Pros: controls have been updated, graphics are jaw-breaking, longer than previous Resident Evil's
Cons: it's being ported to PS2 (and it's going to be bad)
The bottom line: Resident Evil 4 is the best survival/horror game ever. Nuff' said.
I became a fan of the Resident Evil series when Code: Veronica X was ported to the Playstation 2, and an even bigger one when Capcom remade the first Resident Evil for the Nintendo Gamecube. As much as I like the series, it was in need of a serious face lift. The RE remake is one of the Gamecube’s best games, though Resident Evil 0 didn’t sell real great, and Capcom only ported RE2 and RE3:Nemesis with no enhancements at all. The wait’s been worth it though. Capcom promised to deliver, and they rolled out the red carpet for the best game in the RE series, as well as a reason to own a Gamecube. Resident Evil 4 has given the series a bigger face lift than Tim Allen in Christmas with the Kranks, and a new reason for old fans to be excited.

The first big change is the story. It’s been several years since the Umbrella incident in Raccoon City, and Umbrella has been shut down by the Government for good. Leon Kennedy, who as you may recall, was on his first day with the Raccoon City Police Department when the viral outbreak plagued the city. So much for that profession. Now, Leon works for the Government, and his first assignment is to rescue the President’s kidnapped daughter. She’s been rumored to have been seen in a village in the outskirts of Europe, so Leon is off to investigate the village and rescue Ashley. There’s something fishy about this village though, everyone wants to kill Leon. They’re not dead, but they love to kill. They‘re not dead? Well, instead, the Los Ganados replace the zombies, and they are WEIRD. They are smarter, faster, and deadlier. No more stupid, slow zombies. The Los Ganados have the best AI I’ve seen in any RE game.

Past Resident Evil games usually focused more on providing multiple instances of panic using “boo” scares. And at the same time keeping your ammo count low and your elite dodging skills high, or else you’d be up against a boss with a few handgun bullets and your knife. I liked it, it was fun, but Resident Evil 4 changes the slow-dodging, low ammo gameplay to a more fast-paced, Ganado in your face warfare. You are almost always being surrounded by the Los Ganados, and so Leon’s weapons get plenty of firing time. Fixed camera angles are a thing in the past, as Resident Evil 4 uses an angled, over the shoulder wide screen view. The camera can be moved a little bit using the C-stick, but it’s still frustrating to maneuver at times, especially in the tighter hallways. Nonetheless, some of the past camera angle problems show their dirty little faces in some parts of RE4. With the now behind the shoulder camera placement and red dot sight, aiming for specific body parts is a lot easier in RE4 than in the previous games. With the red dot sight, you can now shoot different body parts to get different results. Shoot them in the leg and they’ll bow down, shoot them in the arm and they’ll drop any weapon they’ve got in it, or shoot them in the chest/head for maximum damage. Like always, your goal is decapitation.

When things start to drag you down, look no further than the new traveling merchant for your urgent needs. Want a new weapon? Buy one. Need health? Buy a First Aid Spray. The Los Ganados drop Pesetas (Gold), and you’ll also see it laying around on the ground a lot. He’s kind of a weird fella, but some of the weapons you can purchase later in the game are amazing. The popular weapons of old times are back, like the hunting knife, handgun, and best of all, the shotgun. RE4 has a few new weapons as well, like the Riot gun (a pharmaceutically enhanced shotgun) and the sniper rifle. You will find the weapons that you need as you progress with the game, but using the optional weapons reap many guilty pleasures.

Some people may think that Capcom made the game easier with the traveling merchant being stationed at pivotal points in the game. To me, approaching the merchant after a nerve wrecking encounter keeps me from going crazy. Also, instead of using the same weapons that have the same power the whole time you use them, you can now upgrade weapons. You can upgrade parts of the gun like the maximum ammo, firepower, and reload time. Useful, but is not necessary with any of the starting weapons. Once you can buy the second and third wave of weapons, then upgrade them to the max in order to unlock special weapon only attributes.

One of the things that past Resident Evil games were guilty of was the excessive amount of backtracking. Resident Evil 4 eliminates it for the most part, although a few parts of the story will send you to trek back through all-too-familiar territory. Even then, it only happens every once in a yellow-blue moon. Some of the puzzles in Resident Evil 4 are a little brain twisting, but overall they’re not that hard. Instead of searching for an emblem, backtracking 15 minutes, inserting the emblem into a hole to unlock access to grab a key that unlocks a door which you have to backtrack another 20 minutes to get to... Resident Evil 4 flows at a much faster pace. Excuse my long, hard to read run-on sentence, but that’s what previous RE’s have made me feel like when I play them (I still liked them though).

If you were one of those people that thought nothing could top the Resident Evil remake, well, it happened. I was one of them, and the visuals in Resident Evil 4 are drop dead gorgeous. It took Capcom long enough to do it, but no longer are the backgrounds pre-rendered. Everything is in full fledged 3d, which helped allow for better camera angles, as well as make the environments more interactive. Items still flash so that you don’t miss them, but the detail and beauty of the backgrounds glow with an attractive aurora. Since the backgrounds are entirely 3d, there are a lot of situational events that you can trigger. You can now jump through windows and jump off of ledges, while the villagers will surround your locations, and even try to burn you out. Once again, smart AI mixed in with fast and aggressive gameplay and a full 3d engine - Resident Evil 4 wins big. Everything in RE4 looks great. From the amount of detail in the backgrounds, to the big and bawdy details of the bosses.

Sound means everything when it comes to create a scary atmosphere. It’s true in movies, games, and even real life. You know those weird sounds you hear at night? They creep you out a little bit, maybe even give you a little cold chill. Capcom has done a great job with maximizing the intensity in the atmosphere, and it’s most likely the sound that will make you jump the most in RE4. There were a only a couple times where I actually jumped from something jumping out and scaring the pee out of me. The other times I would jump just because the sound would climax at a certain point, and then nothing would happen, but the sound still made it sound like something ugly and sinister was about to jump out at me.

Resident Evil 4 is one of the top 5 most beautiful games on the Gamecube, and it was the first game to take me completely away from Final Fantasy XI for more than a week since March 2004 (when FFXI came out on PS2). Unfortunately, RE4 is only exclusive to the GC until later this year when it gets ported to the PS2. Let me tell you something right now: DO NOT WAIT UNTIL THE PLAYSTATION 2 PORT. Resident Evil 4 is one of those games that is going to be talked about for a long time, and the overall quality of the game is going to drop the big one when it’s ported to the Playstation 2. No offense to the sexy machine that sits next to my Gamecube, but it just cannot put out the specs that the Gamecube can. Get it, play it, be afraid of it.

happy gaming