Call of Duty 3 (Completed) vs. Red Steel

Now that I have completed Call of Duty 3 and worked my way through the first two hours of Red Steel, I felt I would review them against each other.

Both games of course are first person shooters and on the Wii. Both were released at the launch of the Wii. In most aspects the games are alike, even though it may not seem that way. Linear paths for forward progression with objectives and goals that need to be accomplished.

Features:
Red steels most anticipated attribute is sword fighting. With the controls you dodge and parry the slash at your opponents, it is fairly interactive and a neat feature. COD melee portion is less often and subtle. Through out the game there are small things you must do with the wii motes in order to create an action, such as rowing a boat, planting c4, and wrestling with the enemy. In Red steel this interaction felt like a mini game, where as COD gave you immersion into the game. COD also had a few missions where you controlled vehicles, this was a great break from the normal FPS frolicking.

Controls:
The difference in controls for the games was flat out astounding. Red Steel seemed to be very buggy. At times my cursor would be in the middle of my screen and jump a few inches in any given direction. This made precision shooting problematic. During the sessions of play I often felt motion sickness. In my opinion this is attributed to the flow of the controls and how they are correlated on the screen. Also when zooming it required you to push the wiimote forward, this was not only uncomfortable but it was hard to aim and sustain the zoomed position. The sword fighting while fun felt off. The sword position would mimic the position of your hand while holding still, but took a decent swing of the wiimote to get the sword to swing. COD however was smooth and extremely precise. With the single shot rifles I could clear a line of enemies one shot one kill with very little problem. When zooming it appear that the ratio between movement of the wii mote and movement on the screen changed. A motion form the wiimote that would normally spin your screen around only moved the cross has a smidgen. This made aiming with a sniper rifle easy and precise, yet realistic in its own manor.

Graphics:
COD was all that I expected, great character models and environments. The smoke grenades when let loose gave a fairly realistic sensation as the filled a room. Red steel on the other hand really felt like an updated version of golden eye. The majority of 3D models in the game seemed simple and colored strangely with out realism in mind.

Story:
COD while only trying to recreate history was a little scattered. The different factions of allies you play from mission to mission gave an over all picture. But it didn’t give you the chance to bond with the character you were playing. Red Steel appeared to be a standard yakuza story, but I found it entertaining. If the plot had not been in Red steel I am not sure it would have made a real difference.

In the end my over all feeling would be COD any day of the week over red steel. COD is a solid FPS that is easy to control and fun to play.

Call of duty took me right around 12 hours and I would consider playing it again.