Considering the dog's dinner that was made of the PC conversion of Resident Evil 4 earlier in 2007, that the Nintendo Wii version has been adorned with so much care and attention is a welcome, unexpected surprise. And it's a surprise with real rewards too: as a result of that extra work, Resident Evil 4 becomes - in one swoop - the best game on the machine to date.

Actually, to be fair, that's not a total surprise. The original Game Cube version of Resident Evil 4 is rightly ranked as the best in the survival horror franchise to date, and a strong contender for one of the best games of the last five years. But there's no getting away from the fact that it originally appeared in 2005!

The game itself, for this latest version, remains all but the same. You're still Leon S Kennedy, you still have to rescue the daughter of the President, and there are still hordes of creepy, more sinister than ever, zombie-like creatures standing in your way. On top of that there's a properly-constructed story and at times a ferociously hard game to navigate.

Yet thanks to its clever construct, its ability to ratchet up tension and really keep you on your toes, and devices such as the limitation of ammunition, you're really kept alert and tested at almost all times.

But, as you may rightly point out, that could all apply to the existing Playstation 2 and GameCube versions. So where does the Wii version differ?

Where do you think?

Where many games thus far have treated the Wiimote and Nunchuk control system as a novelty, Resident Evil 4 has here been adapted to make them integral, and in return, they arm the game with a natural way to control the action. So the movement is now assigned to the Nunchuk, while aiming is given over to the Wiimote.

It's a tremendously intuitive system that the game adapts to very well, and the biggest compliment you can pay it is that even if you've played Resident Evil 4 on another system, it's worth at least having a go at the Wii version to experience how well it all meshes together. No console has bestowed such a workable control system on the game before.

The game itself, aside from the controls, hasn't enjoyed any enhancement as such, and so if you are one of those who has played it on a different console in the two years since it appeared, it's hardly going to build a particularly compelling case for an entirely fresh purchase.

But if you haven't, and you want to disprove the pigeon-holing that has seen the Wii being considered purely as a family-oriented console, it's an absolute treat of a game. Ironic, though, that the game that leads the Wii pack is already a couple of years old.

A terrific console game that greatly enjoys its new control system. While the lack of further enhancements isn't great, Resident Evil 4 remains one of the very best console titles of recent years.