Resident Evil ... well, it's certainly part of the gaming landscape and has been since the 32-bit generation. I managed to avoid paying it much mind till Resident Evil 2 came out with all its hype and legion of rabid fanboys. Working at Best Buy at the time, I was able to acquire it on the cheap and so found it a lot easier to get sucked in along with everyone else. To say that I managed to put two hours into the game before dumping it used would likely be an overestimation.
I guess there was a lot of "I need to know what happens next" factor as you tried to get through to the next time something disgusting jumped out to frighten the bejeezus out of me. I'm not a fan of disgusting or gory just for the sake of disgust and gore, and I certainly don't appreciate being startled with calculated efficiency over and over and over. (Yeah, I wasn't scared; I just jumped every time something smashed in through a window or whatever, but once I got my adrenalized heart back under control, I was usually just thinking, "look at that goofy mutated thing.") Then there was the fixed camera and the clunky controls, but I'm sure we can just leave it at that. It was not for me, and I studiously avoided the franchise from that point on.
Fast forward half a dozen years, and here comes something called Resident Evil 4. I'd owned a Dreamcast during the intervening time, so I was pretty sure there'd been a lot more than just one new Resident Evil game put out since that first encounter, but who really cared? I didn't play Resident Evil, so I hadn't paid any attention to the news or hype over the revamped gameplay design. Then one day, probably the week after Resident Evil 4 released, I walked into my favorite hole in the wall used and import shop, and the proprietor had it up and running in the background. It took me a few moments to notice, as I'm sure I was hunting used games that day, but once I did, it sucked me in. Even the reluctance generated by learning that it was Resident Evil 4 couldn't overcome the game's gravitational pull, and I demanded access to the Wavebird and gave it a whirl. Ten minutes later, I walked out with a crispy new and surprisingly full-priced copy.
Resident Evil 4 is basically a third-person shooter featuring Leon Kennedy, a simplified control scheme, some context-sensitive and quick-timer style activities, and a focus on ammunition conservation and inventory management that I'm told is typical of the series. Resident Evil 4 is a major departure from previous entries, though, as they were all presented from fixed cameras upon pre-rendered backgrounds. The freedom is a full 360 degrees on both axes. Aiming is accomplished by the contrivance of having every weapon mount, either a laser sight or a scope. This can seem a little goofy on a beat-up old shotgun, but it is the centerpiece of gameplay and what really makes things work.
Movement is handled by the analog stick and looking around without aiming a weapon by the C stick. The right shoulder button stops Leon in a shooting crouch and either activates the laser sight or brings up the first-person scope view. The left shoulder button causes Leon to draw his combat knife. The A button is your primary action button, either firing the equipped weapon, slashing with the knife or performing a contextual action, such as opening a door or kicking a stunned enemy. The B button allows you to run (which you will use most of the time as walking is a painstaking chore) or — when used in combination with a backwards flick of the analog stick — performs a quick 180 degree turn. The rest of the buttons are used in a variety of ways to access and manipulate your inventory, open the map or game options screens.
It may sound relatively straight forward. However, Leon's speed is limited to a realistic range, and the enemies this time are — to paraphrase some of Leon's in-game chatter — definitely not zombies, so they can be quite quick at times and frequently defensive or evasive, hence the initial challenge of the game. Also, these "not zombies" also are pretty tough, so simply laying into them with a hail of bullets will find your stores empty in short order. This is the point in which the mechanism of the laser sight comes into play as it allows you to very precisely aim your shots. Of course, how much time you have to perform the actual aiming depends on your planning, your use of cover and stealth, and sometimes a lot of luck.
Early in the game, the most rewarding shots are headshots, as the default pistol is really good at frequently causing "not zombie" heads to explode. Other good shots are to the hand/arm, which will cause most weapon-wielding enemies to drop their weapons; or to the leg, which will vary in effect from having the enemy stop and hold themselves in pain from a thigh shot to falling completely flat for an ankle/foot shot or one that strikes while he is running, almost like a trip performed with high-velocity lead. Stopping an enemy this way will let you get in close and use various melee attacks or the knife to finish them without endangering Leon too much while conserving ammunition.
The other core concept to gameplay is the inventory case. Leon starts with a relatively small case that is divided in a grid. All items take a certain matrix of grid spots (for example, a 1x2 for a box of ammunition or 2x3 for a pistol), and you can freely move and rotate items to try to shoehorn as much as possible into the case. Anytime you try to pick up something that won't fit in your case, you are automatically brought to the inventory screen so that you may manipulate it to your best advantage (for example, dropping a nearly empty box of handgun ammunition in exchange for a handful of shotgun rounds or a healing item). At certain points, larger cases become available for sale from Merchants, and these are purchases you will certainly want to make immediately if possible. Outside of your carrying case capacity, you have the ability to carry valuable items, such as precious stones and other bobbles; or game-necessary items, such as keys, as well as a store of documents with hints, instructions and story background that you pick up along the way.
The story is there, though pretty stock "special agent sent into foreign territory to rescue the president's daughter" fare. The dialog is pretty cornball and delivered just like it's written. Puzzles are generally of the "find the key and backtrack" type, or are literally little puzzles, like sliding tiles to make a picture, used physically as locks. Usually more challenging are the "figure out how the heck to beat this (mini)boss" sorts of puzzles. Not breaking any ground here, but quaint and serviceable.
The graphics are very good — some of the best to ever hit the GameCube (and far better than those presented on the PlayStation 2 version of the game). The color palate is quite drab with notable exceptions, though that's keeping with the more realistic nature of the game. Besides, the setting is very rural, earthy and lived-in, so things tend toward shades of mud, wood and stone. Lighting effects do their job but generally don't attract attention. The name of the game, graphically speaking, is geometry. Good examples of the game's graphical prowess in this area are some of the outdoor areas where the trees still hold their leaves. Each is rendered, and the limbs holding them sway and rustle in the breeze. This isn't spectacular and generally wouldn't draw anyone's attention unless they knew about the amount of effort such a thing takes. but I feel the environmental immersion it creates is well worth it. Gunfire, explosions, flame, lights, water (in both the flowing and falling varieties), sprays of blasted stone or wood, splaying blood, and the flying gib of exploding "not zombie" heads are all adequate and convincing.
Character models are decent and generally move smoothly, though it's nothing to write home about. However, the first time you see a "not zombie" duck and juke to the side when you're lining up for a headshot, you might have something newsworthy. The variety of unique models can be quite lacking, though. The first area of the game is filled with peasant-type "not zombies," and there are exactly four male and two female models. This can have an inadvertent comic effect when you manage to bunch up multiples of the same model and then lay into them with a shotgun, causing them all to react identically at the same instant. Each area has its own distinct batch of enemy models, so in total, the game offers a significant number of them, but since they are grouped by locations, it often can be distracting (except in the castle, where all the black-hooded monks give the impression of a dark, endless horde). Boss enemies run the gamut, from giant mutant fish to multipart transforming monstrosities, which adds an interesting bit of spice.
The sound design is another area in which Capcom succeeds in being generally unobtrusive yet effective in creating immersion. Wind, rain, the roar of open flame, the rustling of the above-mentioned high geometry leaves ... on a good sound setup, can sometimes fool you into thinking you're out in the forest on a dreary, damp day in late autumn. Sound effects range from serviceable to satisfying. The voice acting, at least the English voice acting, is campy and overwrought. The master stroke, though, was setting the game in what is apparently some hidden rural bit of Spain, and all the "not zombies" speak Spanish. They threaten you; call out to each other when they've spotted you and generally just sound all the more menacing because they're not speaking in some sort of stilted English like the more important characters. End result is one part camp and two parts ambience, and it works well.
OK, so far you're thinking it sounds good, you might want to give it a spin, but you're probably also wondering why I would feel compelled to play the game so much. It took me close to 14 hours to play through the first time on Normal difficulty (professional being the only other level available), so what would keep me feeding the Resident Evil 4 disks (there are two) into my GameCube after I'd beaten it the first time? Moreover, why would I continue to play once I'd beaten it on well over a score of occasions and be looking forward to doing the same on the upcoming Wii?
Well, there are all the weapons and their corresponding sets of upgrades that become available as the game unfolds. There is the Professional difficulty level, which can be impressively difficult to new players, even those fresh from their initial triumph over the Normal level. There is additional content on the disks, a side mission for Ada, important secondary characters and a game called Mercenaries, which is an arcade-like repurposing of environs and characters (plus some extras) of Resident Evil 4. There are "super" weapons (a couple of which are unlocked by a certain level of performance in extra content) that are very, very fun to wield in the main game but will require repeated play to acquire. There's the fact that you can start a new game from the save of a completed game, letting you play through the whole game with all the upgraded weapons, collected items and cash — which you'll need if you're to afford the purchase of certain ridiculously entertaining items — that you had amassed by the end of your first run. And of course, there's catharsis to be had trying to break three hours, blazing through with the Chicago Typewriter and the Unlimited Rocket Launcher.
I suppose there's really not much I can say about Resident Evil 4 that hasn't already been said a thousand times (though it certainly appears I made an attempt). What I can say is that in my day, I've left the meaty carcasses of untold numbers of partially played games on the side of the road. I no longer have the time in my life to fight through every frustratingly inadequate moment of a game that doesn't engage me, just because it's on-hand. As a "responsible adult," I always have something "better" or at least "more appropriate" to do than mindlessly plow through less-than-stellar games. Resident Evil 4, however, I finished initially in just over a week of real time and then proceeded to beat it at least a dozen more times without taking a break for a different game or entertainment in the months following. And, since then I have pulled the game off the shelf multiple times to give it a sound thrashing with a speed run (I've got it down to just a hair over three hours on Professional difficulty). That's pretty much unprecedented for me (at least since college, when I had lots of human competition handy, plenty of time on my hands, and couldn't afford to do much more than sit around and play Genesis games when I wasn't getting my education on).
Resident Evil 4 is easily worth the $50 I paid for it new, probably several times over. Nowadays at $20 new or even less used, the game is a no-brainer recommendation. It's simply one of the most fun and replayable games I've ever experienced.
