Resident Evil 4 stands out in a variety of ways that push the boundry for what survival horror games can do now a days.
Before the actual release of the game, we heard that Capcom has made a few changes to the Resident Evil formula. Immediately after starting the game, this is going to become quite obvious to players, in that Leon is not threatened by the usual zombie menace that were bulk of the enemies in previous Resident Evil game, but a Spanish speaking native that attacks Leon with an axe. These psychotic villagers are much spookier than your average zombie, because these new enemies seem human. Their unprovoked hatred of Leon is shown by their suicidal tactics. These Ganados, as they are called, will go to any lengths to see Leon burn and die, and feel no sacrifice if dozens of them are killed. The real thing about them though is that they exhibit a kind native intelligence. Your enemies love to try to surround you and come at you in droves. You may be hesitant at first to shoot what appears to be a human enemy in a Resident Evil game, but it only takes one death by pitchfork impalement to teach to kill these people without a second thought.
While Capcom has usually revolved around a similar formula with most of the previous Resident Evil games, RE4 breaks away from the pack a bit and gives a different stylistic way to play. While it’s not terribly difficult to learn how to play the game, coming to grips with the controls will reveal that they seem tuned just right for a game in this fashion. But it does break away from a few shooter conventions as well. All of the action takes place behind Leon, and the camera zooms into an over the shoulder view when ready a weapon with the R or the R1 triggers. While you cannot move in this aiming mode, nor aim a gun otherwise, it lets you get a good bead on your enemies. Leon always has a trusty laser sight on all his guns which help him further to aim at foes. Leon doesn’t have a completely unwavering hand while aiming a gun but doesn’t always need to because most of the combat takes place in close quarters, thus accentuating the in your face brutal style of gunplay that RE4 presents. Leon starts out the game with his normal handgun but his arsenal will soon grow to include pistols, shotguns, magnums, automatics and other forms of eliminating a Ganado. The game does a good job of slowly introducing newer and better weapons into the mix as you proceed, but the handful of the most powerful guns will only be available at the end of the game. This mechanic works well with the difficulty as the more powerful guns become available for purchase when the difficulty starts to rise. Another neat feature that RE4 presents is the ability to opt to either upgrade the guns you currently own, or shell out for a new one. Since you won’t ever usually have more than three or four firearms on your person, you will need to choose wisely about which guns you opt to replace the old one with. While the progression of some guns is fairly pedestrian about which gun you would bring to battle because all the weapons in the category all get progressively better as you go along, some other weapons will make have to make a choice and stick with it. An example would be: having to make a decision over which pistol to buy, you could choose the Red9 which is the most powerful handgun, or the Blacktail, which beats the Red9 in the other three categories. Decisions like these make the shop mechanic fun to have to make some serious choices along the course of the story line. When upgrading your gun you can choose from Firepower, the over power of the gun; Firing Speed, how fast you can fire the gun; Reload Speed, how fast you can reload the gun; or Capacity, how many bullets or shells the gun can carry. To top it all off if you completely level up a firearm you can opt to buy an Exclusive upgrade for it. These “Exclusive” upgrades are all very prominent in their own right because they all set the gun apart from the group. Each Exclusive gives the gun some real boost outside of the normal upgrades that will help you keep yourself alive. Some of these Exclusives include: raising a certain shotgun’s ammo capacity to one-hundred; increasing certain magnum’s firepower to fifty; allowing a certain pistol’s bullets to penetrate five bodies. The only minor hit against RE4’s gameplay is the lack of a quick weapon select or a hotkey. It seems that it could have easily been established by using the d-pad or the remaining shoulder buttons. This wouldn’t be a real problem if you did not have to rearrange your inventory to fit in more guns, herbs, ammo or what have you. Yes, in the game you store all of your guns, healing items, grenades a just about everything else in a large attaché case. Leon can purchase larger cases as he goes along but you will generally spend a bit of time organizing and moving around the newer things in your case. It’s not a flaw that the game uses this type of inventory, it just feels a little clunky at times. In terms of difficulty, RE4 is no walk in the park. In the beginning of the game you don’t ever have to worry too much about your ammunition reserves, but as you move along you will have to be a bit more conservative. The difficulty seems just right because it seems like everything that Leon will have to encounter on his long road to saving the president’s daughter is appropriately challenging as most attacks from your enemies will transfer lots of damage and loss of health if they don’t kill you right away. But while it may seem like the game is impossible, for any player with any sort of skill could easily surmount the twenty-five hour long story mode and the few optional extras thrown in for good measure. RE4 in addition to being incredibly fun also looks and sounds absolutely off the charts. From a technical stand point, Resident Evil 4 is masterpiece to behold on both the Gamecube and PS2. Both games look great and push the boundaries for those systems can do. The sound is amazing too, as all of your enemies will yell, in Spanish, words of hatred and curses at you. All of the guns sound appropriately loud and powerful and Leon and the other characters are beautifully voiced over. The only hit against the sound is a silly script that doesn’t translate at all a dire situation. Thankfully, at least the cut scenes translate what is happening in the story, and even some of the seemingly non-interactive cutscenes require you to hit a button or a combination of two buttons (or even a series of button presses) to avoid certain doom.
Resident Evil 4 succeeds in so many ways that other games have failed. It excels in almost every area and rightfully deserves the title of best survival-horror themed action games ever created.