Resident Evil 4 Review

Anyone who loves a shooter game will have a thing for the Resident Evil series. It has been around from quite a long time and has spawned a movie series to starring Milla Jovovich.

Background:

Resident Evil was first released on the GameCube in 2002 and was later ported to the PS2. And now the game will hit the PC. As the game is a port, some parts may be a little hard to control.

Graphics:

For a PC game, if not great, the graphics of Resident Evil are good. The environments may seem a little untidy and unreal sometimes, but the characters and the weapons look quite real when you play. The blood too, sputters out realistically when you hit someone in the game.

Review:

The biggest difference between the earlier Resident Evil games and Resident Evil 4 is that the earlier versions were slow survival-horror while Resident Evil 4 is a fast action-horror game. One more difference between the old versions and the new ones is the camera angle. The earlier versions had badly placed cameras and the developers had received a lot of flak for it. However, this time the camera has been placed over Leon’s shoulder, which makes it easy to fire the shots.

Coming to the game, the story takes you to a remote village in Spain, where, Leon, the cop from Resident Evil 2, is sent to rescue the President’s daughter from the villagers who are working with an evil cult. The game starts when two Spanish cops escort Leon near the village where he encounters the hostile character and the adventure begins.

Resident Evil 4 has been made in such a way that you will have to make many decisions that will have a huge impact on your future gameplay, unlike other shooter games where all you do is just fire and blow off the villains that are coming at you. If you use up a lot of ammo, chances are that you might not have access to it when you really need it.

If you are being attacked by the hostile villagers or zombies, you have to be tactical in shooting them and make sure that you hit them in the head to finish them off. You can also decide to shoot them according to the way they attack you. If they are holding a dynamite in their hand, you can shoot the hand, so as to make him drop the dynamite and let it explode, so that it kills him and thereby, it saves your ammo.

Sometimes you can even shoot the hostile enemies in their legs to slow them down. You also have the option to kick your enemies away, and that is a good option as it will save your precious ammo. Most of the times, if there are a lot of hostile creatures; you can just kick them away and then completely ignore them and run away from the aggressive zombies.

If you are attacked, you will be hurt, naturally. But to increase your health, there are herbs that can be used to heal yourself. Most of the healing herbs are embedded in boxes that will always be kept near the ammo. But you will have to shoot the boxes to break them apart and procure the healing herb. There are different types of herbs in the game, the green herb, red herb and the yellow herb. One more thing, when you kill an enemy, you can take some of their energy.

As we are speaking of combat, let me tell you, the game is full of it as well as lots and lots of weapons. They are made in a very tactical way and along with pistols, rifles and machine guns, there are hand grenades too. They surely add up to the violence and the action factor of the game and make it a really fast action-horror game.

No shooter game is complete without a boss fight and Resident Evil 4 is no different. There are many boss fights which will see you doing a lot of different things like protecting a house from the villagers and the zombies. There are boss fights where you will be in a helicopter fighting off your enemies.

As we had mentioned earlier, your actions could well affect the future gameplay. While playing you will come across a trapped wolf. Your natural instinct will be to shoot it, but behold, you will have an option to help him. Initially you will find the move insignificant, but as you progress in the game, the wolf will come to your help in the later stages of the game.

Resident Evil 4 has a long gameplay, more than twenty hours to be precise. The game starts from a small village and takes you further in the Spanish countryside. You will rescue the President’s daughter once, only to lose her again. The game will see you go through a lot of places including towers, Spanish castles and finally a remote island where a secret lab is situated.

Resident Evil 4 is a port and that could mean a little difficulty in the controls. We did have a little bit of problem in configuring it out, but those were just minor issues which any ported games face nowadays.

Our take:

We think Resident Evil 4 is good, but not as good as the GameCube version, but perhaps as good as the PS2 version. If you are a PC gamer and love playing shooter games, this is surely a game for you. As for Resident Evil fans, the game is a must have and we are sure you will enjoy the game.