The Rebirth of the On-Rails Shooter

By: Pedro Hernandez, Staff Writer

On rails, and packing plenty of heat

Thanks to the versatility of the Wii Remote, many genres gamers thought would forever lay dormant have found new life on Wii. One of the genres that has had a strong presence in 2009 was the on-rails shooter. Technically, they have existed since Wii's launch; ports of older arcade games such as Sega's Ghost Squad and House of the Dead 2 and 3 Return arrived on Wii early. In 2007, Nintendo released the Wii Zapper (bundled with Link's Crossbow Training) as a way to capitalize on the genre. In the Wii's third year, many of its major third-party titles were on-rails shooters that took advantage of the system's capabilities and controls.

On February 10, 2009, Sega released House of the Dead: Overkill, developed by English development house Headstrong Games. Announced in 2008, Overkill is a prequel to the original House of the Dead arcade game, drenched in a grindhouse presentation that held nothing back: blood, guts and swear words included. It was a fine prequel that made up for its technical limitations with its classic gameplay and winning presentation.

Later in 2009, EA announced that their sci-fi/horror franchise Dead Space would be appearing on Wii. This announcement brought many surprises. For a while, fans thought it would play exactly like its Xbox 360/PlayStation 3 cousins, while telling a new side of the expansive saga. The biggest surprise wound up being that, instead of being a third-person horror shooter, it would be a first-person, on-rails shooter. Dead Space: Extraction elicited a lot of reactions from fans and the gaming media. EA explained that the reason they decided to make the prequel an on-rails shooter was because they wanted to make a game that would be engaging, despite the system's limitations. They even went as far as to not call it an on-rails shooter, but rather a "guided experience".

The final product proved to be a solid effort, despite the criticism it received prior to release. The graphics were some of the best seen in the genre on Wii, and it created a haunting atmosphere despite the technical limitations of the Wii hardware. The story was well told and enhanced the mythology of the Dead Space universe. It proved that an engaging game can be made even if the genre is a classic one.

A few months after this announcement, rumors of a major title from Capcom started to emerge. Later on, Capcom confirmed that a new game was indeed coming, and that "it would make fans really, really happy". The new game turned out to be the sequel to the 2007 release Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles, Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles. Starring Leon Kennedy and Claire Redfield, Darkside Chronicles would retread old ground as players experience through the character's eyes the events seen in Resident Evil 2, Resident Evil: Code Veronica, and a new chapter that takes place in South America. The graphics received the most polish as the game truly looks like you are living the horror, complete with camera movement reminiscent of movies like Cloverfield and The Blair Witch Project.

It was clear that the on-rails shooter was back in full force, with major third-party releases created exclusively for the Wii. While some felt that the move was a cheap cash-in resulting in mere spin-off titles, many a gamer who missed using plastic guns to shoot everything on screen (minus the innocent of course) appreciated the efforts on Wii.