For a third party title to be getting so much attention for the launch of a new console is almost unheard of, but sure enough, once Ubisoft showed off what was undoubtedly an amazing looking game with plenty of true to life sword combat, this was a game every future Wii owner would want to have in his collection.

Sadly, this is where the excitement ends. Now the game has launched and after weeks of getting to know the title, it can be said that Red Steel just doesn't deliver what the development and publishing team promised us.

Graphics are obviously lower quality than the official footage showed prior to its release and the controls are initially painful to use. However, while the first hour or two of the title may leave an extremely bitter taste in the mouths of pretty much every gamer who will pick this title up, it's those who perservere that will see and understand exactly what Ubisoft was trying to create.

The game sees you in control of Steve, an American with a Japanese girlfriend whose father just happens to be one of the Yakuza bosses. When a deal goes bad with the big boss we see Steve knocked unconscious by a bullet and his girlfriend and her father kidnapped. After retrieving a pistol from a nearby body and chasing down and killing most of your girlfriend's captives, you manage only to save her father from this predicament. It's up to you - filled with hatred and vengeance - to get your girlfriend back from Tokyo to the safety of her father's arms.

While the story seems legit and works for what it is trying to achieve, it is quite sad to see it conveyed in such a weak way. 2D art is panned and wiped across the screen and only ever looks mildly impressive at the best of times. Fully animated 2D cut scenes using the in-game art style would have helped push the presentation of Red Steel a long way. Thankfully, there aren't too many of these and they don't last too long when they do come about.

Controls really are a mixed bag. No matter how well Ubisoft created these controls, this was going to be the first Wii FPS many people would play, and the fact that you'll be controlling it in a way you have never controlled one before was always going to mean there is an inherently high challenge. Upon starting the game you'll find it hard to aim and run at the same time. Next comes the tricky part of strafing and zooming in for more precise kills.

Each and every new skill you receive comes at the cost of needing to learn a new way of doing something you've done a hundred times with dual thumbsticks. This is extremely frustrating and will drive many gamers away from the new experience, but those who can master it will find themselves getting more and more engrossed in the game, and is the main reason most reviewers have scored this title badly. Would this game be bad if we had used a control style like this for the last generation?

The B button of the Wii becomes the trigger button of your weapon of choice. Grenades are thrown while holding down on the D-pad and mimicking either an under- or over-arm through with the nunchuck - leading, of course, to either rolling or throwing the grenade.

While the controls do take some getting use to, even the masters will agree that the control is still a little flawed. The game comes of feeling more like the Nintendo 64's GoldenEye instead of anything last-gen. With a click of the A button the game clicks to an aim mode that is seen the aforementioned N64 title. By reaching forward with your Wii controller you then have different levels of zoom. While this works for most weapons, the sniper rifle - the weapon that really requires zoom - fails on an epic level. As you push your hand forward to activate the zoom, your hand naturally shakes or drops a little, and when doing so the item you thought you were zooming in on disappears and you'll spend a few seconds trying to relocate the character shooting at your head.

The only other control style worthy of mention is the swordplay. Gamers went mental when it was first announced that a console that touts motion control would sport a swordplay game from day one, and gamers around the world let out a collective cry when they heard the controls would not in fact be a simulation, rather scripted swipes depending on how you shook the nunchuck. So what should be the most epic part of the game ends up feeling more like a mini-game. As you progress through the title more special moves will find their way into your swordplay, but the final product is something that shows a lot of promise yet seems to under-deliver.

What seems odd is that Red Steel starts off as a title that really doesn't seem to push any boundaries as far as graphics are concerned, and screenshots - for the most part - don't do the game justice either.

But sure enough, once you get into the heart and soul of the game the graphics seem to improve around it. There are some nice refractions seen in glass, and an impressive effect that allows light to pass through windows and cause a sunbeam effect. It's almost like a fake HDRI system that Ubisoft have running here, and it's impressive. For the most part, Red Steel seems to be the most graphically outstanding launch title for the Wii, but like the rest of the game, it's more a case of seeing potential than utilising the system.

The game's soundtrack is fairly impressive and like most Wii titles supports Dolby Pro Logic II. Orchestrated music, choral singers and voice actors ensure that the game sounds better than it looks and plays.

Our only gripe with the sound is that even with the Wii controller's speaker set to 1 on the volume meter, the reloading of the weapons is normally audible over whatever else is happening on screen. It sounds great considering the speaker it's coming out of, but it might annoy the late night gamers out there.

Multiplayer is something the developers wanted to push, but with a control style that few will appreciate and an archaic splitscreen mode, it's probably a gameplay mode that will stay untouched. If Nintendo had got their act together to ensure an online component to Wii were available from day one, then we might have something completely different in our hands.

In the end Red Steel just doesn't live up to Ubisoft's hype, though it still manages to deliver a title that is fun. But you have to fight your way through learning a new control style before you reach it.