While Mario Karts Wii Wheel is an ugly piece of kit, its nothing compared to the Guncon 3: a garish orange pistol covered in cheap thumbsticks and buttons. Wielding this tacky light-gun does nothing to make you feel like a sharp-shooting special agent, and more like youre playing paintball with the Powerpuff Girls.
And while this controller is particularly unappealing, the action in Time Crisis 4 is also a clear reminder why light-gun blasters are a genre that time forgot. Although modern shooters such as Halo and Call Of Duty have offered satisfying gunplay that requires more than an itchy trigger finger to save the day, the action in TC4s arcade mode is shallow and unadventurous, amounting to little more than popping out from behind objects to take pot-shots at enemies, the game sticking rigidly with its familiar coin-op conventions from beginning to end.
The new mission mode, which injects a handful of first-person sequences into the on-rails action, goes some way to offering a new take on a hackneyed idea, but even here theres still an inordinate amount of jumping in and out of cover, a routine that soon becomes tired, repetitive and achingly dull.