Resident Evil 4 (PS2)

Resident Evil 4 was a bit of an overhaul for the series. It saw some changes to some of the key elements of the first games in the series. The camera got repositioned to a third-person over the shoulder position, the action got more of an emphasis, and it was the first to see away with the ink ribbon save feature (although you still make your saves on a typewriter). So let's dive in and see how well it worked for the game and the series as a whole.

This review is also the first of two celebrating the upcoming birth of my son in September. His name will be Leon Isaac, and since the Leon part comes from Leon Kennedy, I chose this game. There's also been a vote going on on my Facebook page for which Dead Space game I will be reviewing in a couple of weeks (Isaac Clarke is the star there), which I will announce the winner of the vote at the conclusion of this review.

The Story

Resident Evil 4 begins six years after the events of the Racoon City Outbreak. Since then, Leon Kennedy has taken up a job in security with the President, assigned to protecting the President's daughter, Ashley. Before he starts, Ashley goes missing, and Leon's first job becomes a rescue mission. (This guy can't catch a break. First day as a cop, zombie apocalypse. Before he can begin guarding the President's daughter, she goes missing.) He is able to track her last position to a small Mexican village, only when he gets there, all the residents are acting strange. The more he looks for Ashley, the more he learns that she has most likely been kidnapped by the chief of the village. His investigation leads to him discovering that the village inhabitants have been infected with a parasite called Las Plagas that makes the host impervious to pain but still maintain enough presence of mind to blindly follow orders to meet the objective of whoever is controlling them. Can Leon get to the bottom of the Las Plagas conspiracy, while still rescuing the President's daughter?

The Controls

As I mentioned in the intro, this Resident Evil got a complete overhaul to become an over-the-shoulder shooter. Gone are the fixed camera angles and stiff shooting controls where you can only shoot straight, up, or down.

Movement can be controlled with either the D-Pad or the left joystick (I found the D-Pad to be the preferred option in this game), while the right joystick can tweak the camera angle a little bit. L1 will bring up Leon's knife, and R1 will bring up his gun, and X will either swipe the knife or shoot with the gun. On it's own, X is used to pick up and interact with objects in the game. □ will let Leon run forward, or if pushed in combination with down on the D-Pad/joystick, he'll do a quick turn to face the opposite direction. △ will bring up your map for whichever area you are in. The Start button brings up your inventory, which I'll discuss more in the next section. Lastly, R2 will allow you to issue a "Stay Here" or "Follow Me" command to Ashley when she is with you.

While it's different from all the other previous titles in the series, these controls are easily adapted and just about perfect to use. Other than the above controls, this game also introduces quick-time events to the series that can use any combination of the button interface or trigger buttons. So let's see how the controls stand up in the game.

The Gameplay

 Capcom still maintained the survival-horror aspect of the series, but they threw a bit more action into it to go with the new shooter aspect for the series. This game sees the return of Leon Kennedy who last appeared in Resident Evil 2 alongside Claire Redfield. Leon himself has become a bit of a face to the series, and a lot of fans were excited to see him come back.

The main objective through the game is finding and rescuing Ashley. Leon maintains radio contact with an Agent Hunnigan, updating her on the things he discovers. The game is broken down into six chapters, and each of these has a small number of sub-chapters. Each sub-chapter has it's own specific short-term objective, which is generally either getting to a specific location, or finding a required item or key, with Leon needing to overcome many obstacles along the way.

It's a pretty linear game, but there are some areas with multiple routes that require you to take them in a specific order to unlock all of them. 

All the old aspects of the games are back in this one, some with a new twist. There's a new type of infection to fight your way through, lots of puzzles, and with a new emphasis on action, this game doesn't stop once it gets going.

The combat is much improved with the over-the-shoulder camera, you get free control to aim wherever and however you'd like, making it easy to specifically target for headshots. When  you draw the gun, a red-laser sight comes up, with a dot forming whenever you're aimed at something that can be shot. However, the shooting can only be done while standing still, no strafing allowed.

This time around, there's a much different variety of enemies to face. The T-Virus has been replaced by the parasite, and it's creations can be a bit more terrifying than the zombies of the old days. Due to the new camera positioning, it allowed the developers to create enemies that can only be killed by shooting a specific weakened spot. Some of your enemies will hurl objects at you as well, so you have to remain completely aware of what's happening all around you. There's the "normal" ones that just shamble around trying to attack you, there's enemies that can throw dynamite and axes at you, but I will discuss the enemy types in further detail in the next section.

The puzzles got a bit more mainstream, and a lot less convoluted. No more wandering around half a city completing a chain of random obscure puzzles that net you something unrelated to the pieces you just put together. If you're in an area that requires a special key to get out, the pieces are all in the area with you.

All of your weapons can be purchased and upgraded through The Merchant. He is a character that remains in a number of fixed positions throughout the entire game. The upgrades you can perform are firepower, fire rate, reload speed, and capacity. Through him you can also sell any treasures you find in the game to obtain more of the in-game currency. Sadly, the one thing you can't buy from him is ammo (but if you perform a capacity upgrade on any of your weapons, it automatically fills up the gun with bullets). Ammo is found randomly in the world, along with grenades, money, and herbs for healing. These things can also be dropped by enemies after you've killed them, along with money (bigger enemies will net you larger amounts of money).

The Merchant even gives you your one optional sidequest in the game. He has scattered a number of blue medallions in two areas of the village section of the game. If you shoot ten of these, he gives you a special handgun as a reward, and if you shoot all fifteen he gives the gun a free firepower upgrade.

All in all, this is a really great game. But let's take a look at how challenging it is.

The Challenge (or lack thereof?)

With the overhaul in gameplay, Resident Evil 4 brings a a lot to the table in areas of challenge. There's your enemies (which can be broken down to your regular guys, special types, and bosses), the puzzles, and the newly introduced quick-time events. So let's take a look at these.


For the regular enemies, they present a moderate challenge. They start off pretty easy when all they do is try and come after you. Once they start throwing things (especially the dynamite) things get a little tricky. A little later, some enemies will begin hatching their parasite out of the top of their head and these are where the challenge can come in. The parasite whips around and gives the enemy a bit of a wider attack range, and steps up the damage they can deal too.

Your special enemies are definitely challenging. These include giant ogres, named El Gigante, a giant swamp monster, and Garradors, among a few others. They're all tough, and they all have their own strategies for beating them. Some of these could probably be classified as mini-bosses, but most of them pop up multiple times so I'm putting them down as just special types. The Garradors will test your patience. While they may be blind, they have extremely sensitive hearing and are armed with giant Wolverine-like claws that can literally take your head off if you let them get to close. Defeating them requires you to walk quietly around in the environment until you can get behind them to line up a shot on the parasite sticking out of their back.

The bosses are broken up by the specific areas of the game, of which there are three. You begin in the village, eventually find your way to a castle, and after that an Island. In the final chapter section of each area you will find yourself facing off with the person "in charge" of that area, so for the village you fight the village chief, and so on. These fights are definitely as challenging, if not slightly more so, than the special type enemies. They take place in tightly confined spaces with a few helping ammo and health pickups.

Puzzles themselves vary in level of challenge. Some are fairly easy, it's just a matter of finding a certain piece or key to get out of/into an area. Others can be pretty in depth and take up whole areas in which you not only have to decipher the solution, but hold of waves of infected Ganados. Either way, they are nowhere near as frustrating as they used to be in the older games, where you would be in one area and could potentially pick up a key for something you wouldn't use until almost the end of the game.

Lastly, the brand new feature (in Resident Evil at least) of quick-time events. Much like I mentioned in the Until Dawn review, the difficulty of these rather depends on the player. If you have a quick and precise reaction time, these will be easy for you. But if you tend to zone out while playing the game, they might be more of a challenge for you. They can occur in cutscenes as well as in your fights against the bosses and special-type enemies, requiring you to hit a specific combination of buttons to dodge an attack, or mash one particular button to either run away from something or slash your knife.

In the end, Resident Evil 4 presents a decent amount of challenge, but it's well deserving and fairly spread out. Despite the more challenging areas of the game though, you'll find yourself having a lot of this one. Now let's see what was good and bad about this game and get to the final verdict!

PROS

- Returning characters. Leon isn't the only name that makes a reappearance in this game. I don't want to spoil who else does pop in, but if you're a big enough fan of the Resident Evil games then you can probably take a good guess at one of those names.
- Reboot of play-style. If you were to go from playing any of the earlier titles to playing this one, a lot would change about the games, and it was a change that worked out greatly. The over-the-shoulder helps with maintaining the horror aspect of the game as now you can't use the fixed angle to keep yourself ahead of all the zombies. You can only see what's directly in front of you, so unless you're backed into an actual corner, threats can come from anywhere.
- Keeping the fear alive. Introducing more action managed to not kill the horror aspect of the survival-horror game. They pull in some good horror-themed settings with the old run-down village and the castle. The game even keeps you tense by making it so you have to find your ammo and not buy it as well as the overwhelming size of some of the enemies. Fighting the Garradors is probably one of the most intense fights in the game because you're constantly afraid of moving too quickly that you cause him to chase you down and run you through.

CONS

- Ashley's AI. I've played a lot of games where you have to escort and protect a second character, and if I could, I would trade just about any of them for Ashley. One way you can lose the game is by her getting captured. Some of the Ganados will pick her up and carry her away, and if they reach a door that leads to a separate area, the moment they cross the threshold you lose. The only warning you get from Ashley is the second she gets picked up. No matter how close they are, she won't cry out for help until she's already been hoisted over someone's shoulder. There's other areas where she is completely separate from you and you have to protect her from afar, while also having to deal with things coming after you, and she can't do anything to protect herself from attacks. But I feel like the most frustrating thing is her inability to climb down a ladder. She can climb up them just fine, but getting down requires you to walk over to the bottom of the ladder and hit the prompt to catch her. Not the worst thing in the world, but very annoying if you're trying to run away from any enemies, because you lose precious moments having to stop and retrieve her allowing the enemies to close in.
- No strafing while shooting. It's really the only flaw in the overhauled gameplay. The new shooting mechanics are vastly improved over the old ones, but the issue of not strafing stems from the right joystick being dedicated to only minor camera movements. The left controls all body movement and aiming of the guns when you have them drawn, so it didn't really leave the room for strafe and shoot.

Final Verdict

Whether or not you're a fan of the Resident Evil games, if you enjoy survival-horror games at all, this game belongs in your collection, because it is damn near perfect. It generally gets talked about as being the best game in the RE series to-date, and it lives up to the boast. The story is strong and entertaining, the graphics are beautiful, and the new form of enemies are great in number and will keep you on your toes while playing this one. While Ashley's AI is heavily flawed, don't let that deter you away from the game because it manages to be worth the frustration in the end. This one was also released on GameCube and the Wii, saw an HD re-release on PS3, and it's also going to see a release on PS4 and Xbox One at the end of this month. So you're left with numerous ways to play this game and enjoy it, and I promise you it's worth every raised heartbeat that you'll experience while playing.

Just a quick side-note. For my reviews I try (to the best of my ability) to beat a game in it's entirety before reviewing it. Unfortunately, due to some issues, I was unable to do so with this game. It continued to freeze whenever I died and needed to reload the game, or after I would save and try to go back to the game, and it just got to be far too tiresome. However, I will be getting the PS4 version at the end of this month (just in time for my Leon to be born) and I will be playing and streaming it on my Twitch channel. 

The winner of the Dead Space vote was the original Dead Space, so in a couple of weeks you will see that up here on the blog to complete the reviews for my son, and to add one more review to the PS3 library-completion. Thanks for reading and see you soon!

HG

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