Genre: Shooter
Publisher: City Interactive
Developer: City Interactive
Release Date: Oct. 2, 2009

Shooting should be one of the most generic genres on the Wii. Just look at all the gun-shaped items that have already been sold, and consider that some of the Wii's gem titles have included House of the Dead games. But the more I think about it, I haven't seen that many. As City Interactive's most complete game that isn't near release date yet, Redneck Chicken Riot is odd, perhaps inspired by Wallace & Gromit, but with a confusing idea of its very own.

The game is a pretty standard arcade shooter — except that all of your enemies are chickens. The representatives promised there would be at least an excuse of a plot in the final game, but basically, there are cartoonish chickens walking around and occasionally trying to beat you up, and you gun them down with your handy-dandy pistol. A few power-ups are strewn about in hidden spots, but otherwise, that's really all there is to it.

Kid-friendly graphics, generally ludicrous physics (eggs are apparently absolutely deadly when thrown; more so than chickens running or flying right into you), and surprisingly decent and smooth graphics abounded during my time with the game. Unfortunately, the good old Wii "the pointer isn't one-to-one" issue reared its ugly head, and made gameplay perhaps a good bit harder than the creators wanted. Also in the category of "maybe not a good sign": when I mentioned how Sega had worked around this issue in The House Of The Dead: Overkill, they admitted to having never heard of the game.

Redneck Chicken Riot is early enough in its development cycle as to have a long, long way to go yet; City promised to do what they could to make the game improve. What I saw was competent for a beta build, and they mentioned that they were taking input in hopes of making it better before release; hopefully, the game will, on completion, turn out much better.