Red Steel 2's Creative Director, Jason Vandenberghe, has told this site it is "absolutely crucial" for the future of the studio to create a successful game with the sequel to the maligned launch title.

Speaking at an event last week in London, the developer said: "It was clear from the beginning we had to succeed. It was absolutely crucial. It was obvious that, if Red Steel 2 came out and it was not well-received by the fans, we were done. There would be no Red Steel 3. There would be no point in continuing that: once is an offense, twice is a pattern."

Jason explained how he turned the ominous forecast into a positive, saying how being upfront "made it very easy for me to focus the team on the quality of the gameplay, and to receive 100% support on that from from top to bottom."

He also explained why the team has been doing their best to keep a low profile with the upcoming first-person-brawler: "It also meant that we didn't want to talk about the game until we knew you could play it. That was the other big thing."

The first game in the series holds a paltry Metacritic ranking of 63, with a user score of 7.0. We're guessing the sequel needs to score at least an 80.

Red Steel 3 is released for the Wii on March 23rd in the and March 26th in the UK. You can read our latest hands-on preview on this site soon.

By Martin Gaston