Evil, oh yes you are.

I had always looked at the Resdident Evil games and passed them by because I thought they would be to intense for my kids. Well, my 12 year old finally talked me into getting this game for him and his brothers. If this game is anything like the others, I might be buying a few more.

With FSP (First Person Shooters) becoming more and more popular, I expected this game to be a lot of fun to play. Right off the bat I was frustrated because it is a rail shooter. That means you cannot freely move through the game and go where you feel like going. It made this game feel like the old House of the Dead games on the Dreamcast system. Being spoiled with games like Halo and Medal of Honour, I found this game very frustrating. The Nunchuck allows you to scan around the area for things or targets, but you cannot change your movements.

The other thing that seemed to bother me is that the game seems better suited for a widescreen formatted TV. I have my Wii on a 4:3 screen and a 16:9 screen would seem to fit it better. Several times during gameplay a zombie or character would be partially visible and hard to kill.

The gameplay is great and the graphics are well done. I've watched the movies and they reminded me of every aspect of the game. During gameplay, you and a partner if you have one, play as members of the STARS unit. A special force that I guess is trained for these types of catastrophies. The first level is Rebecca and a escaped prisoner who used to be on the force. His name escapes me. The second level you play as Chris and Jill. Then the third level has Carlos and Jill again. As you work your way through each level with 3 tasks, you open up a single player story of one of the guys from the Umbrella group that is kind of a rougue. He is against Umbrella and the Stars forces. These extra boards can only be played in single player and are harder than the co-op boards. I liked the story line, but we played on "Easy" and have been stuck on one board that we just cannot seem to get through. I could not imagine playing on the other two levels "Normal and Hard".

You can virtually shoot and destroy anything in the game. Some items if hit reveal hidden items such as weapons or herbs. Some of the levels even hide the crytsal looking thing that gives you a second life. I enjoyed shooting down light fixtures and paintings. Dogs, bats, zombies, and mutated creatures all come at you trying to get you and you have to mow them down. The game was suprisingly blood free and if the other games are like that, I might buy them. I would have to know if they are not a rail shooter though.

Once you complete levels, you earn points. The higher your ranking, the higher the points. You can use them to upgrade your weapons and make them more deadly. You also earn other weapons during gameplay and you can revisit old board with the new weapons and get through them easier for a higher rating. I assume this was put in to get replay value out of the game and allow you to play it on the harder levels.

The Wii controller is used well, allowing for a button push or a wave of the controller or nunchuck to reload and dodge attacks. A neat feature is the counter melee attack. If a zombie gets his or her hands on you, you can shake the Wii remote to fight them off. Some of the characters have some pretty cool looking moves to push a zombie away and finish it off.

Grenades, rocket launchers, shotguns, handguns, and machine guns are frequent on the "Easy" level, so if you run out of ammo, you usually have a chance to reload it or pick up a different weapon. Your handgun has infinite bullets, so you always have something to fight with.

The game is quite long, we put in about 8 hours in co-op and have not reached its end. Of course we are stuck on one board, so 6 hours is about how much we have played and I believe we have unlocked all the levels.

The good thing about this game is that it has good replay value, but would have been awesome and a definate keeper if it was not a rail shooter.