Resident Evil 4
Gamecube
For my initial review of Resident Evil 4, click
I first played and reviewed Resident Evil 4 for this blog about four years ago. Honestly, I didn’t have any plans to replay it as soon as I did. But a conversation at work about whether or not this game was as good as I remembered prompted me to come back and play it again. Would I still like Resident Evil 4, or would I find that nostalgia had clouded my judgment?
Long story short: this is still an excellent game. Maybe nostalgia does play a bit of a factor, but I think that I would have liked this game no matter when it was created. I will admit I had my doubts at first. When I pulled out my gun and tried aiming it at an enemy’s head, I ended up failing miserably and getting hit multiple times. I almost died before I had even gotten to a part of the game that any reasonable player would deem difficult. My first thought was to blame the controls and refer to the game as “clunky”, but the more I played, the better I became at aiming. The combat system seemed a little outdated to me at first, but I became a master in no time.
Graphically, everything holds up more than it has any right to. This game looks so good! I find it incredibly hard to believe that this is 14 years old. The characters are well-designed. The environments are detailed and atmospheric. I like the lighting effects. I love how all the enemies respond to damage in different ways. Shoot them in the leg and they drop to one knee. Shoot them in the head or upper torso and watch them stagger back. You can take out limbs. You can even shoot the weapons right out of your enemy’s hands!
Right from the get-go you know what kind of game this is going to be. The shootout in the village is one of the more iconic moments in the history of the series, and it sets one heck of a tone that only takes off from there. Every area I’d enter, every scripted battle I’d encounter, every boss I’d fight, I'd just think to myself: man this is iconic. Perhaps this is indeed nostalgia speaking, but I didn’t think there was a bad spot in the entire game. Every time I’d enter a new area I’d be like “oooh, this part!” or “I forgot about this part. Awesome!” Resident Evil 4 is just so darn fun to play. Even the parts of the game I remember as “bad” parts, like the Krauser battle or the area with the disappearing insects are still fun as hell.
Resident Evil 4 is one of those rare video game anomalies where everything comes together in a near-perfect fashion. The story, the action, the graphics, the setting. It just works. I fully expected to return to this game and be able to nitpick things about it that I didn’t like or I didn’t think aged well, but that didn’t happen. It’s hard for me to find any faults with this game. I could say that the story isn’t very deep, but honestly I don’t even care. Once you start playing this game, the pure fun factor of it is what draws you in and keeps you playing. To me, Resident Evil 4 is an all-time classic. My replay of the game only further cemented its place in my mind. I love it and I don’t think I’m ever going to not love it.
Final Score:
A+
(again)
All of my Resident Evil reviews:
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