Nintendo Wii (or Wü?) Wannabe Zapper Light Gun Review

I don’t know about any of you, but I intend on picking up the Nintendo Zapper- the plastic shell-cum-light gun cradle thingy that holds your Wiimote and nunchuk Tommy-Gun style - when its released later this month, even if only for the freebie Zelda-themed Crossbow shooting game that’s packaged with it. I was kinda iffy about it (I loved - and miss - the original design from E3 2006) until they surprised me with that announcement, and the prospect of shootin’ up some zombies and other blastables via Link and his crossbow sealed the deal for me. Ghost Squad from SEGA looks pretty damn good too, as does MOH2’s nice bonus old-school arcade mode, not to mention I’ll most likely end up owning RE: Umbrella Chronicles too, as I’m a sucker for that series in general. Sure I could (and likely will) play all these games without the extra moulded plastic hardware, but part of me feels that, hopefully, these games have been designed with the zappers’ unique layout in mind, and may actually play a little better, or be a little bit more fun, with the zapper as opposed to without. Probably not, but I intend on finding out when it’s finally released, as I’ve been a Light Gun gaming fan for years, and would love to see it replicated with the Wii Remote, as it seems a rather natural fit.

Imagine my delight then, when the other day upon finally waking up (I work graveyard shifts and sleep the days that I work, see), I find that a friend of mine had stopped by and dropped off a little gift for me, and it was a light gun cradle for the Wiimote. Here’s a couple pictures of the package it came in:

I got a chuckle from the classic engrish on the packaging, and their interesting take on the spelling of “Wii” (how the hell are you supposed to pronounce that?), but quickly got down to the business of tearing into it and trying it out. There is an input for the nunchuk on the bottom of the butt of the gun, which according to the packaging must be connected before the remote, not too sure why though, but whatever, it’s a good spot for it, and so far I was pleased. But then I was to soon learn something that would simultaneously become both one of the biggest knocks against this knock-off, and my biggest, newest concern about the official zapper itself: the Wiimote doesn’t fit inside the cradle if you’re using the blessed Nyko rechargeable battery paks. That is a huge, huge strike against it, and something that hadn’t actually even crossed my mind about Ninty’s offering until now.

Luckily I have a third Remote that came with Wii Play, that I still use batteries for (the Nyko charger only comes w/two paks.), I slid it in and it fit like a glove. I fired up the aforementioned game and went immediately to the shooting gallery game, which I thought would be a perfect fit. The gun itself adds a little (but not too much) weight to the remote, and it feels pretty good overall. Feels solid and generally well-built for what it is. Upon playing the game I discovered the biggest complaint against this product; the frustratingly-way-too-damn-slow unresponsive trigger. Seriously, the ‘targets’ and ‘alien’ levels were infuriating, and I was having really no fun using this gun with this game, as the trigger mechanism is just too slow. After a couple more rounds, and right-pissed off at this frickin’ gun, I tried a couple more rounds w/just the remote itself and more than doubled my previous sad, low scores when it was docked. “Why does this suck so much?”, I thought, and investigated the trigger mechanism. There’s a bit of plastic that moves back when you pull the trigger, and it in turn presses the B button on the Wiimote. Eventually. This is what it looks like:



What you can‘t see in these pictures, is that the time it takes for the trigger to move all the way back to its starting position, and back to finally press the B trigger is woefully inadequate for quality gaming, but I still thought I could make it work, so I gave it another go. I tried playing by keeping my finger pressed on the trigger, and not letting it recoil all the way, so I could keep the mechanism relatively close to the trigger at all times, resulting in, hopefully, quicker shots. While this did kinda work to some small extent, it is not in any way preferable to playing sans-gun, as you never quite keep your finger in that small ‘sweet spot’ the trigger needs to fire off successive rounds, and kinda makes playing it, you know, not fun. This gun was making my finger cramp up already, and I’d only been playing for about 10 minutes or less.

So, it kinda sucks with Wii Play, would it work with something else? Well, possibly I guess, but not with any of the most-likely games I have and tried. You can forget about using this with either Metroid Prime 3, Red Steel, Call of Duty 3, Transformers, or The Godfather, that’s for sure, as you simply need to use more buttons on the Wiimote than just the B button, which is pretty much all you have access to with this set-up. I went through that frustration for you already with each game, and no fun was had doing so. Don’t even think about trying Elebits with this, as you need more speed than this can offer, and it will kill your finger trying to keep up. This is not “playing easily, playing happily”, as the package had promised. Perhaps the game plays well with Splinter Cell Double Agent, since Sam Fisher is so prominently displayed on the packaging, but I don’t own that (apparent) shovelware clunker, and I highly doubt that it does anyways. The only game that was tolerable at all with the gun attached was Rayman Raving Rabbids’ shooting stages, since they move at a slow enough pace, and even then it was much less fun with the gun than it is without it, leading me to wonder exactly when I would ever use this hunk of white plastic again.

Probably never, which sucks, ‘cause I likely won’t be buying a 2nd zapper just for 2-player games (I do only need one copy of X-bow training, after all), and this could’ve been a neat alternate, but this is only really any good if you’re looking to handicap someone during a match, thus ensuring your victory. Otherwise, in my opinion, don’t drop your cash on this cash-in, as I guarantee you will regret it. No, in my humble opinion its likely better to wait and spend the wee-bit extra on the official plastic remote cradle that comes free with your purchase of Link’s Crossbow Training (or is that the other way around?). And, lets all just keep our fingers crossed that the official gun allows remotes with Nyko chargers attached, as I am now a little concerned about that. That would pretty much kill it for me, as I am done with batteries in my Wiimotes, and swear by the Nyko paks.

-Kimo

As an added bonus, here’s some more entertaining pictures of the packaging, and of the gun itself: