I picked up Resident Evil 4 on Friday. Was able to spend a bit of time playing it this weekend as well as playing it over at my brother’s house where we switched off upon dying (which was often).

First I have to say this is one of the best action games I’ve ever played. I put a little bit of time into the original Gamecube version, but for someone who hates dual analog controls this version is like a godsend. The aiming controls add so much to the game without making it easy. I guess the best way to explain it is that the previous control feel almost, unnecessarily difficult. Like they didn’t add real difficulty to the game but just made it more annoying to play (even though it wasn’t). Now aiming and shooting is almost a reflex. You just aim the cross hairs where you want to shoot and shoot.

And that brings me to my second point today. As developers continue to improve the core basics for controls on Wii games, it is actually going to suck worse and worse to use dual analog controls in certain control schemes. I’ve always hated dual analog FPS titles, and Wii shows that you CAN do them on a console without a mouse and keyboard. Anything either requiring aiming or using a pointer will pretty much be crap on other consoles. It’s the difference between dragging your control to where you want it to be, or fluidly pointing with ease and reflex.

The best part of this whole thing though was I only paid $11.32 for the game. The retail is an unbelievable $29.99 (well worth the price). On top of that Circuit City had a promotion a few weeks back that if they didn’t have Mario Party 8 in stock after 2pm on launch day, you got a free $20 gift card. You’d think with that kind of a promotion you’d go to the store and see a mountain of games. Nope. Not a single one so I waited in line for my free $20.

This game deserves special mention, just because it happens to be the first game I’ve taken the time to play in the past 3 months of working on www.badgercomics.com.

The game is called Cooking Mama and it is only available for the Nintendo DS handheld game system. As the name implies, you cook. You cook potato salad, miso soup, fried chicken, boiled rice, rice patties… actually 76 total items. You accomplish the preparation and cooking using the stylus and the touch screen. Slice across the screen for cutting, tap on it for chopping, stir, blow into the microphone to cool things down, etc. Scoring on the game comes down to how fast you can perform the task correctly. For the entire item you are given a score of 1-100.

What makes the game fun is that you actually feel like you are cooking. You are cutting vegetables, mixing ingredients, setting the stove, and all of the other tasks you perform while cooking. So it is diversionary fluff just meant to entertain, but yet gives you a sense of accomplishment while playing. I don’t see the game holding my interest after mastering all 76 itmes you can prepare, but at only a mere $20 (and that is NEW) I am certainly not going to worry that the game won’t have a ton of replay value.

On a related note, the Nintendo Wii has also been announced for release. The system is coming out to America on November 19th at a price of $250. This price is higher than what many people were hearing (some places saying as low as $169), however it must be pointed out that the system pack includes a game (Wii Sports), as well as an excellent value as a systme (view pictures, instant message, and surf the web all with that outstanding wii remote). I preordered mine at Amazon, but they actually sold out of pre-orders in less than an hour. Nintendo plans on shipping 4 million units worldwide by the end of the year, and even taking into account that probably won’t be enough units, it should mean that youshould still be able to find one with hopefully only a little looking around.

Anyway, Cooking Mama. If you have a DS, buy it. If not, you really have to ask yourself why you don’t have a DS. It’s the video game system for people who aren’t interested in playing video games.