The Resident Evil series is reinvented with it's fourth entry, and the results are stunning...
You will play as Leon, a secret agent whose mission is to protect the president's family. But, unfortunately when the president's daughter is kidnapped and taken to rural Europe, you have to go investigate, and your brought into a village filled with strange, crazed villagers who want to hack you into bits. There are plenty of other twists and turns and surprises and what not, so uncovering the full story in Resident Evil 4 will be very entertaining.
It's important to note the atmosphere in this Resident Evil game as opposed to previous ones. This one only has a few scares, but focuses more on sheer intensity, which actually seems to make for a better atmosphere when matched up with the new gameplay, which is all around more action packed.
The controls and camera angles have been changed quite a bit from previous titles in the series. Now, the camera is placed behind Leon's shoulder, a welcome change from static camera angles. With it you'll have a new aiming system which will quickly halt you to a stop, but allow you to aim your gun from the shoulder and take out baddies with precision (more on this system a bit later) and you have increased mobility, such as you can now sprint, and turn 180 degrees with the push of a button.
The county you'll be exploring will be separated into a bunch of different zones. While there is a certain amount of linearity in terms of the route you take to get to your objectives, each fight offers a stunning amount of options. For example, in the first big fight of the game, you are left with a whole village and about 1 1/2 dozen villagers trying to eat your face. So, you can take them out in the open, sprinting from corner to corner, or you can enter one of the buildings and barricade yourself, or maybe even climb the guard tower and pick them off from a distance. This is perhaps one of the greatest things about RE 4's fights because you are often given quite a large area to maneuver around. But each of RE 4's fights will be surprisingly difficult, the "zombies" have amazing A.I. They sprint toward you, throw sharp objects at you, they'll dodge, they'll even put their hands in front of their face to avoid a headshot. But luckily, your given a great precision aiming system to take them out. This aiming system will allow you to shoot any point on a villagers body and have them react to it. If you shoot them in the kneecap, they'll fall over, if you shoot them in the arm, they'll drop their weapon, if you shoot them in the face, they'll either stumble backward or drop dead as it pops off. This system is great, and very fun to get used to.
Another welcome addition is the merchant. This traveling salesman of everything of everything involving death will prove to be quite useful to get new weapons and various supplies to help you in the field. The addition of the merchant will also encourage players to explore their environment, because you can find quite a lot of things to sell for more cash to spend at the merchant if you just stop and look around. The merchant also has various sidemissions to give you which in he'll give you a gun for in return. It's quite a neat addition and helps players further interact with their environment.
There's also a bit of puzzle-solving in RE 4, but it doesn't work as well as it could as the puzzles are often pretty simple, but these puzzles only come up every so often.
There's also some button-pressing scenes, when you're quickly prompted to press certain buttons or else you'll die. These are pretty intense, as they'll almost always lead to your demise if you don't complete the button presses in the split second you have.
The boss fights are pretty intense, learning the patterns of each boss is quite fun and learning their weakpoints is great too. Each boss is pretty different and they're all very fun to take down.
The graphics in RE 4 are pretty good. The models all look amazing, and effects such as fire, and smoke look great as well. For the most part the textures look great, and are very grainy and gritty to make the environment scarier, but sometimes you'll see a few low-rez textures. There are also annoying loading times before you enter each zone, which weren't in the GameCube version, but all around the graphics are great.
The sound quality is awesome in RE 4. The voice-overs definitely sound better and more real than any other RE game and the music really helps create an intense environment. The sound effects are great too, but they sound oddly muffled and sometimes low quality.
The amount of time you can play RE 4 is actually quite astounding considering its a survival-horror/action/adventure game. Beating the game itself will take about 14-18 hours, a pretty lengthy affair in itself, but you'll also receive a wealth of bonus content afterwards. And no, it's not the boring kind, you receive and entirely new mode and a new mini-campaign. One will detail the adventure through Ada's perspective and the other is an entirely new mode that challenges players to get a certain amount of points in different levels and to master the many characters you can unlock. You can also unlock new content on your second time through the game, like new weapons and new costumes. If you add the amount of time the game takes to beat the first time, the mini-campaign, the Mercenaries mode, and (perhaps) a second play-though this game's value is astonishing.
You will have an awesome time playing Resident Evil 4, whether you were a fan of the original games or not, Resident Evil 4 offers quality gameplay, graphics, and sound as well as a ridiculously high replay value. If you are a fan of the series, the survival horror genre, or action games then it's pretty much guaranteed that you'll love RE 4.