About three years ago when Rogue Trooper was initially released, the world still hadn’t gotten its grubby paws on Gears of War and the Wii was still a figment of Nintendo’s quirky imagination. With both having subsequently gone on to rather successful things, the Wii release of the aforementioned 2000AD-based third-person shooter makes for an entertaining slice of gaming that not only reminds you that people were doing the whole cover-based shooter thing before Epic and crew, but also goes to neatly filling a bit of a hole in the Wii’s software library too.

Kicking off with a traitorous general going all nasty on a squad you are part of, the game sees you guiding the Smurf-blue badass Rogue through an adventure to avenge his fallen comrades. Luckily for you Rogue is able to cut out a personality chip from his more useful buddies and implant them into himself, thus creating the equivalent of a one-man squad. It’s kind of like what would happen if B. A. Baracus could implant the rest of his team’s personalities into a one-man A-Team, only without the gold chains, jive talking and fear of flying.

Throughout its length, the game places you into a really enjoyable, tangible sci-fi world in which you must run, sneak and gun your way past enemies whilst using the surrounding scenery to balance the odds slightly more in your favour. Those not familiar with the comic need not worry, as the game’s story is a self-contained affair that plays beautifully to the characters’ personalities and the settings you find yourself in.

The best part of the whole thing, though, is that the game’s controls suit the Wii-mote and Nunchuck beautifully. On a system where pointing and aiming is the main idea, it’s a bit miffing as to why no one has really managed to make the whole aiming thing on a shooter work particularly well, but thankfully with Rogue Trooper it’s sensitive enough and accurate enough with the target lock-onto really absorb you into the game without you constantly getting smacked over the head by the control system.

This goes for the whole scheme too, with diving into cover, sniping and the chucking of grenades all intuitive enough to ingrain themselves into your brains without you having to arse around with the manual whilst gently sobbing into your Wii-mote. As such, you thus get to simply knuckle down with what is a really good action shooter from the get-go, and the whole thing really benefits greatly from that.

It keeps you absorbed, too, which helps. From the very first steps you take on Nu Earth you’ll find yourself taking up sneaky vantage points to eliminate enemies, of whom you will find have commendable intelligence to bolster the experience further still. Anyone expecting to be able to crouch and aim their gun in one particular place as opposition soldiers continually feed themselves into your line of fire will quickly realise that particular tactic won’t be doing you much good at all as your intended victims dodge for cover and plan alternate routes themselves. It sucks you into the unfolding conflict superbly, egging you onward towards your eventual goal.

What you end up with is a game that is pretty much Gears of War for the Wii, although it would be very unfair to Rebellion to simply brand it that given that Rogue Trooper predates the adventures of Marcus Phoenix by a year. Whilst you can say that the cover system and shooting aspect is the main seller here, it’s also only fair to point out that Rogue does a heck of a lot in its own right to warrant merit, be it the multiple ways you can undertake certain levels, the clever integration of multiple squad members into one super-powered soldier, the crisp, colourful visuals or the fine audio production throughout.

Hence you can’t help but recommend it. The most pleasing thing is that it would have been pretty easy for the game to have been rushed onto the Wii knowing that the console lacks a decent collection of shooters, but Rebellion have instead done a proper job in converting what was already a superb, criminally underrated game. For those reasons, as well as the fact that it’s such a damn enjoyable game in the first place, Wii owners should get off their sofas and get down to their local games shop as soon as humanly possible. They may have had reason to bemoan Nintendo’s white box’s lack of decent shooting action in the past, but with Rogue Trooper those reasons to complain have just been vastly diminished. Cracking stuff.