Mr Durand Pierre
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Before I get into Resident Evil 4 (or 4RE as the cover logo stupidly writes it) I feel obligated to mention that I am not a fan of the Resident Evil series based on my limited experience with it. I only played a bit of Resident Evil 0, but I found it to be one of the worst games I've ever played. I'm sure many worse games have been released, though I have not played them and they're all too forgetable to really affect the market. But the RE series has always been critically acclaimed and I couldn't see why. Save ribbons were about the stupidest thing I've ever heard of, and the controls were horrible, and the "puzzles" weren't even really puzzles, and it was just plain not at all fun to play. About the only nice thing I could say of that game is that it looked and sounded pretty. But I'll save all that for another review. Onto RE 4...
My initial impression of RE 4 was a bit of a dissapointment. It essentially felt like Half-life, or any other first-person shooter, but with worse controls. You can't strafe nor can you aim while moving. It takes a minute of getting used to. But after about 10 minutes when I got into the first major battle of the game I saw what everyone else was talking about when praising this game. The combat is ingenious, which is good since that's basically all this game is. Even though the controls initially seem limited it works well with the enemies AI. See, the AI is both good and bad. The enemies don't behave like real people as some critics would lead you to believe. What they do is they'll run up until they get within 10 feet away from you, at which point they turn into slow moving zombies. Sure it's not realistic, but from a gameplay point of view it's pretty genius because it gives you time to aim and shoot at them while they slowly crowd around you from all angles and wildly outnumber you. In this way the combat is slower moving than your traditional FPS, but it's also a lot more tactical. You have more time to decide where to shoot enemies, plus you can pause and go to your inventory and switch weapons instantaneously in game-time making combat a lot more strategic than what most of us are used to. The combat is also given great replay value based on the environments. Much like Ocarina of Time you have the A button as your action button and during combat you can push furniture to baricade a door, climb ladders, knock them down, and deliver a superhuman kick to stumbling enemies. There's also some red explosive barrels that can be shot and hopefully be used to your advantage. You can play through the same battles multiple time and it never gets old.
Much has been made of the games "quick-timer events" to borrow a term from Shenmue. This is where a button prompt will appear during a cutscene and you will have to promptly respond to it or either die or get hurt. In Shenmue I found these a fun diversion, but hardly a major element of gameplay as it's essentially a 20+ year old concept, but now it's happening with pretty cutscenes in the background. But in RE 4 these button prompts are incorporated mid-game. For example, during a boss battle a boss might swing a tentavle at you and the only way to dodge it is to quickly press L and R when they flash for a split second on the screen. It really helps to keep you on your toes since you can't always tell when you're going to have to press these buttons.
And speaking of boss fights RE 4 has some of the best I've ever played. They don't drag on too long (OK, maybe one did) and have interesting patterns, and use the environments in battle. That cave troll looking fella you've all seen in the trailers is truly astounding to battle. He even picks up trees and swings them at you. And he's early in the game too. My only problem with the bosses is that they're too easy. They're still fun, but the hardest parts of the game are just fighing off hordes of "regular" enemies.
Another great thing adding to more replay value and strategy is the money system. You can find a lot of money in the game and much like any RPG you can buy upgrades and new items, and there's some pretty tough decision making to be had. Especially in the earlier parts of the game where money is more scarce and every upgrade feels vastly important.
But no game is perfect, and there are some flaws I'd like to point out:
One thing about the game that I noticed, and I'm not sure if this is good or bad, but like most action games, the music changes during combat. The problem with this is that it lets us know that there are enemies present, and as soon as the last enemy is killed the music dies down and you're free to explore at your own pace and pick up whatever stuff you missed. I can think of at least one point in the game where there was no music during combat and it was much creepier since you didn't know if the coast was clear or not. It's a minor fault of the game and just a basic staple of the action game, but it would have been nice to have more areas where there's nothing to cue you in on if there are enemies present.
My biggest problem with RE 4 is that the beggining of the game sets the bar a little too high and the rest of the game can't quite live up to it. The game is 5 chapters plus a final boss and only the first 2 chapters take place in the village. And the village really is the highlight of the game for a few reasons. For one, the environments are a little more open. I mentioned earlier how you can use the environemnts to your advantage and go about the same battle in many different ways... well there's not quite as much of that in the latter two-thirds of the game. Don't get me wrong, some of the best moments of the game are in the second half (there's a particularly thrilling mine-cart sequence that has to be seen to be believed), but I missed all the huts and houses that you could hide in and then jump out the windows of, etc, etc... I also liked the atmosphere of the village. It felt more outdoorsey (perhaps because it was outdoors) and open, and just plain scary. Once I got to the castle it felt more like Quake. Running around shooting guys is still fun and all, but it lacked in that certain overwhelming horror aspect that felt very rich in the village.
Story-wise the game gets worse as it goes along too. In the beggining you know next to nothing and are trying to figure out what the hell is going on in this derelict Spanish village, but the more you find out about the plot the stupider and more cliched it gets. Part of this is because I never played RE 2 and the game assumes that I have and there are a few old characters making an appearence and I was completely lost, not that I cared. And the villains are all real cheesy and suffer from talking villain syndrome where they give the plot away to you confident that you'll never make it out alive. Oh, and sadly there are a few cutscenes where we see things not from Leon's perspective. Like scenes of the bad guys talking amongst themselves. These scenes ruined the illusion that I was investigating. And some of the dialogue is laughably bad. Overall this doesn't effect the gameplay much, but the cheesy writing does hurt the tone a bit. The beggining of the game is genuinely creepy. After that it's just foiling megalomaniacs' evil plans, etc, etc... too bad.
On a side note I would give kudos to Capcom for giving away so little in the RE 4 trailers since most of the footage they've shown has been from the first chapter or two with a small taste of the third. But then for some reason they decided that the intro movie to the game (as in the movie that plays when you don't hit any buttons for awhile on the opening menu) would be almost exclusively footage from the second half of the game that discusses heavy plot spoilers. Why on earth they decided to reveal this god only knows. I didn't care too much about the story to begin with, but I still knew more than I wanted to from that goddman trailer. So word of advice: don't watch that thing until you've beaten the game.
One personal problem I generally have with these kinds of games is that I never know how much I'm supposed to conserve. I tend to be a conserveaholic (and a saveaholic for that matter too) in games where there is a finite amount of health and ammo. I generally prefer games like Metroid or Zelda where enemies respawn, but give you stuff, so you can't dig yourself in a corner. So when I play these kinds of games I play extremely cautiously so I don't end up at a place where I've just saved, but I'm all out of ammo or something else that I need and am pretty much screwed. (I ended up beating the game with about 150 saves and it took about 32 hours. I ended up getting to the final boss with something like 300,000 in cash and about 10 health packs and plenty of ammo. Yes, I was deffinitely overtly cautious.) This is partially my own fault and partially the games'. When given the opportunity to be cheap and constantly save I will, even though I ultimately enjoy it more when I just run into a room full of enemies full blast. I prefered the Metroid Prime games where save slots refill your health, so there's never any worry over whether or not to save over an old save. The difficulty comes from getting to those save points (and the bosses). I understand that the point of RE is to make due with what you got, but sometimes that bothers me since I never know what's up ahead. (You can imagine how much I hate the earlier RE where ammo and health are scarce.) But in this game it's not so bad so long as you save a little cash on ya for those first aid sprays if it comes down to it. (Word of warning though, when you beat chapter 4-4 you are near a merchant, when you start chapter 5-1 you are not. And you are at a very difficult part of the game too. Make sure you've got some health on ya. I didn't fall victim to this, but I can only imagine how much it would suck to have).
One very minor nitpick that only I seem to have is that I was kinda hoping for more different types of enemies. Apparently this game has more variety of enemies than past RE, but that doesn't sound like much. I'm fairly picky about this though. Most people aren't. But aside from the bosses almost all of the enemies are humans, or at least humanoid. There was a strange insect creature that I liked and I wanted some more creatures of that nature to fight on a regualar basis. Oh well.
Conclusion:
Overall though RE 4 is still one heck of an action game. It doesn't do anything particularly new, but it's a good thief and borrows just the right elements from Half-Life, Splinter Cell, Shenmue, and the old RE games. The game is long for its type, and a couple of mini-games along with a proffesional mode extend it's replay value quite a bit. The action is fantastic and there's a ton of well thought out action sequences. RE 4 may have revolutionized the RE series, but it's still a pretty traditional action game, but a very polished one. Next to the Metroid Prime games I'd say it's my favorite game for the Gamecube, which is very high appraisal coming form me as I'd also say RE 0 was the worst game I've ever owned for my GC. Here's hoping RE 5 comes out for the cube.
Pros:
-Great Combat
-lots of interesting scenerios
-it has money
-boss battles
-amazing graphics
-great sound effect/music
Cons:
-loses its fresh new horror feel after you get out of the village
-music (while well composed) cues you in too often that there are enemies around
-the writing is pretty dumb (and the opening trailer is even dumber)
9.0 (out of 10)
My initial impression of RE 4 was a bit of a dissapointment. It essentially felt like Half-life, or any other first-person shooter, but with worse controls. You can't strafe nor can you aim while moving. It takes a minute of getting used to. But after about 10 minutes when I got into the first major battle of the game I saw what everyone else was talking about when praising this game. The combat is ingenious, which is good since that's basically all this game is. Even though the controls initially seem limited it works well with the enemies AI. See, the AI is both good and bad. The enemies don't behave like real people as some critics would lead you to believe. What they do is they'll run up until they get within 10 feet away from you, at which point they turn into slow moving zombies. Sure it's not realistic, but from a gameplay point of view it's pretty genius because it gives you time to aim and shoot at them while they slowly crowd around you from all angles and wildly outnumber you. In this way the combat is slower moving than your traditional FPS, but it's also a lot more tactical. You have more time to decide where to shoot enemies, plus you can pause and go to your inventory and switch weapons instantaneously in game-time making combat a lot more strategic than what most of us are used to. The combat is also given great replay value based on the environments. Much like Ocarina of Time you have the A button as your action button and during combat you can push furniture to baricade a door, climb ladders, knock them down, and deliver a superhuman kick to stumbling enemies. There's also some red explosive barrels that can be shot and hopefully be used to your advantage. You can play through the same battles multiple time and it never gets old.
Much has been made of the games "quick-timer events" to borrow a term from Shenmue. This is where a button prompt will appear during a cutscene and you will have to promptly respond to it or either die or get hurt. In Shenmue I found these a fun diversion, but hardly a major element of gameplay as it's essentially a 20+ year old concept, but now it's happening with pretty cutscenes in the background. But in RE 4 these button prompts are incorporated mid-game. For example, during a boss battle a boss might swing a tentavle at you and the only way to dodge it is to quickly press L and R when they flash for a split second on the screen. It really helps to keep you on your toes since you can't always tell when you're going to have to press these buttons.
And speaking of boss fights RE 4 has some of the best I've ever played. They don't drag on too long (OK, maybe one did) and have interesting patterns, and use the environments in battle. That cave troll looking fella you've all seen in the trailers is truly astounding to battle. He even picks up trees and swings them at you. And he's early in the game too. My only problem with the bosses is that they're too easy. They're still fun, but the hardest parts of the game are just fighing off hordes of "regular" enemies.
Another great thing adding to more replay value and strategy is the money system. You can find a lot of money in the game and much like any RPG you can buy upgrades and new items, and there's some pretty tough decision making to be had. Especially in the earlier parts of the game where money is more scarce and every upgrade feels vastly important.
But no game is perfect, and there are some flaws I'd like to point out:
One thing about the game that I noticed, and I'm not sure if this is good or bad, but like most action games, the music changes during combat. The problem with this is that it lets us know that there are enemies present, and as soon as the last enemy is killed the music dies down and you're free to explore at your own pace and pick up whatever stuff you missed. I can think of at least one point in the game where there was no music during combat and it was much creepier since you didn't know if the coast was clear or not. It's a minor fault of the game and just a basic staple of the action game, but it would have been nice to have more areas where there's nothing to cue you in on if there are enemies present.
My biggest problem with RE 4 is that the beggining of the game sets the bar a little too high and the rest of the game can't quite live up to it. The game is 5 chapters plus a final boss and only the first 2 chapters take place in the village. And the village really is the highlight of the game for a few reasons. For one, the environments are a little more open. I mentioned earlier how you can use the environemnts to your advantage and go about the same battle in many different ways... well there's not quite as much of that in the latter two-thirds of the game. Don't get me wrong, some of the best moments of the game are in the second half (there's a particularly thrilling mine-cart sequence that has to be seen to be believed), but I missed all the huts and houses that you could hide in and then jump out the windows of, etc, etc... I also liked the atmosphere of the village. It felt more outdoorsey (perhaps because it was outdoors) and open, and just plain scary. Once I got to the castle it felt more like Quake. Running around shooting guys is still fun and all, but it lacked in that certain overwhelming horror aspect that felt very rich in the village.
Story-wise the game gets worse as it goes along too. In the beggining you know next to nothing and are trying to figure out what the hell is going on in this derelict Spanish village, but the more you find out about the plot the stupider and more cliched it gets. Part of this is because I never played RE 2 and the game assumes that I have and there are a few old characters making an appearence and I was completely lost, not that I cared. And the villains are all real cheesy and suffer from talking villain syndrome where they give the plot away to you confident that you'll never make it out alive. Oh, and sadly there are a few cutscenes where we see things not from Leon's perspective. Like scenes of the bad guys talking amongst themselves. These scenes ruined the illusion that I was investigating. And some of the dialogue is laughably bad. Overall this doesn't effect the gameplay much, but the cheesy writing does hurt the tone a bit. The beggining of the game is genuinely creepy. After that it's just foiling megalomaniacs' evil plans, etc, etc... too bad.
On a side note I would give kudos to Capcom for giving away so little in the RE 4 trailers since most of the footage they've shown has been from the first chapter or two with a small taste of the third. But then for some reason they decided that the intro movie to the game (as in the movie that plays when you don't hit any buttons for awhile on the opening menu) would be almost exclusively footage from the second half of the game that discusses heavy plot spoilers. Why on earth they decided to reveal this god only knows. I didn't care too much about the story to begin with, but I still knew more than I wanted to from that goddman trailer. So word of advice: don't watch that thing until you've beaten the game.
One personal problem I generally have with these kinds of games is that I never know how much I'm supposed to conserve. I tend to be a conserveaholic (and a saveaholic for that matter too) in games where there is a finite amount of health and ammo. I generally prefer games like Metroid or Zelda where enemies respawn, but give you stuff, so you can't dig yourself in a corner. So when I play these kinds of games I play extremely cautiously so I don't end up at a place where I've just saved, but I'm all out of ammo or something else that I need and am pretty much screwed. (I ended up beating the game with about 150 saves and it took about 32 hours. I ended up getting to the final boss with something like 300,000 in cash and about 10 health packs and plenty of ammo. Yes, I was deffinitely overtly cautious.) This is partially my own fault and partially the games'. When given the opportunity to be cheap and constantly save I will, even though I ultimately enjoy it more when I just run into a room full of enemies full blast. I prefered the Metroid Prime games where save slots refill your health, so there's never any worry over whether or not to save over an old save. The difficulty comes from getting to those save points (and the bosses). I understand that the point of RE is to make due with what you got, but sometimes that bothers me since I never know what's up ahead. (You can imagine how much I hate the earlier RE where ammo and health are scarce.) But in this game it's not so bad so long as you save a little cash on ya for those first aid sprays if it comes down to it. (Word of warning though, when you beat chapter 4-4 you are near a merchant, when you start chapter 5-1 you are not. And you are at a very difficult part of the game too. Make sure you've got some health on ya. I didn't fall victim to this, but I can only imagine how much it would suck to have).
One very minor nitpick that only I seem to have is that I was kinda hoping for more different types of enemies. Apparently this game has more variety of enemies than past RE, but that doesn't sound like much. I'm fairly picky about this though. Most people aren't. But aside from the bosses almost all of the enemies are humans, or at least humanoid. There was a strange insect creature that I liked and I wanted some more creatures of that nature to fight on a regualar basis. Oh well.
Conclusion:
Overall though RE 4 is still one heck of an action game. It doesn't do anything particularly new, but it's a good thief and borrows just the right elements from Half-Life, Splinter Cell, Shenmue, and the old RE games. The game is long for its type, and a couple of mini-games along with a proffesional mode extend it's replay value quite a bit. The action is fantastic and there's a ton of well thought out action sequences. RE 4 may have revolutionized the RE series, but it's still a pretty traditional action game, but a very polished one. Next to the Metroid Prime games I'd say it's my favorite game for the Gamecube, which is very high appraisal coming form me as I'd also say RE 0 was the worst game I've ever owned for my GC. Here's hoping RE 5 comes out for the cube.
Pros:
-Great Combat
-lots of interesting scenerios
-it has money
-boss battles
-amazing graphics
-great sound effect/music
Cons:
-loses its fresh new horror feel after you get out of the village
-music (while well composed) cues you in too often that there are enemies around
-the writing is pretty dumb (and the opening trailer is even dumber)
9.0 (out of 10)
