionPlus at the TV running the game, feeling my hand movements match the arm and gun movements of the character in the first-person game.

"Without MotionPlus, I couldn't do this," he said with the Remote now in his hand and me stepped off to the side to observe. He pointed the Remote at the screen as if to shoot. Then he moved his arm, pointing the Remote toward the left side of the screen... then he turned it more until it wasn't pointing at the TV any more.

Wii first-person-shooter owners know what VandenBerghe's gesture would normally cause. The Wii sensor bar would lose track of the Wii Remote's pointer, causing the game's first-person camera to either keep turning uncontrollably, or the camera would stop. This would be a frustration for players who were just trying to turn and had turned a tad too much. Either way, the gamer would then have to point back at the screen to get the Remote noticed again.

When VandenBerghe moved his Remote away from the TV something different happened. The camera in the game did keep turning. But as VandenBerghe turned his hand and the Remote back to the TV, the camera swiveled back with him. MotionPlus had taken over for the Remote's pointer. The Wii never lost track of its player.

MotionPlus had made these controls smarter. The swings to the side could even allow the developers to map a quick-turn.

This wasn't marketing. Technically, that's what MotionPlus added to the shooting of Red Steel 2. Otherwise, VandenBerghe said, no, MotionPlus was not essential for Red Steel's shooting gameplay.

But remember, Red Steel 2 fans, the essence of the franchise is guns and swords.

MotionPlus is essential to the sword-fighting in the game, I was told. VandenBerghe has been on the project for a year and a half. He remembers riskily informing his bosses that the game had to use it. He remembers expecting MotionPlus to birth a lightsaber game at this E3 that would steal his game's thunder. He remembers being shocked that no such game shows up. And he maintains that it would be pointless to make a game with sword-fighting without MotionPlus — unless, as with a No More Heroes, the intention wasn't to emulate the feel of actually swinging a sword.

To sword-fight is to swing your arm. Vigorously. In real life or the game.

Red Steel 2's sword combat involves big swings, short swings, blocks, combos. And without MotionPlus, Vandenberghe told me, it would have involved a six-to-10-frame lag between player motion and the action on the screen. That would be too slow to make the game worth making, he told me.

In Red Steel 2, the switch from gunplay to sword combat isn't activated by a button. There's no weapons toggle. The change is activated by the rapidity of arm movement. The gun is the game's default, but swing your arm sharply and the sword comes out — and stays out until the Remote is leveled and shots are again ready to be fired.

I swung the virtual sword in the game. I almost had to wallop Vandenberghe and other people standing by to get some of the best strikes on the game's enemies.

VandenBerghe told me that he keeps getting quoted as proclaiming himself to be the man who killed waggle. Kill waggle with this? These controls felt right.

The game was recently delayed to 2010, a move VandenBerghe said is designed to balance the quality of the adventure. When released, Red Steel 2 will be bundled with a MotionPlus.

Today Bethesda confirmed that WET, Wheelspin and Medieval Games will all be playable at the show and that they will be talking up Brink.

Ubisoft's list of games at Gamescom includes Avatar, RUSE, Silent Hunter 5, Red Steel 2, Rabbids Go Home, Academy of Champions and Assassin's Creed 2.

With games like Modern Warfare 2, RAGE and APB on the offering as well, it looks like the show will have something for everyone. And don't forget Sony is holding a three-hour press conference. EA and Microsoft also plan to make announcements at the show.

To make the wait go a little bit quicker—at least two minutes and thirty seconds worth of that wait—here's a handy primer on the game's hero, specifically his East meets West design. There's a little Asian, a little American, a little Native American in the mix here, a tasty blend that should make Red Steel 2 stand apart from the first.

Guess we'll see how it all worked out in the Spring.

Splinter Cell Conviction and Red Steel 2, two of the breakout titles from this year's E3 Expo, won't be making their original 2009 release dates, according to Ubisoft's first-quarter 2009 sales report. The two titles are now slated for release in the 4th quarter of 2009, which in Ubisoft's case places their release sometime in the window of January to March 2010. Two additional titles, I am Alive and Ghost Recon, have been pushed to fiscal year 2010-2011, which kicks off in April of 2010. From Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot:

"We are disappointed that we have to postpone the release of several major games but we consider that this choice is the best one in the long-term interests of Ubisoft. Lastly, we are having to adjust our full-year targets to take into account the fall in business over the first half. The excellent response to our games at E3, as well as the high buzz generated for titles such as Assassin's Creed 2, Splinter Cell Conviction and Avatar, reinforce our belief that the company can achieve strong growth in the second half of the fiscal year."

During the conference call, Yves furthe rexplained that the team working on Red Steel 2 requested more time to polish all of the maps, and that the demo shown at E3 didn't reflect the quality of the rest of the game in its current state.

On the bright side, we should have plenty of money to buy presents for other people this Holiday season, right?

We all know (and possibly love) Ubisoft – the French game studio has been bringing us multiplatform hits for years. This month's preview event hosted by the developer was a Nintendo-centric affair, though they were nice enough to include Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood in the swag haul.

Pictured:
Autographed pink Rayman Raving Rabbids Thong (?!)
Rayman Raving Rabbids T-Shirt
Red Steel 2 T-Shirt
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles classic cartoon logo sweatband
Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood for the Xbox 360
Ubisoft logo laptop case

About a week earlier than that – in fact, the very day Fawcett and Jackson passed away – I attended 1C's annual Another Night in Moscow event held at the Russian Consulate in San Francisco. Now, 1C is more obscure than Ubisoft, but I'm told it's like the Microsoft of Russia. Judging from the lavish party and modest swag haul, I could see why somebody would say that.

Pictured:
1C logo Russian fuzzy hat
Another Night In Moscow t-shirt
1C logo swag bag
1C logo pen

Not Pictured:
1C logo notebook that I totally lost at Santa Cruz

But whether you love them or have even heard of them, both companies delivered a huge haul of previews and early looks at games we can expect this year. Just in case you missed them, here they are:

Another Night In Moscow
Get Some Russian In Your Independence Day
XIII Century: Blood of Europe - All The Brutality, None Of The Plague
Death To Spies 2: Moment of Truth Preview: SMERSH is a fun word to say
Trucking It In Rig 'n' Roll
Captain Blood Preview: Errol Flynn He Ain't - But He'll Do

UbiNintendo
Academy of Champions Preview: It's Harry Potter But With Soccer And Sam Fisher
C.O.P. The Recruit Preview: If Only Becoming A Police Officer Were So Easy
Shaun White Snowboarding World Stage Preview: Snow In Summer
TMNT Smash-Up Preview: Will The Real April O'Neil Please Stand Up?
Rabbids Go Home Preview: Rabbids Go In Your Wiimote
Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes Preview: The Might Of Mana… and Puzzles
Red Steel 2 Preview: Whack-tastic Fun

After five minutes with the demo though, I take back everything bad I ever even started to think about this game. It's almost completely unrelated to the first one besides the name and the revolver/katana gameplay – and it's blessedly awesome in several ways.

What Is It?
Red Steel 2 is sequel only in name to the 2006 Wii launch title, Red Steel. The first person combat is similar and the weapons are the same, but the story takes place in a completely different setting and the player is a different character – and it's a Wii Motion Plus exclusive. Details are scarce on the exact story other than the reveal about it being an alternate reality where high tech cities are safe but the open desert is dangerous. The primary inspiration for gameplay comes from desperado films like Yojimbo, The Good, The Bad and The Ugly or Six String Samurai; so we can expect a nameless lone hero in an East-meets-West setting dominated by gangsters.

What We Saw
I played through the demo, which appears to be the tutorial of the main game.

How Far Along Is It?
Red Steel 2 is due out "this holiday season" which could mean late 2009 or early 2010.

What Needs Improvement?
Targeting is a bit twitchy: You have the ability to lock onto enemies with Z and switch between targets just by tapping Z – but in melee situations, this can lead to confusion. For example, you could be locked on to an enemy and succeed in killing him. You'd press Z to lock onto the next enemy right beside him, however, because you killed your targeted enemy, the game will auto-select the closest enemy – which might just be the guy behind you instead of the one you were trying to target.

Have to keep the remote anchored: It could be because there were so many other active Wiimotes in the room, but I felt like if I didn't keep my Wii Remote pointing within a narrow field in the center of the screen, the controls wouldn't work right. For example, there's a blocking mechanic where you have to turn your "sword" (read: Wii Remote) in the direction opposite of the attack (horizontal blocks vertical, etc.) – but if you start to block with your Wii remote pointing somewhere outside that narrow field (because you just finished a horizontal slash for example), the hero would just sort of freeze instead of blocking and I'd have to re-center my remote at the screen to before trying to block or attack again.

What Should Stay The Same?
Tight Shooting Controls and Authentic Sword Swings: This is the first game I've played that makes the Wii Motion Plus feel like a godsend. The targeting reticule for the revolver barely wobbled even when I was wheeling sharply right or left to shoot at enemies or glass bottles. It also seems like the game can tell the difference between an actual horizontal slash and a lazy sort-of-horizontal slash that's actually more like an upward diagonal slash. Best of all, the game can read the strength of a slash, which feels so satisfying when you're delivering a strong vertical slash to the head of an armored enemy. Just be sure to actually wear your wrist strap.

It Looks Fabulous: The character designs and animations were smooth and the colors popped. I know there's not a lot of visual intensity to a dusty desert town, but the sky, sand and occasional fiery explosions looked really good.

Safe-cracking mini game: You can find safes in a level and crack them open for money to upgrade or buy weapons. The way it works is you hold the Wiimote to your ear to listen for the tumblers clicking as you turn the dial of the safe in the game with the Nunchuck. Sure, it might look a little silly – but I'm pleased to see the Wiimote's speakers being put to good use. And what kind of Western would it be if you couldn't crack safes?

You Can Deflect Bullets With Your Sword: Win.

Final Thoughts
I thought my bias against Red Steel 2 from not liking Red Steel would be canceled out by my bias in favor of Westerns and that I could pretend to be objective about this game. But truthfully, my love of Westerns and the sheer amount to which Red Steel 2 appeals to it overpowers any memories of Red Steel, so I have to admit I'm biased in favor of Red Steel 2.

According to the latest issue of Nintendo Power, Ubisoft has confirmed MotionPlus only. "It's a huge risk," said Red Steel 2 creative director Jason Vandenberghe. "We have no idea what the penetration rate for Wii MotionPlus will be. We assume high. We would like it to be high."

Sure you would. Vandenberghe went on to tell Nintendo Power that he would love to say the game was compatible with a regular controller, but that the gameplay just wasn't there.

Red Steel 2 faces a huge risk [NIntendo Dpad via EDGE]

Ubisoft's invitation-only presser at the Los Angeles Theatre kicks off at 5pm on Monday, June 1st. There the company will be detailing their 2009 holiday lineup, complete with exclusive reveals of Red Steel 2, Assassin's Creed 2, and a demonstration of Rabbids Go Home, the raving ones' solo debut. There's also mention of other unannounced titles, so we can probably look forward to a couple new games dropping as well.

The event is being hosted by actor and comedian Joel McHale, the current host of E's Talk Soup, so expect many offbeat references to Ryan Seacrest, with whom the man seems obsessed. If that's not enough star power for you, Ubisoft also promises special guests that are certain to thrill attendees". I'm thrilled already!

For those of you unable to attend, Ubisoft will be broadcasting the entire event the following morning for public viewing at Ubi.com, which is certain to be almost as good as being there.

The trailer comes courtesy of MSN Games Brazil, who say they obtained it via a source at Ubisoft. It shows just how different the sequel is to the first game, with post-apocalyptic deserts replacing city streets, and stylish road warriors replacing stereotypical Asian gangsters.

Not sure why this was shown at a PlayStation event, but then, it's far too elaborate to be a fake. Guess Ubisoft were peddling more than PlayStation games at the recent get-together.

As for the clip, it's like stepping back into a time machine, with the clock set to 2006. A time when the Wii was unreleased, there was real potential, there were silly trailers with people acting like it's The Matrix, and there was a Red Steel clip showing graphics the final product will never manage.

<br> <a href="http://video.msn.com/video.aspx?mkt=pt-BR&vid=97eeddd7-cac9-40c3-8c36-57dc41ce55b3" target="_new" title="Red Steel 2">Video: Red Steel 2</a>

Not much! Most notable of the limited news on-hand is that the game won't feature any multiplayer, with the developers choosing to focus on getting the singleplayer experience juuuuust right. Veterans of the first game's multiplayer will no doubt see this as a good thing.

As for the other stuff, the game will let you level up your character, there are a number of hub worlds with missions branching off, and missions can be re-attempted once you get bigger guns or new abilities.

Red Steel 2 - more details reveal some controls, non-linear gameplay, and explanation for lack of multiplayer [Go Nintendo]

UPDATE - Nintendo Power let us know that, while "some of the information" in the source article is accurate, it does not come from Nintendo Power's cover feature on the magazine. As such, we're going to mark this as rumour for now.

The announcement mainly centers on the fact that the game was created from the ground up for the Wii MotionPlus, and will be Ubisoft's first title to fully integrate the peripheral. Aside from the peripheral back-patting, the only other information provided is that the game takes place in a "desert-bound, high-tech metropolis", which explains the Western look of the game's protagonist.

"Red Steel was a unique opportunity for Ubisoft to work in tandem with Nintendo to create a title exclusively for the launch of the Wii console," said Tony Key, senior vice president of sales and marketing US at Ubisoft. "Red Steel 2 is another milestone for the company as it is the first Ubisoft title with full Wii MotionPlus integration."

See? It's all about Wii MotionPlus, and why shouldn't it be? No other launch title highlighted the limitations of the Wii remote as well as Red Steel, so it's up to the sequel to show us how much better control works now that Nintendo has fixed it.

Red Steel 2 is aiming for a Holiday 2009 release.

Snippets of the June issue of Nintendo Power are now available online, giving Red Steel fans a peek at the next waggle-filled first-person slicer, but, sadly, no screen shots. Perhaps in the paper version of the Nintendo-focused mag. Nintendo Power seems jazzed about Red Steels 2, though, with the pub excitedly claiming that "wielding a sword in a Wii game feels as real as you'd always dreamed!"

I was unaware that that was a recurring dream of mine. But I trust Nintendo Power wouldn't lie to me.

The Nintendo Power table of contents further confirms that Ubisoft will be supporting Wii MotionPlus for Red Steel 2, offering up some pleasant looking artwork.

Other highlights from the June issue include our first look at Don Flamenco in the Wii remake of Punch-Out!! as well as an official review. Watch for it!

Nintendo Power

Yes, before the current version - in development at Ubisoft Paris - there was an older one, being worked on by Ubisoft Montreuil. And it was a version that, alongside the contemporary urban spaces you'd expect from the series, included levels that were a bit more fantastic. Floating towers, ethereal landscapes, that kind of thing.

Like a Max Payne dreamscape, then, only with rubbish motion controls.

"Oh, how do you know it was rubbish?" I hear you quip indignantly. I can strongly suspect that was but one of the reasons Ubisoft shut development of the game down in October 2007 over "concerns about the game's quality", and handed it over to Ubisoft Paris.

Plenty of concept art at the link below.

Red Steel 2 [Wii - Prototype / Beta] [Unseen 64]