Oh no! More zombies!...

I've never really been a big fan of the Resident Evil franchise. Aside from the comedy voice acting and Thunderbirds-like character animation of the first installment I've found it hard to work up much excitement over the brand's plodding "action" and non-existant chill factor. I'd much rather play the genuinely unsettling Silent Hill games any old day of the week, and failing that stick to something a bit more action oriented.

Imagine my surprise then when I first picked up Resident Evil 4 some time last year on the PS2. What's this? It's actually quite atmospheric. Hang on, where are the shitty "put cat's eye jewel in scarecrow's arse socket" puzzles? And hold up; what's with all this weapons upgrading? Clearly someone at Capcom had been eavesdropping on my conversations with Res Evil fanboys, because they had pretty much addressed all of my complaints, in the process creating what is now acknowledged as one of the finest games of recent memory. See, they should have listened to me in the first place.

Res Evil 4 has you take control of Leon Kennedy, returning from the second game and now, some four years after the "events of Racoon City" as they are constantly refered to, assigned to the Secret Service on Presidential guard duties. Although inexplicably he seems to be allowed to keep wearing his natty leather jacket, combats and thigh holster combination. But that's by the by. In a startlingly original plot twist the President's daughter Ashley has gone missing while on a visit to something resembling rural Spain circa 1920. I say "rural Spain" although I don't think it's mentioned as such anywhere in the plotline. The fact that everyone is living in the woods, speaking Spanish and chucking pitchforks at your face would at least indicate I'm half right, and no other explanation is given so what the hell.

Unlike other installments in the franchise this is an over-the-shoulder third person perspective affair, much like the Hitman series, and like those games this time around Capcom have decided to go heavy on the action, less so on the wildly misplaced puzzles. Presumably the penny finally dropped that not every house / police station / mansion has a series of hidden rooms accessible only by the coupling of random exotic jewels with eye sockets of antique staues. What puzzles may come consist of only mildly taxing variants on spatial awareness and sliding block themes, and they are much fewer and further between. No sir, the emphasis here is most definitely on firepower and the subsequent taking apart of many an undead cranium.

I could bemoan the fact that the Wii Edition has no extra content over and above the PS2 version's bonus missions and side games, which are themselves pretty good value in that they each take a good few hours to play through. What it does have, though, is a dual controller system where the nunchuck is used to move Leon around, toggle sprinting and ready his knife when necessary, and the remote is used like a light gun to control an on-screen aiming reticle. Drawing your weapon is as simple as pressing the "B" button, whereupon Leon will halt, take aim and, when you so decide to press "A", unleash hot lead against the undead hordes. While this new and startlingly intuitive system is not quite as game-changing as some critics might suggest, it does make the title warrant another play through, and while in some circumstances it makes the combat a tad easier it can also prove more tricky in some of the boss battles, altering gameplay that little bit further.

While Res Evil 4 is never going to make me change my mind about other entries in the series, it is undeniably a genius piece of software that is as accessible as any non-franchise title to those who may not have been tempted into the game world before. It's not a revolution by any means, but represents pretty much the pinnacle of this particular game mechanic and as such offers an almost impossibly high benchmark to future contenders. As the definitive version of the game, the Wii Edition is an absolute must for owners of Nintendo's newest box o' fun, and while the graphics may now no longer be next gen the experience itself is still as intense as you will find anywhere in Pixel Land.