I still haven't had much in the way of gaming time over the last couple of weeks - I can report that Battlefield: Bad Company 2 is a sound investment, but that's no surprise to anybody who reads gaming news at this point; the reviews have been out and everybody know it's a solid product. I've also had more fun with the Just Cause 2 demo (after applying some minor changes - see the trainer linked from the SomethingAwful page and the one in the notes of the Youtube video) than I've had with some full games. The 30 minute demo as it stands is great fun, but adding unlimited health and ammunition and removing the time limit turns it into a sandbox of terribly impressive scale. My suggestion: take a helicopter and fly it as high as you can - this will be very, very high - and then free fall back down. It may surprise you that it takes literally minutes to do this; the bigger surprise is that it's totally worth it, just to see that you can.
Anyhow. This post is no longer about that; it is to tell you that I did make an hour or so last night to pick up my pre-order of Red Steel 2 and give the opening of the game a spin, and that I feel pretty confident in saying at this point that if you have a Wii, you should play this game. Everywhere that the original Red Steel made a design misstep - and there were several - the sequel makes strides to improve on them. Your swordplay is no longer limited to scripted encounters, and is now the central mode of play. Red Steel 2 is in fact a first person beat 'em up as much as it is anything else. From the combo-based fighting system (which strings gunplay and swordplay together in some really satisfying ways) to the game's penchant for hiding money and ammo in objects scattered around the world for you to smash, it feels as much like an old school arcade brawler as it does a modern FPS, and so far I think that's great.
My biggest concern going into the game, having not had a chance to try it at PAX last year, was that there would be trouble for the player in switching between "sword mode" and "gun mode" - since you can literally do this at any time, but one involves aiming carefully with the IR pointer and one involves wide swings of your arm, this seemed fraught with peril for losing track of where the player wants to go or mistaking a turn for a sword swing (or vice versa). Luckily, in practice, this hasn't been a problem for me at all so far. As you roam around the world, the IR pointer controls your view direction and aiming as it does in any other Wii FPS, but as soon as you engage any enemy (or breakable object) at close range, the game switches into a Zelda-esque "Z-targeting" mode where your view is locked to your opponent and the nunchuk allows you to circle-strafe around them. In this mode, you can swing your arm around for sword strikes as much as you like without worrying about ending up facing the wrong way. You can also manually hop in and out of this mode in case the auto-lock doesn't catch what you want to focus on, or if you need to switch opponents. It works really, really well, and in almost all cases I found that the game handled switching from gunplay to swordplay and back again gracefully.
Most importantly, an hour in, that solid control scheme powers a really fun, intuitive, genuinely new experience. Strolling into a group of bad guys and switching quickly between using your blade to block sword strikes (and bullets, in a completely unrealistic and awesome design choice), shooting foes at range, and slicing / stabbing enemies up close, feels both fluid and powerful. The Wii Motion Plus does a great job of detecting both the angle and strength of your strikes, and the versatility of the moves based around that seems pretty impressive, especially when I look at the list of moves I have yet to unlock. From the beginning, the game makes you feel like a competent fighter, and the "Samurai Western" aesthetic they went with - for me, anyhow - just feels right. The plot is generic and the characterization cliche, but that hasn't taken away at all from the fun I'm having with the gameplay so far.
Bottom line: Based on my first hour or so with it, Red Steel 2 justifies its existence not only as a Wii title (you couldn't do this game the same way on the PC or on the other consoles, at least not until the Playstation Move shows up) but as a shooter that uses both the IR pointer and motion control well, something very few FPS games have managed to do. The Wii Motion Plus integration seems excellent, and again adds features to the game that would simply be missing without its inclusion. I'm genuinely excited to get back in and play the part of a sword-swinging gunslinger badass some more, and I really don't want to see this game's prospects harmed by the memories of its lackluster predecessor. Red Steel 2 is a whole new thing, and you should check it out if you can.