Resident Evil Four

Resident evil four is one of the best RE games I have played to date with only a few hang-ups preventing it from being nearly perfect. You play as Leon Kennedy several years after the raccoon city incident. He has been thorough some special training which has toughened him up quite a bit. Somehow the president’s daughter has been kidnapped, so instead of sending in an entire team of navy seals, they send Leon all by his lonesome. Somehow the girl is spotted in some tiny village in the middle of nowhere, but when Leon gets there, he finds that the locals aren’t the friendly type. It seems poor Leon is just a magnet for insane biological experiments. Unlike other resident evil games, the enemies in RE4 aren’t exactly zombies, but they act much the same, they attack on mass in a slow, unstoppable sort of way while trying to sink their teeth into you. Unlike the previous games, these enemies are relatively intelligent and can even use weapons such as pitchforks, machetes and even dynamite. Some of the mini bosses have mini guns! The Gonados as they are called, can also talk, open doors, and run to catch up to you. This is a good change for the open environment you’ll find yourself in because slow shambling zombies just wouldn’t feel as threatening in this game.

My biggest complaint about this game is the prompted button pushing which is forced on you more than in a God of War game. Now I can understand when your fighting off a hoard of the gonados and one gets close to you, you will be prompted at the bottom of the screen to press X and you can kick it away, but then it throws in random moments where you have to rapidly press X to run form something and then press x and square to dodge out of the way, and you only have a split second to do it. There are also moments when you have to constantly be ready to press prompted buttons to avoid attacks from enemies that are hiding in the ceiling or floor, or just to avoid the attacks of a boss. But the worst is when you are watching a cut scene, and it suddenly prompts you to press L1&R1 in a split second or it’s an instant death, that it gets really annoying. And speaking of instant death, nearly every enemy stronger than a standard gonados has a move that can kill you instantly. Some of them bite your head off, some cut your head off. If you let them get too close, you are dead. This gets even more annoying when you have full health and several full heals but die anyway. Several of the bosses also have an instant death move which can make beating them a real headache.

My only other real complaint about this game is the corny dialoged. Borrowing from the Metal Gear games, Leon gets a little headset that lets him enter into a screen were his little image is talking to someone else’s little image, and Leon really needs to work on his lines. At one point the bad guys cut into his transmissions and chat with Leon. The bad guys says, “I’ve sent my right hand to deal with you.” to which Leon replies, “It comes off?” and speaking of dialogue, why are all the RE villains so over the top? Every single one of them seems to be exceedingly arrogant despite the fact that one guy is single handedly destroying their army of super-soldiers that they had planned to take over the world with, yet they still think the guy doesn’t have a chance? Talk about denial.

There are a few other puzzling aspects to the game, like how there are chests of treasure hidden all over the place, but the village looks dirt poor. You can destroy barrels and crates with your knife to find items worth several thousand dollars, or just chests of gold coins. You use this money to buy and upgrade weapons from some very creepy merchant guy who has enough guns to start his own war, yet he seems to be out of ammo because you can’t buy that from him, and really, that’s all you actually need throughout the game. This guy kind of replaces the ammo dumps from the previous games, though once you beat the game and get the Chicago typewriter which is a Thompson machine gun with unlimited ammo, you won’t need to worry about carrying anything other than heals.

Resident Evil 4 also has a few mini games in it such as a shooting gallery, different story modes, challenge modes and unlock able difficulties which add to its replay value. The improved over the shoulder targeting system with the red laser pointer, and the easier movement makes this one of the best Reside Evil games to date. Despite the few problems I’ve mentioned, this is a really good game with stunning graphics and several one the edge of your seat moments. A must buy for any fan of the series, and a good game even for those who aren’t.