This morning I managed to luck out and was one of the first in line at E3 2006 to try out perhaps the most talked about game controller in years: The Nintendo Wii Remote. While it's still too early to reach a final verdict, I do think the controller is everything it has been advertised to be but both Nintendo and third party publishers and developers are mixed with coming up with games that really use the controller to its fullest extent.

The big game I wanted to try out this morning with the Wii controller is Metroid Prime 3: Contagion. The original Metroid Prime from Retro Studio is still one of my favorite console games of all time and one of the few non-PC first person action games I would recommend. While the game itself looks only slightly better than the first two games in the series, Retro has clearly gotton on board with the Wii controller, allowing it to do things that no other first person shooter game has ever done. Yes, you can use your hand movements to shoot and aim at the bad guys, but Metroid Prime 3 also has puzzles that have to be solved via hand movements as well. For example sometimes you have to remove a barrier before you can move on so you use the lock-on button on the Wii controller to fire a grapple and then you use the hand movements on the nunchuck device in your left hand to litteraly pull the object out of your way. Switching to Samus's ball form is easy as well and easy to move around with the Wii controller. We predict that Metroid Prime 3 will the the premiere game to use this controller, even after only a brief period of playing.

The same cannot be said of Red Steel, the UbiSoft Wii first person shooter exclusive. While you can use the controller to move your hand and shoot at enemies and also engage in swordplay, the game itself looks, well, old fashioned. The graphics look like the state of the art..five years ago that is. While the sword fighting is an interesting switch it quickly becomes repetative as well. Overall we were surprisingly not impressed with the E3 demo of Red Steel and we hope that the developers of the game take a little more time to make the game both look better and make it better use the Wii. Nintendo also had another hardcore action game on display called Project HAMMER but the demo basically had you swing a large hammer against enemies that look like 19th century diving helment suits. There wasn't a lot there at all.

We still think that Nintendo is on the right track with the Wii and its controller but again it all depends on the game and how it uses the console's features. One thing that Nintendo did show was a couple of other add-ons for the main Wii controller. One put the controller inside a shell that looks like a pistol. Another attachement looked like an old fashioned Super Nintendo controller for use in playing games for the Wii's Virtual Console service. Speaking of which, we actually played the Virtual Console version of the first Sonic The Hedgehog game with that attachment. The port looks exactly like the original which is in a way a bad thing since ports for older games for Microsoft's Xbox Live Arcade have some updated graphical looks. Nintendo was still being tight lipped about how the Virtual Console will work when we asked about it.

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