The story's not bad, but not great either. It's blending sorcery and technology not unlike Shadowrun, but at least in a setting that's not just more gritty cyberpunk dystopic cities. My main complaint was that the characters weren't fleshed out that deeply (at least as far as I read when we were developing the game). The gigantic skyships were pretty cool though.

It's a shame they couldn't release the XBox version of the game, it was considerably better looking than the PS2 one. Hopefully if it ever gets to the shelf it will still be as fun to play. If you like brawlers and/or shooters, it's definitely worth a look. Plenty of fun there for a budget title.

By  BruceC, at 07 November, 2006 16:33  

The Red Star is based on a comic book, which does have slightly different standards and attentions.

By  Baines, at 07 November, 2006 23:24  

Check out the videos:
http://media.ps2.ign.com/media/568/568431/vids_1.html

Not too shabby, somewhat MGS looking.

And tell me about the Quake 2 storyline again?

By  rufbo, at 08 November, 2006 13:13  

The Red Star is not just any comic book, it's a particularly well-written and interesting one. Just 'cause I like you, I'm going to assume that you are not snarking just for the sake of snark and instead have forgotten this:

A two-sentence summary of almost any story, particularly something of the science fiction or fantasy (or in this case, both) variety, is destined to fail to capture what makes it good.

Go on. Take your absolute favorite novel. Introduce the setting and protagonist, and refer to the genre, in two sentences.

"Warring family trade consortiums compete for access to a valuable and mysterious spice on a far-off desert planet. You begin play as Paul Atreides, who combines his family's high-tech weaponry with his status as the native's messiah to fight giant worms and the evil Harkonnens."

"In a land of wizards, elves, and dwarves, you play a hobbit (sort of a more rotund, wimpier dwarf) traveling through enemy lands to destroy a cursed ring of invisibility. This quest is set upon a backdrop of war between several factions of humans, goblins, and uruk-hai, which are goblins on steroids."

By  Bob, at 09 November, 2006 15:07  

I think the point is getting missed here. I really don't care about The Red Star. I don't. What got me to post was that the two sentences here almost seem constructed to optimize the ridiculousness. Independent of the comic it sounds ridiculous. Knowing that the comic is considered good, it's even worse that they botched it so spectacularly.

Switching from USSR to URRS? It's like proto B1FFing, but you don't have to put it out in front, esp. without parenthetical explanation. An army known as a fleet? Fleet is more commonly used with an air force or navy; an army is often considered all armed forces except the navy. Wikipedia makes it sound like there is in fact a Red Army in the comic, so calling the fleet an army looks like an unforced error. It's space ships in the first sentence and then a sorceress in the second. The apposition is humorous, and avoidable.

Having told me how great the source material doesn't makes it clear that a better one could probably have been made.

By  jvm, at 09 November, 2006 16:05