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PS2 | Action | The Red Star

Boxart for The Red Star
The Red Star 20 screen shots
  • GRAPHICS: 3.00
  • SOUND: 2.00
  • CONTROL: 4.50
  • FUN FACTOR 4.50
  • AVG USER SCORE 3.5
  • AVG CRITIC SCORE 4.5
Winner of the GamePro Editor's Choice Award

Review: The Red Star

Review by AJ Glasser | 06/11/2007 | 16:10:21 PM PST

XS Games' resurrection of Acclaim's PlayStation 2 shooter The Red Star may be too little, too late for fans of the comic - but for everyone else, the price is right.

The game is a third-person shooter reminiscent of top-down and side-scrolling games titles like old school Contra and the upcoming Alien Syndrome. Battles also play out like a fancy version of Asteroid, making The Red Star feel both retro and stale.

Shelf Life

There's more to The Red Star than meets the eye--a complicated history coupled with rich source material went into this game, though none of that shows up in the final product. When Acclaim went under in 2004, the nearly retail-ready game was shelved for two years before XS Games picked it up. Two years is a long time in the gaming industry--long enough for new technology and gameplay innovations to become standard, or even outdated--and The Red Star definitely has a dated feel to it. But even old games can withstand the test of time - if they're fun and interesting.

The Red Star is definitely fun. With three characters to choose from (you can also unlock Maya Antares after beating the game once), and 19 levels of mixed melee and ranged combat, the hybrid factor of The Red Star makes for an engaging game while ranked missions, extensive upgradeable weapons arsenal, and hidden Arena mode are all pluses. The three characters - lithe Makita, burly Kyuzo, and mage-class Maya - are well balanced and sufficiently distinct to make gameplay feel different as you play through the game with each, and the two-player co-op mode sweetens the deal.

Sadly, The Red Star isn't that interesting. The plot is based on Christian Gosset's sci-fi/fantasy graphic novel depicting an alternate reality Soviet Union, and quickly becomes an utter mess. The comic follows the Maya, her bodyguard Kyuzo, and the war orphan Makita on their quest to find Maya's dead husband Ulric while resisting the evil clutches of Troika. Somehow, the game manages to make even less sense than the comic with incoherent "mission update" sequences interjected between levels failing to explain why a character moves from an airship battle, to a frozen factory, to a desert tribal ground. And compared to Gosset's vivid panels that would have been well-suited to cel-shading, the graphics suck.

What you get out of The Red Star depends on what you expect. If you're an action-shooter fan, looking for a pleasant distraction, the game delivers a quality experience, considering the $20 price tag. However, if you're a fan of the comics and were hoping for some of the glorious art style and heavy plot twists, you might just wish that XS Games had left The Red Star on the shelves to rot.


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