Truth Stretching Wednesday, April 4, 2007 : 9:00 PM By: Chris

We got a bit of news today about Resident Evil's presence on Wii - mainly that a port of RE4 will appear followed by the shooter RE:Umbrella Chronicles. Why did Capcom do this? It's like they took a good concept - that we should revisit the past games using the RE4 engine - and divided it into crappier ideas that totally dilute the awesomeness that could have been. RE4 is a great game and maybe there's something to gain with the addition of Wii-specific controls but it's a game so many of us have played many times over. Then we have Umbrella Chronicles, a reunion with environments of the past games (where graphical revamps of RE2 and RE3 locales should be fun to see) but now in the context of a shooter - a genre not particularly known for its gameplay depth, and a genre that RE has dabbled in several times with unsatisfactory results. Why? Why do this? Just take environments from the old games and let us play in them RE4-style. Sure it's not a creative leap forward, but I'm convinced it's something that people are interested in and would buy in heaps. Why does RE5 need to have a monopoly on the new gameplay mechanics?

Switching gears, I have no idea how old or new this is or whether everyone has already seen it or not but I found it to be a fun little game. It's a Flash game sponsored by Nintendo called Chick Chick Boom. It's kind of like a simplified Worms that has had it's turn-based battle system excised.