Resident Evil 4 (Shadow_Gamer927 Review)

Ok, before I get into this let me just say this game gets points for just being plain cool. Now to your regularly schedules review.

Now that thats out of the way. This is the first Resident Evil game I have really gotten into. It looked good so I decided to give it a spin. I couldn't stand the other games horrible camera angles and combat, but this game fixes all those problems. The camera is set behind your shoulder through most of the game and it works out nicely. Sometimes you will be attacked from behind from an enemy that comes out of bum f***ing Egypt!! But really it just teaches you to be alert and to watch your back, or you can easily get decapitated by a chainsaw. Somethings have not changed, like you still carry all your items in a briefcase, and all the items are basically the same as the other games. You heal with herbs, carry ammo, grenades, and lots of guns all in your tiny little briefcase (anyone know were i could buy a briefcase that can hold all this without affecting my walking speed?)

When you start out in the mysterious town the game takes place with you are given normal handgun that gets the job done. When you do want to shoot you will have to stop and aim for the spot you want your bullets to go, this really isn't that troublesome. The enemies are not all speed demons so it's not a huge problem having to stand still and shoot. Boss fights require you to move around the most, if you stand in one spot you will probably be killed instantly most of time. If you just want to be lazy and stand there, that can work, you will just need to shoot everything that comes at you. It can be hard to aim and shoot a ax being thrown at you in the DARK! You could just get your timing right with a shotgun which can be more helpful at times. You will be experienced to lots of different weapons to mess around with, but you will find all you need from The Merchant. At first you could mistake him as a guy hat wants to flash you his goods and he does, and he's got a lot of goods. He'll sell you all kinds of different handguns, revolvers, shotguns, a mine launcher, rifles, and of course the (usually) one hit kill Resident Evil rocket launcher. Something that was really annoying about the merchant is that he does not sell you any ammo, you have to find it all! That can really make things more difficult at times. Well, not only will he sell you a wide range of these weapons but he will also upgrade them for you, you'll be able to increase the firing speed, reloading speed, bullet captivity, and the firepower the weapon gives. It is easy to tell that the upgrades are worth getting after you are able to blow of heads with one shot of a handgun!

Trust me, you will need the firepower. You are gradually attacked by more and stronger enemies, but even if you are bombarded with dozens of enemies the odds never feel impossible for you to come out of the situation alive. You may just need to sit for a second and think of the best way to get through alive. You'll have to work your way through all kinds of creatures. There's zommbish villagers, giant bugs (thats something new (rolls eyes)), monks (don't worry there evil monks, so their ok to kill), and other things that are just hard to describe. The boss fights and all very intense, which is good because there are lots of them. Every fight with a boss can give you the intense feel you get when fighting the last one. For those people that like to stand still and shoot in one spot the whole time won't last to long in most of the fights, most require strategy and a clean pair of pants.

This game has improve a lot in the game play, but it could have been better. Once you think of it, the game is basically just walking on a path, but it's still a kick ass path! It would have been nice to have a little more freedom in the game. Another thing that would have been nice to see is bullet marks and to be able to damage the environment would have been cool to have (maybe I've just been playing to much Half-Life 2.) Well everywhere you are able to go has a big space to play around in. There are plenty of place to hide and run for cover, but you will get cornered at times, and thats why the shotgun is such a good friend. At a certain parts of the game you fight creatures called Regenerators and you are able to shoot of there limbs! To bad they just grow them back soon after, but my point is it would have been really cool if you could to that to all the things you fight in the game. Yes, you can blow off heads, but thats it. However, if you shoot someone's arm they are than unable to use it anymore. It's a nice thing to have, but why not go the next step and just have the arm come off?

What else do I need to say? Oh yeah, THIS IS ONE OF THE BEST LOOKING GAMES I HAVE EVER PLAYED! The graphics are great, and the sound makes you feel like your actually being chased by something and the sounds of the environment just make you feel like your about to crap your pants in fear at any moment. What do you expect? It is a high profile Gamecube game. The controls are good as well, it does take a little while to turn around, and you do seem slow sometimes but it's all good. I don't think the upcoming PS2 version will have as great as a look, and the load times will probably be a bit longer. So this is deffinatly one of those great Cube games.

I bet your wondering how long this game will keep you entertained. Well the game doesn't have any multiplayer, but it doesn't really need it. The single player is fun enough to play through over and over again (it will take around 15 hours for a normal person to get through it.) After you beat it the first time you are able to play through 2 mini games called Project Ada(sp?) and a survival mode. Project Ada is a short game in which you play as a different character from the game, it is very difficult and doesn't have any save points. Survival mode is pretty self explanatory, you just choose from 4 different areas, and just trying to get as many kills as you can before the clock runs out or you die. Getting certain scores allow you to unlock different characters with different abilities. So this game will deffinatly keep you occupied for some time.

Well Capcom, you done good. You gave us this great looking, creepy game that is just fun to play. It does have a few things that make it imperfect but it still this game is great. It would have been nice to have some other stuff, but the game still is great and definetly worth playing. I'm going to give Resident Evil 4 a 8.5 out of 10.