Control. That's what so many of the shooters rushing to take advantage of Wii's tools lack, and what Far Cry Vengeance appears to nail. You notice it as soon as you start moving the remote to shift your character's point of view. The camera responds immediately and with just the right amount of sensitivity. It only requires a few more minutes to master strafing with the Nunchuk's analog stick while simultaneously looking around with the remote.
Targeting enemies is also much easier than in certain other Wii shooters we've experienced. The reticule isn't allowed to slip all over the screen in search of bad guys; it stays relatively locked in the centre (if you want it completely locked, all you have to do is hold down the A button). And rather than moving the cursor all the way to the edges of the screen to get it to pan or tilt your view, simply moving the remote in the desired direction does the trick. The former method feels like navigating through a sluggish PowerPoint slideshow - Far Cry Vengeance's approach feels much closer to controlling a lithe and lethal action hero.
Above: Blue skies filled with wheeling gulls are still a rare sight in shooters, so Vengeance earns itself some points there
But enough about just lining up holidaying mercenaries in your crosshairs... what about actually killing them? You've got a satisfying variety of options in that regard, and while none of them are new to the series, they sure seem fresh when you're performing them with the Wii controls.
Fire your virtual gun by actually pointing a tangible object at the screen and squeezing a physical trigger. Pull out a secondary arm cannon and you can begin pumping dual streams of bullets into the steamy jungle air with the additional trigger located on your Nunchuk.
Grab a grenade and then pretend the Nunchuk is that grenade by using a real-life throwing motion to lob it in the game's world. Push the remote away from your body to zoom in with a sniper rifle's scope. Or slash it horizontally through the space of your living room to slice right through a digitized thug's face. All of these techniques, plus what Feral powers we saw in our demo, work smoothly and intuitively.
