Story by: Brian Rowe

You know it’s going to be a good day when you walk into the office and someone from Ben & Jerry’s is handing you a scoop of Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough. Think of the boost to employee morale, not that Ubisoft needs it. After six hours of waggling remotes and squiggling styluses, it’s obvious that Ubisoft is serious about dominating the Nintendo-scene this next holiday season.

Athletic mimicry with digital baseball bats and golf clubs is fine, but swordplay is the one thing that Wii-owners have craved since the beginning. Sorry for the pun, but the original Red Steel didn’t quite cut it, which is why Ubisoft Paris scrapped everything except the gun and sword combo for the spaghetti-western-meets-samurai reboot of the series.

In the alternative reality of the Nevada desert, our nameless hero is the last of his clan, Caldera’s protectors. He has been beaten by the merciless Jackals and humiliatingly leashed to the back of a motorcycle. Sliding through the sand, avoiding cacti, and lining up the sights for one skillful shot to the gas-tank is where you come in. As far as first impressions go, Red Steel 2 slaughters the standard.

The new visual style is a far cry from the mundane shades of grays and browns that permeated the original. It’s brazenly colorful and sporting some of the most vibrant cel-shading to date. I could have spent another five minutes watching the smoke from an explosion fold and flow like hot wax in a lava lamp. Along with the fresh look, Red Steel 2 will feature, and require, the Wii Motion Plus add-on, which will come as an optional bundle.

News of Wii Motion Plus sparked fantasies of shooting guns from hands and the hats off grizzled outlaws – talents every good gunslinger must possess. I suppose that makes our nameless hero a wannabe. He’s accurate to a tee, but not in the way I expected. Instead of giving pinpoint accuracy over to the player, the egregiously generous auto-targeting assumes control when you point in the general direction of a target. Perhaps the 1:1 movement of Wii Motion Plus is being saved for swordplay.