At last weeks E3, I was able to spend some time playing the new Wii version of Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles . Ever since the original Nintendo console launched way back in the day with Duck Hunt as one of the coolest games the light gun has been a big part of console gaming for me.

The gun has been missing from the next gen consoles, but Capcom is bringing back the light gun for Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles on the Wii. We can call it a light gun anyway, but in reality, it’s simply a plastic holder that you place your Wii remote into along with a nunchuck.

Then what you have is a light gun with some movement controls, I say some movement controls because on the version I played at E3 most of the movement was scripted and the nunchuck was used to shake the zombies off if you were unable to drop them with the gun before they got close to you.

Accuracy was as good as you could expect from the Wii remote which is to say I had to hold the gun at odd angles sometimes that didn’t feel like I was aiming at the right place on screen. The holder put a trigger right where you would expect one to be and it activated the trigger on the bottom of the Wii mote when you pressed it, thereby firing the gun.

A big red crosshair follows wherever you point the Wii gun and once I got used to holding it at the angle the sensor bar need for good tracking, the Wii gun was very accurate. It was great to shoot the zombies and I found there was enough accuracy to hit not only dead center on the zombie hoards, but you could pick head shots, groin shots or arm shots if you so desired. Reloading your on screen weapon was accomplished by flicking the light gun up, which sometimes took a few tries to get reload to activate for me.

Overall, Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles was a good game with graphics better than most Wii titles. The game play was certainly fun and it’s great to see a light gun back on a Nintendo console, even if it is just a fancy holder for the Wii remote and nunchuck. I think fans of the Resident Evil series will really like the Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles, I know I did.