If your new to the series, brace yourselves. if youve played Resident Evil before.....brace yourselves
The bad: Not exactly for everyone, no multiplayer of any kind, Its too good....
The previous resident evil games have served as ambitious survival horrors which kept us playing into the night, and kept us up the rest of the night wondering if the creeking of your poorly designed house was a zombie or not. Not only was it 'the' survival horror game, but it also had a compelling story to it which was unfortunately told by shocking voice acting. Over the three main games there have been memorable heroes, monsters, and villians but have all had the same fundimental problem with the gameplay which drove most players. This is where the games roots have changed in Resident Evil 4. It still maintains its horror movie touch while it completely revolutionises the way you play Resident evil, hopefully forever.
The game starts off with a brief reminiscing cinematic with a narration of what has gone down in the past resident evil games and some videos from the previous games. There is another in-game cinematic following the epilogue of a blond haired police officer wearing navy blue t-shirt a brown whooly jacket and jeans sitting in the back seat of a car, being driven by two pretty boy spanish men. The blond haired police officer is Leon S. Kennedy from Resident Evil 2. In the cinematic the spanish chauffeurs ask Leon why they are driving him to central europe in the first place, and he answers that he is there to locat and extracate the presidents daughter Ashley Graham. The car pulls over and the cinematic ends. You are then to enter the survival horror that is Resident Evil 4.
The controls for Resident Evil 4 are completely different to any other Resident evil game, and any other action adventure or survival horror for that fact. You control Leon from a third person view. One thing it keeps in common with the previous Resident Evil games is the control scheme, so to fans of the series this game will be quite intuitive. The basic control scheme is you use the thumb stick to turn around and walk foreward. If you hold B you will run foreward. If you hold down the R button then Leon will brace his gun and you will be able to aim around with the thumb stick, and shoot with the A button. The same deal for the gun is with the knife except you hold down L to whip out knife.
After the first few minutes you will see what Capcom ment when they said that Resident Evil 4 is heading in a brand new innovative direction. You will come across a small wooden house out in the descolate autumn forest and there you will see a short ingame cut scene from inside the house, looking out the window and a casted silhouete of an axe wielding man. You will then walk up to the front verandah of the house and then another cut scene will occur. Leon will approach the man inside, present a photo and ask if he has seen the girl in the photo. The man, still wielding the axe tries to hack Leon in the chest, but Leon being the super badass cop he is does a backflip and dodges it. It then returns to the game and leaves it up to you to kill him. You then have to find a way out of the house since the door is magically nailed shut. After you jump out of the window you will encounter more villagers out to kill you. You of course kill them, and afterwards the car you went there in is driven off through the dusty road. From then on you are abandoned and have to venture on to survive.
As you go on through the game you will encounter a huge variety of creatures out to get you in this game from pitchfork wielding villagers to chainsaw reving, paper bag wearing maniacs to monstrously gigantic fish. While playing through the game you will notice that the enemies are actually quite clever, tactical, and cunning and are incredibly advanced for AI's. You will be able to purchase weapons a large expanding collection from the local merchent, thought you cant buy ammo so you have to be careful with what you shoot. You can also buy heals and other special items from the merchant and you will also be able to collect and sell certain treasures. You can even combine certain treasures to add compound value. Some treasures are hard to get, and alot involve some fiddling around and some puzzle solving but there are too many to find all of them the first time through the game around the enormous european environments.
The breathtaking environments....Yes. Breathtaking! are just simply stunning. They are so well done that the maps themselves look real. There is so much effor put into the lighting effects, the textures and the flame effects that its amazing they fit it onto even two discs concidering how big the maps actually are. The sound effects of this game are also something truely special. The actual firing of every gun sounds authentic, when you crack open a barel or crate and its all dusty, the sound of blood splattering from villager when you slice their calves, and the gut renching chainsaw reving is just superb.
In total there are 5 chapters with an average of 4 episodes in each there is plenty of value, and even after it there are special unlockable including the arcade shooting action fun that is Mercenaries. All in all the main adventure should take about 20-25 hours, and after that you will want to play the game in round 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 to unlock and save up for all the incredibly badass guns that you werent aloud to get first time around.
Resident Evil 4 is one of the most revolutionary games where the age classification actually means something. It is'nt anywhere near as scary as the previous Resident Evil games but its deffinitely more suspensful and a hell of alot more fun. After playing this game and seeing what the Wii is capable of i cant wait to see what the exclusive Resident Evil game for the Wii is like.
Oh well im ganna go play round 13 now....laters