There's no denying that Red Steel was a disappointment. Even if expectations were too high, development was rushed and it was truly the first of its kind, the game had a lot of issues and definitely didn't live up to its promise.

Now Ubisoft wants to make amends. How do you get the disappointed consumers back, how do you put the sword in their hands and say: "This time it's for real."? How do you put samurais in the Wild West? Well, for starters you erase the drawing board.

Let's cut to the chase, what you want to know about the most are the sword controls, after all this was one of Wii's biggest pulls, we wanted the sword on the screen to mimic what we were doing with the controller (the so called 1:1 controls) . Finally, Motion Plus with its magic trinkets called gyroscopes enables us to do that. So, how does it work? Well, it works great. First of all, the attacks aren't fully 1:1, BUT WAIT DON'T GO INTO NERD RAGE, do we really want 1:1 controls in this kind of game? Are we all devout followers of the Way of the Sword, capable of astounding attacks? I know I am, but most of you probably aren't.

The game detects the direction of your movements- left to right, top to bottom, diagonals and so on and of course the speed and strength with which you're attacking is also picked up. If you wanna go for the kill, fast wide movements are your friend, but you can just attack with some gentle swipes. It's clear that the attacks themselves aren't 1:1 because you can't, for example, stop your swing in mid-air, but moving the sword around while you're not attacking shows that even the slightest movements of your hand are being registered.

I can honestly say that I've rarely had any problems with movement detection or calibration by doing as instructed by the incredibly out of place lady in the tutorial videos: pull your arm back, use your elbow, yadda, yadda. Sometimes you might not be able to pull a move off, but everything works most of the time, unless you're being lazy and not moving as you were told. Plus, with the option to set the playing style to athletic, normal or relaxed you can choose to swing around your living room or give your arms a bit more rest. Still, you can't just sink into your couch and do tiny wrist flicks while you eat cheese balls.

It's so shiny!

Outside of combat if you want to wave your sword around you will have to lock-on, otherwise, you'll be pointing away from the screen which obviously can't end well, so initially there might be some confusion when trying to use the katana when no enemies are around.

The lock-on system prevents the camera from going bonkers when you're flailing the katana around and can be automatic, semi-automatic or manual, depending on your play style. A neat thing about the lock-on is that if an enemy is behind you, an indicator will show up, if it's red and you have a certain attack you can finish off your attacker by stabbing him without even so much as looking at him. So awesome.

The four guns at your disposal work great too, d-pad to change between them, point at the screen and press B to shoot, that's all there is to it. Slash with the remote and you have your sword in hand again. It's simple, intuitive and works great, allowing for you to get some cheap shots in between sword strikes. As you progress you can improve your health, defense and weapons among other things and acquire new, crazy attacks that work by combining a few buttons with sword swings. As you get used to the controls and do combos and finishers one after another, you'll feel like King of the Badasses.

While you can always choose whether you'll use the katana or a gun, the pendulum swings more to the blade and its fierce attacks but still, the game spreads out the upgrades and their affordability in a way that encourages you to try them all.

If you're gonna shoot, shoot! Don't talk!

Red Steel 2 isn't merely an FPS with swords, in fact it feels more like an action game or a brawler from a first person perspective. Not only is the battle system with its combos and scores different from what we get in a first person shooter, the optional side missions that require us to scour the levels for trucks to blow up or ammo depots to loot add some exploration elements to the game. While these are an incentive to wander around the otherwise empty levels and offer a break from just killing bad guys, the objectives just end up repeating themselves rather lazily. Constantly returning to the same places after a mission to get new ones also gets old pretty fast, but thankfully everything is streamlined in a way that you won't need a lot of backtracking.

The art direction is simply astounding, the concept of mixing the Wild West we know from old cowboy flicks with Japan and its Samurai and Ninjas sounds silly and would be very easy to screw up, but Red Steel's team deserves a lot of praise for pulling it off with tremendous success. Badass cowboy samurais, Asian sheriffs, futuristic Ninjas and Japanese temples and Torii gates in the middle of the desert, everything clicks together and looks stylish as hell. Not only that, the cel-shaded graphics are up to the task of bringing that art direction to life with a great looking engine with silky smooth 60 fps, really good animations and big, detailed levels. One of the best looking games on Wii, no doubt about it.

The cheesy voice acting works very well with the game's theme, there's just something peculiarly alluring about a Japanese big bosomed girl speaking with a Southern USA accent. It's probably just the breasts. The soundtrack is also a pleasant surprise with some great tracks, predictably inspired by Westerns and traditional Japanese music.

The game will last you about 10 hours and has a nice difficulty level, not too hard or too easy, but asides from some challenges you unlock, there's nothing new to do after you finish the game. Granted, it's the kind of the game that's fun to play through a couple of times, maybe get some attacks you couldn't afford or find some hidden items, but with the lack of multiplayer, a few extras would be more than welcome.

Red Steel 2 delivers what the first game promised and makes you learn new ways to play- a perfect example of Nintendo's philosophy with the Wii. It's a very high quality package from the satisfying and engaging sword and gun controls to the graphics and art style, this is what we can get when a team actually devotes itself to Wii's strengths and takes the platform seriously. It might have a few problems and not a lot of replay value, but it's a damn good action game and a completely new experience. If the first Red Steel left you scarred, don't be afraid to take the plunge now.