Wii Says Oui to M

After being released on the GameCube and PlayStation 2 a few years ago, Resident Evil 4 is attempting to stumble, blank-eyed and moaning, back into your living room. It's a game that we've already reviewed and described using such phrases as "drips with gore" and "thrives on bloodlust." So why are we revisiting that messy subject? Because it's now being offered up on the Wii.

Yep, that Wii. The new game console that's selling like hotcakes. The often called "family friendly" gaming platform that has been spearheading a new gaming movement of get-off-the-couch-and-swing-your-virtual-tennis-racket kind of gaming. The same Wii that has been praised for its abundance of E-rated software. Well, the folks at Nintendo must have wanted the "hard-core" gamers to feel the love, so they decided to reshape and re-release some "classic" gore.

Once Again, Only...
Gamers play as Leon Kennedy, a special government agent who's been given the job of infiltrating a mysterious cult and rescuing the U.S. president's kidnapped daughter. He starts out by searching around an eerie farming community filled with, among other things, hooded, chanting cult members. His progress is hindered by the fact that the region's occupants have been infected with leech-like bugs that turn them into lumbering almost-zombies. And they all want him dead.

Leon runs and battles his way through abandoned farmhouses, creepy churches, dank caves and decaying science labs in pursuit of clues that will eventually lead him to the young, frightened girl. Along the way, the hero himself is injected with the larva of the zombie bugs, which helps drive the game's roller-coaster storyline as he tries to find a cure and faces off with creatures that get progressively more bizarre and powerful. (For example, in one boss battle, a brawny eight-foot-tall man bursts free of his skin, his gore-dripping backbone telescoping up as he transforms into a gigantic insectile creature that's all waving tentacles, vicious claws and gnashing teeth.)

...This Time, Put Your Back Into It
And while this coagulated action is pretty much the same as earlier versions of the game, the wireless, movement-sensitive Wii Remote and Nunchuk controls breathe new, um, life into dealing out death. Taking aim with your arsenal of pistols, shotguns, rifles and sub-machine guns is made very intuitive and feels much more deliberate and gun-like than the old-model standard controllers. Reloading, making quick jumps and wielding your knife are all done with a movement of the controller rather then a series of buttons. All of which makes gamers more actively involved in obliterating heads and slicing flesh. One battle has gamers shooting at a gigantic ogre, running and leaping up on its shoulders, drawing a knife and hacking mercilessly at a scabrous growth sprouting out of the monster's back—all with the pulling of one trigger and repeated swinging and slashing movements of the controller.

Although gorge-tipping carnage in video games has continued to intensify over the last few years, Resident holds its own with the "best" of them and still has players ducking from the blood spatter. Chain saw-wielding peasants, for instance, are quick to lop off your head and leave you with a spouting neck stub if you let them get too close. Pitchfork-skewered heads, back-embedded axes and grenade dismemberments are frequent. Top it all off with foul language (including uses of the s-word, "d--n," "h---," "a--," "b--ch" and "b--tard") and some sexualized clothing and you've got a full-fledged M-rated game.

Rated M (For Muscles?)
OK. Should we really be complaining this loudly that Wii has added Resident Evil 4 to its gaming choices? PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 have scads of soul-crushing M's. And it's not like the Wii has a spotless track record so far, either. Mortal Kombat and Far Cry Vengeance are already Wii games.

But Wii has uniquely positioned itself as the gaming platform for the rest of us, as it were. For families ... and even fitness centers. As we were getting ready to publish this story, we ran across the news that a Vancouver health club has installed a Wii Workout Station that utilizes the console's active controller to help members burn calories while bowling, boxing or playing tennis.

Since many have gotten it into thier heads that the Wii is somehow safer and more fun than Sony's or Microsoft's hardware, it might be wise to look at this latest M-rated addition as a reminder not to put too much faith in the sales copy. It might not be as ominous as a warning shot. But since blood flow often equals cash flow, we can't duck and ignore it, either.