Again, like ghost recon 3, never liked the previous games, loved this one!
User Rating: 9.4 | BioHazard 4 GC
To me the whole resident evil survival series always seemed appealing to me but never offered enough to make me want to play it. The controls and camera was the biggest turn-off and probably the only reason i never really played one of their games. After playing resident evil 4, all of that changed for me. Capcom did something right when they remade the game from scratch fixing all problems they previously had and introducing new elements that redefine horror games but action adventure games in general. The game had an amazing story that went well with the game and offered good locations in which to play in, varying from a inhabited ghostly european town, to a castle to a remote island. The graphics were by far the most iimpressive of its generation and even better than most games today. Not just the CGI cutscenes but just the in game graphics as well. The framerate never dropped and there was so much going on at a time. Plus all this was on the gamecube which was a big surprise, fully showing what the gamecube can really do if you tap into that hardware power. The action, to my great surprise was refreshingly amazing and addictive, yet unlike any other game you would played before. The over the shoulder perspective for shooting is amazing and you would think that stopping to shoot would be stupid but works really damn well, and it makes it fun and strategic at the same time. The controls were tight as well and even menus were organized well especially for storing your inventory. Also the whole using money to upgrade your weapons and buy new stuff really worked well in a rpg sense and really gave you an incentive to kill more things and explore your surroundings. Another thing that is great is the exploration, everything is great, big vast areas to navigate through with almost no loading time and a map that works exetremely well, similar to that of metroid prime. Now thats all the naturally stuff, but i really have to commend capcom on its new impressive action button system and in game playable cutscenes. The way the action button works is that it is context sensitive, now normally most people would find that annoying but it works so well in this game allowing you to execute dozens of various moves appropiate to the situation with just one button. Shooting zombies, they get too close throw a spin kick at them with the one button, need to open a door, tap it to open it or hit hard to kick it open and knock down an enemy on the other side, kick down ladders to stop evading enemies, in a boss fight, execute a series properly timed knife cuts to prepare yourself for the final blow, it all works brillantly. The next thing i would like to say is the nice playable cutscenes that keep you on your toes and never lets the action die down, allowing you to think twice before putting down that controller on a cutscene. Someone charges at you with a chainsaw, time it right and he misses cuts himself, time it wrong your chopped up and gameover, a boss takes a swing at you, you either dodge it and retaliate or get hit and take some serious damage. The nice thing here is that there is actually a cutscene showing how you die if you do mess up and when you retry the buttons necessary to touch may change, which is more of reaction skill than trial and error. The game is about 15-20 hours of solid game play with and intriguing story to guide you along as well other fun modes playable after you beat it and some very good incentives to replay your profile with all your money, weapons and items from the previous profile. The audio is great with a appropiate soundtrack for a game like this to the sound effects of yours guns firing, your enemy screaming and of course the characters in game's dialogue. I cannot wait until resident evil 5 comes out, the first time i am looking forward to a resident evil game, if you thought it looked good on a gamecube, imagine the xbox 360!!! 
