1 year with the Chumby. Verdict: Winner, winner, chicken dinner!

I remember telling one of my coworkers about the Chumby for the first time:

"Dude, did I tell you I've got a Chumby?"

"A what?"

"You know, Chumby? Bean bag looking thing?"

He stared at me.

"Runs Linux?"

"That's fucking weird man. Don't talk about your chubby anymore."

Unfortunate name or not, Chumby does what its supposed to do and more, and I really have only a few complaints about it after a year of ownership, so I'll get those out of the way. The touch screen is not so great. You can poke it and it usually does what it is supposed to, but you're not going to be enjoying touchscreen games on this little device (though accelerometer games work great). It sometimes flakes out and requires a restart. This is very un-Linuxy and very disappointing. Finally, text entry is terrible (ties back to the "poking" problem above).

So what does it do well? I know this sounds weird, but for an alarm-clock-radio replacement with an Internet connection, this thing is deluxe. The way you can program alarms for different days well in advance is the Chumby's killer app, as far as I am concerned. The alarm feature couldn't really be any better, and its just awesome that you play any kind of digital audio you can think of (Internet radio, MP3s, iPod, and more!).

The Chumby's ability to dish out the Internet in bite-sized chunks is also nice. The Google News app works well, I like the Rotten Tomatoes widget the most since it can tell me about new movies right away, and the Flickr widget gives me something to look at in the morning when I'm trying to motivate myself to roll out of bed. It's also nice for when I'm going to sleep to listen to Soma.FM at a very low volume instead of having a laptop or some other wasteful device piping out music.

The hardware is also damn cool. I wish my laptop was covered in semi-plush pleather and had big spongey buttons and controls to do stupid things (not text entry--stupid things). The fact this thing is fully hackable immediately gives it a much longer service life than iPods even have, and I can see the community carrying this device on for many years to come.

Heck, I even like the menu. The menu, as the story goes, was designed by one of the UI folks who worked on one of Apple's System 7, and it does show. The buttons are intuitive and I never raised an eyebrow at the placement of any options (other than the button to open up SSH and other hacking features, but this makes sense from a consumer-protection standpoint).

Finally, above all the sunshine I've blown into the ass of my alarm clock, this is a device that gets better with age while not having to invest another dime in it. Smart phones have app stores and service contracts that cost lots of money while the Chumby continues to sit and be awesome.

Don't let the fact that this computer-clock-Internet-thing comes in a miniature laundry bag (which I still use to this day... most eco-friendly packaging ever) sway you. If you are thinking this would be a cool device to replace your alarm clock or want to give it as a gift, then do it. They are currently on sale with a $40 off coupon, bringing the price down to $169.99 with free shipping.

Link.

Trip Down Memory Lane: Police Quest: SWAT

You probably don't remember this game unless you played a lot of PC games through the nineties. In fact, even if you did, you probably don't remember this game since it was basically a flop for Sierra who was essentially the Valve of the time (never mind Valve being a part of Sierra for the production of Half-Life 1). And being the Valve of the time meant remaking their best-selling titles over and over again. Valve makes a game about a scientist in a powersuit beating the snot out of aliens and Sierra made games about a king that had to save his kingdom from a wizard. A lesser known series of Sierra was Police Quest, a game about a policeman trying to save his city from a rapist. SWAT was the last game of the Police Quest series and also the most infuriating.

In this game, you're a guy who shoots paper targets over and over again until a flashing klaxon on the screen tells you you need to stop shooting at paper targets and go shoot an old lady or talk her out of her house. If the old lady shot you or herself, you had to go back to shooting paper targets until you were alive again or she came back to life as an old woman that refused negotiations to stop locking herself in her bathroom.


As you can tell the original charm in Police Quest is gone. What they replaced it with were live action actors running around on the screen and you were either supposed to talk to them or shoot them. To talk to them, you had to go through two menus to say something (as they are holding a gun to their own temple) or pull out your gun and shoot them (only one menu, I believe). And, if the old lady, fugitive, or terrorists shot you, you had to sit through the first few bars of Amazing Grace and watch yourself get buried. While this was deep and heartfelt the first time, the thirtieth time I had to wait for my Pentium I to cue up that god forsaken FMV... And, for the later missions, failure meant swapping one of the four CDs back for the first one (which was heavily scratched by my nine-year-old hands) to shoot some paper targets again.

I keep mentioning these paper targets, but one has to realize this was a very early attempt at shoveling game-play-lengthening material into a game so Sierra could hit their 20 hour mark or whatever was in vogue at the time. At least most tedious tasks in a game attempt to give you some reward or skill that is useful later in the game, but nooooope. In this game, all you were supposed to do was talk suspects out of killing themselves or shoot fast moving targets that shoot back with inhuman accuracy. Unfortunately, the paper targets neither moved quick nor were they talkative.

Now I know this was an early attempt to be a realistic simulation for being a SWAT officer, and for the effort, it at least deserves recognition, but if you're going to make a game into an occupational simulator, why not have Plumber's Quest: Roto-Rooter, where you have to spend hours at a time trying to figure out how to order things out of the McMaster-Carr catalog, or you could remake Leisure Suit Larry, but call the game "Leisure Suit Larry: Date Rapist" where you have to spend hours at a time calling up doctors to get prescriptions for rophynol until you strike poontang gold and have to run to your nearest singles bar to get a date? Or, here's another idea, "Blogger's Quest: Run-on Sentence!"

I got a Wacom Bamboo!

Been a while.

I picked up a Wacom Bamboo. It really does perform rather well under Ubuntu 8.10, even if the function keys and scroll wheel don't work out of the box (mostly impossible for me to configure at this point since I need to hot swap my tablet and xorg doesn't like hot swapping). Having only used this tablet a bit, it seems like it is not as well suited as the mouse and keyboard for most tasks (i.e. the pen tool, boxes, ovals, and text), but DAMMIT it is awesome with the caligraphy tool. The above drawing took only a few minutes, and didn't turn out bad at all for a first attempt with the caligraphy tool to produce a complete drawing.

Metal Gear Solid 4 is Shit

Metal Gear Solid 4 is one of the biggest pieces of shit I've ever played. I've played many pieces of shit, but MGS4 represents a new industry standard for shit. You could call it stealth shit since nobody seems to have caught on as to just how utterly shitty this shit is. Straight up shit.

Anyway, I started getting furious at this game after the first mandatory (and irrelevant) cutscene at the beginning that emulated a television--complete with live actors. This would have been fun and all, but you couldn't skip it after it got boring. I'm still furious at this game even now as I write this review while the credits are rolling. As I'm considering the problems the makers faced in producing a game they had to have known made no sense and was dull to play, I have to consider the problems of reviewing a blockbuster title like MGS4. One of the problems with an MGS4 review is critics are afraid to reveal plot elements others would consider spoilers (Konami seemed to be paranoid about this as well with their NDA). I ask: "Is it possible to spoil shit?" I suppose spoiled shit is something everyone wants to avoid, but I'm willing to risk it and spoil as much of the plot as necessary to dissuade you from this crap-shoot.

The original Metal Gear Solid is one of the best games ever made and should be the example title of the series which all other Metal Gears are compared with. By combining stealth, fast-paced action, and a plot that carries the game instead of tripping it, MGS landed a spot as one of my all-time personal favorites. Every one of those things is missing in this game, making it difficult to forgive and even more difficult to play.

The real problem with MGS4 starts right from the very beginning with that non-skippable tee-vee cutscene I mentioned earlier. Cutscenes strangle this game with pointless explanations to fill in the plot holes of earlier games. I'll use my shit metaphor again since all the plot holes are filled with the same substance--"nanomachines"--which could also just as easily be called "shit". As in, "you can't kill me as long as I have this shit running through my veins," or, "Liquid is going to take over the world using third generation shit," or even, "use this syringe to suppress the shit causing your seizures." Quite literally, the micro-robots central to this plot could be replaced with poop. Let's also not forget the confusing acronyms this game loves so dearly and frequently abuse in a love-hate relationship, or LHR for short.

I really want to do an in-depth plot analysis to pick apart the shittiness, but the game is frankly undeserving of it. So, I'll just gloss over the points that feel like pungee sticks jammed into my ear-holes. First, there is the little issue of Raiden being like the third or fourth cyborg ninja in this game series. Hideo Kojima has made a habit of taking the same game he made in 1998 and repackaging it over and over again. The same is certainly true for the plot, so I should not be surprised, but it makes me wonder if in the Metal Gear universe nobody buries any bodies since they tend to come back as cyborgs, clones, or simply for the hell of it like in the case of Big Boss making an appearance at the end just so he can drop dead again after hugging the same son who earlier burned him to death with hairspray and before that blew him up with a rocket launcher.

Some who read my opinions on this game might see me as a numskull for "not getting" why Kojima has made the same game over and over again and consider it brilliance to have so many traced parallels between the games, but I think the problem is those individuals are the ones who don't get it and should go play Megaman to appreciate the ultimate brilliance of making the same game over and over again about 20 times. At least they will have more fun playing Megaman than sitting and watching Snake and Otacon's little girl they re-kidnapped make eggs that Snake won't eat. All the Metal Gear games tend to have conflicting explanations about things like Big Boss's age, how many times he has died, etc. so it baffles me each time Kojima presents a long explanation about shit nobody cares about and wrests control of the game away from you so he can sleep comfortably at night knowing, "they finally know why I'm the Voice of God in my game." (Check the credits on that one if you don't believe me.)

There is also the issue of Drebin, a wholeheartedly unnecessary character if it weren't for the fact he had an armored car that popped up every time Kojima wrote himself into a corner that nanomachines couldn't get him out of. Drebin could have just as easily been replaced with the nameless merchant from Resident Evil 4 and not had to deliver lengthy codec conversations explaining why a bitch in a robot suit was crazy. All the characters are afflicted with giving lengthy explanations for questions nobody in the game even bothered to ask. By the time they are done speaking, I may have gotten a sandwich, shopped for some music off of Amazon, or skipped the cutscene entirely because I ran out of sandwich meat and/or money.

Let's not forget Meryl and Johnny, either. Remember the dude in MGS1 who Meryl beat up, stole his clothes, and then for the rest of his life he had crippling diarrhea? Well they got married right after Johnny confessed his love to her while they were shooting girl-ninjas armed with machineguns. There was a flashback of Johnny's censored asshole and him doing CPR on her. I watched the cutscene and couldn't believe anybody was taking this shit seriously. The whole scene felt awkward because I didn't know if it was supposed to be funny or if Kojima actually thought this was the best way for Meryl to get hitched. Either way the cutscene took easily 20 minutes and was glad it was over so I could get back to Snake being fisted in the ass by an army of three-armed robots (quite possibly the stupidest enemy in any Konami game ever).

I'm starting to rant a bit about characters, so I suppose it is time I drop the show stopper for this game nobody else seems to have picked up on. Snake is fantastically old and was told he had only a few months left to live, a theme which should be core to the game. His health and status deteriorate rapidly through the game and, for the first time, you can see just how badly Snake suffers during a mission. I felt highly sympathetic towards him through most of the game and my heart sank during a dumb little codec conversation where Otacon asked Snake for a number you were supposed to remember. Since I inhaled paint fumes out of boredom while playing this game I forgot it within a second of Otacon telling me the number and I had to watch Snake come to grips with not even being able to remember a simple 5-digit number for a few seconds. Another scene that felt very heavy was when Snake told a joke that fell flat during a mission briefing and having Meryl belittle him in a way that sounded like, "hush now grandpa, we need to figure out which rest home you're going to die in." There is also the scene where you have to button mash Snake's crusty old ass through a microwave oven so he can complete his mission to destroy a computer in a submarine.

I really felt for Snake and by the end had accepted that this was going to be his 'last mission' (at least in the front of my mind since in the back of my mind I had already watched the ending on YouTube the day after it came out). Snake was preparing to end his life since he was an old man with no legacy and now only a burden on the world. I worked hard for this moment so Snake could finally be at peace with himself. Then, in a move of surprise-cock-in-your-ass magnitude, Big Boss shows up and tells Snake not to kill himself and to instead live for a few more months and then die. It was especially disappointing since Big Boss usually only came back from the grave for a final boss fight, which the 80 or 90 year-old cock-block wouldn't even afford us. Perhaps that is the brighter side of things, but one long, dull cutscene at the end made all the rest of the heart-felt suffering in Snake's character irrelevant just the same way as when Rose went back to Raiden to raise their retard in a Donald Duck uniform because her marriage with Colonel was a lie.

It's like Kojima wrote the first 80% of the game and then a fan-fiction author finished the last 20% so all his dollies could live happily ever after. Perhaps you might think I'm too harsh as there are many other games with far worse plots. For a convenient, comparable example you could take your pick of the Resident Evil series and it will be written far worse than even this shit-fest, but I don't recall ever having to sit through a cutscene longer than a few minutes in any of the Resident Evils and the plot never took itself anymore seriously than it needed too thanks to cheesy dialog. I suppose dumb plot-devices and lengthy cutscenes could be forgiven if MGS4 actually had some fun gameplay, but Hideo Kojima was more interested in making a crappy movie than a game.

My list of complaints for the gameplay is short since there is relatively so little gameplay compared to the time spent sitting through cutscenes. The gameplay felt like Splinter Cell with more guns, far fewer shadows, and much stupider guards. The laughable AI in MGS2 is every bit as competent as the AI in MGS4, which is cruelly ironic since the ultimate villain in this game is actually an AI. There were no entertaining boss fights, sneaking just flat out doesn't work, and they also did away with the in-depth first-aid and camo system that made MGS3 so innovative. I just stopped sneaking at one point and had more fun walking around killing both sides of the PMC/rebel conflicts. Those conflicts were easily the most dull parts of the game since the rebels tended to ignore you and the PMCs would stop fighting their dumb little war to chase after you if they saw you. The first time a PMC saw me, stopped shooting at the rebels and then called for radio backup because, "the enemy is here," I though it had been a glitch. No, it seems to be just the way the ass-backwards AI works in this game, so I made it my mission to kill everything the AI controls in this game and really stopped giving a shit about Metal Gears and nano-machines.

There were a few exceptions to this rule of shit gameplay, but not many. The Metal Gear Ray vs. Metal Gear Rex battle was almost fun but so isolated from the rest of the game it felt like something out of Wario Ware, which is dreadfully disappointing since the game is called "Metal Gear Solid 4," and I anticipated an epic Metal Gear battle at the end like I had been treated to in all but the original Metal Gear for the NES, but instead quickly killed off Ray and then went right on not giving a shit about the patriots or my dead brother's arm who had possessed a Russian cowboy. The final showdown with Liquid had a similar vibe except I realized I had done that same boss fight ten years ago in the original MGS. And then there was the flash-back to Shadow Moses where snake was young and the graphics were polygonal, I was actually having fun until I realized I could have turned off MGS4, went to a game store, bought MGS1 and played that instead and had a lot more fun. The free camera and array of practically indistinguishable weapons made MGS4 feel painfully dull compared with the snappy and simple gameplay of the original MGS. In MGS4, after you get a shotgun you've pretty much won the game as I killed practically all the bosses using one. In fact, the biggest challenge I faced in the game was making Snake do what I wanted him to. The controls were confusing and felt like standard FPS controls pulled through the eye of a needle--if that makes sense. There were so many occasions where I saw an easy kill but it was already too late to make the kill when I finally got Snake pointed in the right direction with the sights up. Other than that inconvenience I had absolutely no fear of the game winning. You can get hit a bazillion times and stay standing so long as you had your rations equipped and not one of the enemies posed that great of a threat. The Gekko were simple to take down and the Frogs more annoying than anything else. In fact, on my first run through I only had to continue 7 times and at least two of those were because I fell off one ledge or another during a crappy camera angle.

Considering the way games like Resident Evil 4 forever changed third-person shooters, MGS4 made only vague attempts to learn from that game since none of the enemies were terribly interesting in MGS4, which is also the best way to describe MGS4: "Not terribly interesting." This could be called a game for fans, but I consider myself a big fan of Metal Gear and I think this game is precisely shit. I know there are a lot of fans who adore this game and consider it the best out of the series, so good for them, but if you're the kind of person who buys a game to play it, enjoy it, and not to use as reference material for your compendium of Metal Gear trivia, then stay the fuck away from this shit.

Why MySims Might be the Most Important Game for the Wii for 2007

MySims is fun. That's the best way to summarize this game, you can spend hours just fucking around and having a blast while doing it. It isn't at all like the rest of the Sims series where you spend hours cleaning your virtual house (yawn). Somehow, building houses for your incredibly friendly and adorable neighbors made this game from the Sims series fun. I also like how they completely side-step the annoying economy of the other Sims games and approach this as a sort of utopian post-scarcity situation, if you're willing to put that much depth into a game where blowing bubbles with your neighbors is critical. If you want a full review, I don't think there is a better review than the one by Games Radar found here. This review has some different observations no other reviewer has covered as of yet.

Like I said, the game is adorable, cute and fun for a broad audience--not your Game Spy variety of gamers who spend most of their time raiding or in clan battles. This is a game for any demographic that just carries itself marvelously on the Wii.

So, why does everybody think it's only mediocre? Look at MetaCritic, they gave it a 71. Basically a C- when you figure it that way; just average-Joe video game. Granted, MetaCritic is usually hard on games since there is such a wide-variety of places they get reviews from, and most game sites cater to the expectations of the hard core gaming crowd that gets bored with Nintendo's usual fare.

But... that's not what is shocking. This review is what threw me out of my chair:

My final analysis is this: if you love creating things and have lots of patience, MySims is worth a look, but if you're hoping for a cute virtual neighborhood to inhabit, "Animal Crossing: Wild World" is a better place to settle. [Nov 2007, p.100]

That excerpt is from Nintendo Power. That's right, Nintendo's propaganda mill that shits out positive reviews of otherwise cruddy games and gives over the top reviews for games that are good, but not orgasmic (i.e. Metroid Prime: Corruptions).

This normally wouldn't add up, but the last sentence says it all. Nintendo's in-house Sim game, Animal Crossing, is their recommended alternative. Frankly, after playing Animal Crossing and Harvest Moon, I thought they were acceptable time wasters, but the Sims makes me laugh when I spend time playing it. Note the fact I am spending not wasting time.

What's this mean? That is what I don't fully understand. But I think that Nintendo has not been as accommodating to third-party developers as they could have been. Call of Duty 3, Splinter Cell 4, Alien Syndrome; these were all marvelous games on other consoles but are absolute crap on the Wii. Meanwhile, Zelda, Metroid and Super Paper Mario were all very good and also scored almost perfectly in Nintendo Power, as one should predict.

Another example of this is Nintendo made sure they had the first online games for their console, to get their hands on a captive market of Wii owners wanting to play online. So far, the only online title in the works from a third-party is Medal of Honor while Nintendo has already released many and plans to release many more.

MySims is the first third-party title that has surpassed anything Nintendo has in that genre and is simply marvelous. It is so awesome that it could easily be the biggest Nintendo game of the holiday season, and I have a feeling that is a big problem for Nintendo. Now that everybody and their dog wants a Wii, they seem to be trying to own the market for themselves to increase sale of in-house development.

If this is the case, Nintendo has already lost the console war. This new console war is not about over-the-top productions like Gears of War or Metal Gear Solid 4--those games will be in the twenty-dollar bin after a while. No, it is independent developers that will carry the systems this time around. Xbox Arcade is building in popularity and there are some awesome games going up. Microsoft knows this and has no problem with it, which will make the 360 a success. Nintendo and Sony are playing the market the way they did in the nineties.

I'm really sad that Nintendo isn't seeing the potential for Indy developers. Their SDKs are being offered up dirt cheap and they have a competent digital delivery system based off of Opera. Everything is there to let indy games and third-party, bigger developers like EA, Ubisoft and many others take off on the system, but Nintendo is just being a bastard about this whole thing.

I really hope Nintendo does a 180 after the holiday season.

I got to play with Apple's new Keyboard/iMac

I am, no doubt, a bit of an Apple whore. My workplace uses Apples, I've got an iBook for when Linux pisses me off and I downright like the aesthetics and attention to detail Apple has placed into products. I'm such a fan of Apple products, I actually enjoy using a Mighty Mouse (GASP!). That's why I was delighted that my office at work had two Mac Pros and two of the new iMacs for me to play with earlier this week. I ripped open the boxes and got to work on these machines that were previously in the realm of "yeah right, maybe in a couple of *years*."

Since there are so many reviews of the Mac Pro out there, I'll keep it short. If you love tinkering on hardware, the Mac Pro offers expandability out the wazoo. You'll have a good time if you like your computer like a muscle car; huge, heavy, metal, powerful, impractical, and fun to work on.

As for the new iMacs? Whole different animal. Like their older, glossy white sisters, these beasts are darn near impossible to work on short of adding more RAM to the already crammed ram-bin (couldn't think of a better way to describe where the RAM is stored). So, that already hurts these computers in my book. Also, the aesthetics are not up to snuff, if you ask me. The best feature of the iMac, externally, is the glossy screen. I even adjusted to the black trim around the display that I hated initially. Even though the screen isn't LED back lit, it is still gorgeous. Other than that, the new iMac looks like a freaking iPod on the outside. The cheesy black plastic on the back made me frown and the aluminum has a lot of sharp corners. The new iMac is definitely a lot more aggressive, much less friendly looking computer, especially considering the first two iMacs were downright cute. So, in terms of aesthetics, the new iMac doesn't cut it for me. I like my Apples to be cute and my PC's surly and ornery.

Well, now that I have picked on the outside, I'll tell you about the inside. There is a much heavier duty ATI card in this machine than on previous iMacs, so Quartz operates like a million bucks compared to the Intel GMA 950 chipset iMacs that I am used to. Another nice feature is the iSight camera is much cleaner and has a higher frame rate than the one on my older iMac. I have to wonder if this isn't because my older iMac was the cheapest model from that generation. Nonetheless, even though it has some nice new internal hardware, you're paying for the same shit in a different case. So, if the new iMac body style and glossy screens don't do it for you, look at some third-party retailers to see if you can pick up a previous generation iMac for cheaper. Especially since this bugger only came with Tiger and the new version of iLife... that's right, no Leopard, just Tiger.

Lastly, the new keyboard has been a hot button for a lot of Apple geeks (get it? Hot button? I am so clever.). I spent a couple of hours typing on it and found that while it was reasonably comfortable to type on, it had enough problems that I decided to revert to my Apple Pro keyboard. For instance, this new keyboard is INCREDIBLY low. It sits so close to the desk that you should forget a wrist rest. The low profile made it difficult for me to type. Another issue is the buttons are all flat and the same level, exactly like the keys on a Mac Book. This really stinks for touch typing and I found I was fat fingering keys all the time. The buttons are so nondescript when touching them, even compared to my relatively flat Sony Vaio. Also, the distance your fingers travel when depressing a key is really short. I heard many people complain that Mac Books were really uncomfortable to type on because of this, especially if you hammer keys like I do.

However, the new keyboard does have it's merits. For one, the two USB ports are USB 2.0 and provide power! So, hooking up a flash drive works perfectly with the new keyboard. So long as your flash drive isn't too fat and ends up lifting your keyboard up on that side. Also, the keyboard his highly responsive thanks to it being USB 2.0 and Apple having some solid drivers to go with it. Another neat hack that Apple did with the keyboard is that the media keys are tied directly to iTunes. So, you can change tracks without actually having to call iTunes up! Lastly, there is also the fact that because all of the keys on the keyboard are covered, you're very unlikely to get shit stuck between the keys like on the Pro keyboards. You could practically use the keyboard to hold up your PB&J sandwich and not have crums fall to a translucent bottom for the world to see. So, Apple earned points for finally fixing that flaw with their keyboards.

While the new iMac wasn't a disappointment, just the same iMacs from before repackaged with a couple of updates, the keyboard was the biggest disappointment for me. Apple had a VERY aesthetically pleasing product with their new keyboard and a lot of technology in the little sucker but it failed to deliver due to ergonomics. I realize I am very demanding of the keyboards I use, and I doubt I will ever like a keyboard until I get my hands on a Model M, but Apple is really slipping, especially in comparison to Logitech and Microsoft who are producing just awesome keyboards now. I really hope Apple keeps producing the Apple Pro Keyboard, or I'm going to have to switch to Logitech in the future.

Final word? Buy the last revision of iMac if you are still in the market for one. That, or wait for the next revision, something you should do with most Apple products anyway.

Resident Evil 4 for the Wii, a terse review

Resident Evil 4 may very well have been the best action/adventure game available for the Game Cube. It has some of the best graphics for the system, an OK story, and the gameplay is second to none. That's why I was so excited for RE4 for the Wii.

The basic idea is the same. They took the Game Cube version and updated it for the Wii. They also added a few extras from the PS2 version (Seperate Ways, a side-mission after you beat the game) and included a small amount of exclusive content like Leon's "gangster outfit". That said, that's not what this iteration of RE4 is about, it's about the controls.

The controls of RE4 Wii-edition are far better than the controls of any other action game on the Wii. So freaking good I could not put the game down and it is the primary reason I have not been posting as much to the blog lately. VS stopped posting in protest (or out of laziness), so you will have to excuse us. At least my excuse stems from having arguably the perfection of Resident Evil 4 in my TV room.

The controls are pretty much the same for movement and most everything else (button placement is of course a bit different), the only tweak is the aiming, knife-system and reloading. To reload, hold down the button to ready your weapon and shake your Wiimote up and down to get your Leon to reload. Shaking the Wiimote side-to-side results in Leon slashing with his knife. It makes it a lot more fun than simply hammering the A button with the left trigger pulled down like on the Cube. However, the real excitement is with aiming.

You have a cursor on your screen that you control with the Wiimote like a pointer. You point at an enemy with your Wiimote, prepare your weapon, and start shooting. While this may not seem like anything special, it adds tremendous depth to the game and it is way beyond a rail-shooter in terms of complexity. I am getting head-shots or knee-shots whenever I want and it makes the game much more exciting when you don't have to depend on freakishly huge guns to get through the game. It especially makes the game more fun when playing the Mercenaries. I am getting crazy scores playing the Mercenaries on the Wii. With Krauser, I got over 100,000 on all the levels with my first try! So if you enjoy the Mercenaries "game-within-a-game" on the original versions, I strongly recommend at least trying out the Wii-version, it is far more exciting.

Complaints? Of course. Not every gun is Wii-enabled. The rifles and RPG do not work with the Wiimote, you must use the analog stick. This is a gross disappointment as the rifle is necessary at certain parts of the game. I usually relied on the Red-9 pistol to get me through the game, so switching from a very entertaining gun to a rather boring gun to get the business done was quite lame.

Another problem is the game has not been remastered visually. It's the same exact graphics we saw on the Cube. Granted, the graphics were gorgeous for the time, but they put no effort into remastering the graphics for the Wii. I suspect this was a cost-cutting measure to keep the game as cheap as it is.

Also, the game may be too easy. I have not yet tried a fresh game on professional mode, but I got through normal mode in no time at all and got a 5-star rating on every Mercenaries mission inside a few days (normally a VERY difficult task on other systems, it took me over a month of on-and-off play on the Cube to accomplish this). I suspect professional mode can't be so difficult it stops the steam roller that is the Wiimote.

Bearing in mind that the game is by no means worse than any previous version and typically a vast improvement in game play, it gives us a high quality game that should be bought whether you never played Resident Evil before or are a big fan of RE4 and the other Resident Evils. You will not be disappointed with the fantastic game play and the depths which Capcom goes to ensure replayability with side-missions and unlockable content.