what may just separate the veterans from the inexperienced in this game is the quality of their knifework. leon might pack an arsenal replete with the sexiest weapons of all time, but it's the tried-and-true double-edged stiletto he's packing that remains your eternal companion out there in the shit. utilizing it to its fullest requires confidence to an extent that resembles rashness - a full understanding of where to strike, when to kick, and how to deke. if you ask me, coming fresh off a run of professional, this is one of the most compelling elements of RE4 - the convergence between melee and gunplay is transformative, configuring leon into a living weapon. there is no element of his kit that goes unused or registers as unnecessary.

i once jokingly claimed that a remake of this title needed to simply superimpose re6's base of mechanics on to the game, but actually convey to players how best to parse these systems. there's actually probably a little nugget of gold buried in there - after all, i refuse emphatically the addition of a block button ala the ethan winters duology, or the presence of a parry which, when mishandled, tends to choke combat systems with its rote all-encompassing applicability. what they really need to do here is expand and tailor the level of knifework present. imagine if we got rid of the need for qtes because we got a game with hitboxes every bit as fair, but your knife mode had dozens of options attached to it resembling something like genes dodges from god hand, informally and unofficially linking mikamis action game tenure...errant slashes leading to blades clashing...im talking high risk high reward knife action in such a manner that it doesn't compromise on leons fragility. that, to me, would be a good rendition of re4. shouldn't bend the knee or make concessions to enemy design so as to make the holy grail 'knife only challenge run' more palatable to layfolk...people figured out how to do it with the original, they'll do it again

also id like to be able to throw my knife

RE4 is a game designer’s wet dream. If you really break it down, all Leon can do is point and shoot; and that simplicity is part of how it immediately gets you into this mode of consciously analyzing situations and being intentional about everything you do. Corralling enemies into a single spot and headshot-ing one of them to set the whole group up for a juicy roundhouse kick seems so basic, but having to actively look for ways to achieve that scenario never stops being engaging.

All the different weapons, the upgrade system, enemy types, random loot drops: they add to the basic formula in a way that’s so elegant and immediate that it makes every modern action RPG looter shooter whatever the fuck hybrid look like a dry, convoluted Excel spreadsheet by comparison. It’s so no-nonsense that I honestly struggle to come up with more ways to explain why it’s so good that aren't insanely obvious. RE4 is endlessly polished and pure and exciting and one of the most perfect games of all time.

Where's everyone going? Bingo? Resident Evil 4 is heralded as an absolutely pivotal game not only for its own franchise, but for Video Games period. Many games such as Dead Space take direct inspiration from Resident Evil 4, such as the third-person perspective, and over-the-shoulder camera style that Resident Evil 4 popularized. But is Resident Evil 4 actually a good game? Did it live up to the expectations for its franchise and be innovative for video games in general? Well, you already know the answer is yes, so let’s get right into it.

One thing I immediately want to talk about is the controls. Resident Evil 4, much like Metroid Prime, utilizes tank controls. One stick moves you in all directions, while the other stick moves the camera angle. Since the camera is always behind Leon’s shoulder it can be very difficult to adjust to these controls. In order to fire your gun, you hold down the tight trigger, Leon cannot move while aiming with his gun, so positioning is incredibly important in Resident Evil 4, while enemies aren’t too aggressive in this game, they can easily outnumber and surround you, so it’s imperative you’re not staying still too long and create distance before aiming. Leon also has natural sway with the guns he aims with, which adds a dash of realism as well as difficulty to fire at things well, which adds pressure for the player to land their shots which I find very rewarding. Most games just give you surgical precision with firearms, but Resident Evil 4 makes you work for that accuracy, which is heavily rewarded for mastering through other facets of the game I’ll go over in a bit. You can also use your knife by holding down the L button, the range of the knife is rather poor, but is very useful for busting open crates and barrels to find goodies, and can be extremely useful to take out enemies without using bullets, so it’s a great alternative that feels incredibly useful throughout the entire game because it doesn’t eat up resources to use. But much like Leon’s swaying, mastering the knife and gaining confidence to use it more is only beneficial and really fun. While the tank controls are… a little rough, I think they work very well in tandem with the resource management, difficulty, and stress of fighting enemies and creating space, which the knife can also help you do if you get too surrounded in a last-ditch effort.

Speaking of resource management, Resident Evil 4’s resource management is absolutely incredible. Since your inventory space is very limited, it’s incredibly important for the player to always make decisions on what sorts of things they want to carry on them. Weapons and ammo are always important since they’re the most ideal way to dispose of enemies and interact with things out of reach of your knife, but sometimes you might find yourself with too much ammo. This presents an interesting conundrum where the player might want the immediate benefits of another item in exchange for throwing away some ammo, but as ammo is incredibly limited, it’s incredibly scary to throw away ammo so easily, so it really makes you weigh your options carefully for your success. Add onto the fact some weapons have attachments that make them better in exchange for more inventory space just makes these decisions harder, but thankfully every single attachment for weapons in this game is completely optional, so you can use them for awhile and then sell them later on when you’ve become really comfortable with a specific weapon. While their advantages are certainly substantial, if you really need the extra space, you’re not at an extreme disadvantage for never buying them or selling them later on. You’ll also find healing items and grenades. Healing items come in four forms, first-aid spray, green herbs, red herbs, and yellow herbs, first-aid sprays fully heal you and can be purchased from the merchant, while you can only buy two at a time, it’s a guaranteed resource he always has, but has to be bought with an equally limited resource, so you have to decide if that’s worth it or not. The herbs you can find all throughout the game, and unlike the First-Aid sprays, the herbs can be combined with each other to take up less space in your inventory. You can combine a maximum of three together, which equals up to six inventory slots, which can be used for something else like ammo or grenades. The green herbs heal you for some HP, the red herbs have to be combined with a green herb to be used, but will fully heal you, and yellow herbs also need to be combined with a green herb, but will increase your maximum health when used. Each herb is incredibly useful and very much worth grabbing since they can be combined alone, but they’re also in abundance, of all the resources in the game, herbs might be one of the easier ones to get rid of for space since you can always buy healing if you need, and if you never get hit, you’ll never need to heal. While that might be incredibly unlikely, it’s something to keep in mind while playing. You can also find other abstract healing items like eggs and fish you can either sell for some cash, or use to heal a good chunk of health.

The last of the items you’ll need to manage are grenades, arguably the most useful limited resource besides ammo. Grenades, like herbs, come in three flavors, frags, incendiary, and flash grenades, each one serves a very important purpose. Frags are great for defeating a large cluster of enemies which can help you save a ton of ammo, frags can also stun enemies not fully within the blast radius to give you an opportunity to get away, or take advantage of it to press your advantage further. Incendiary grenades are incredibly useful because it leaves behind flames for a short period of time, damaging any enemies that walk into it, it can also be used to completely cut off a certain area for a while, allowing you to focus your attention elsewhere, while not nearly as useful as frags generally, incendiaries are specifically very effective against specific enemies as well, so it’s good to hold a few at all times. Finally flash grenades, to me these were my least used of the three, but still are very useful. Flash grenades will blind enemies for a long time, allowing you to run past them or keep them in place for a perfect frag grenade scenario, or to gun them down, or even knife them. Flash grenades can also completely kill specific enemies, and has an incredibly niche use that’ll net you some serious cash and more resources. While they were indeed my least used type in my playthrough, I did find them situationally useful which already makes them valuable enough to me to grab and use. Resident Evil 4 is all about these small decisions you’re always faced with, to grab a specific item, to throw something away, maybe you want to sell a weapon you’re no longer using, or maybe you really don’t need healing items and want more grenades. It’s this sort of dynamic that makes RE4 incredibly rich to play for the first time, but also incredibly varied when replaying the game, which keeps it fresh, engaging, and very fun.

My personal favorite aspect of Resident Evil 4 though is the weapon progression. When you first start RE4, you start with a measly if reliable hand pistol, but overtime you’ll keep finding new weapons to play around with, and the merchant will regularly get new weapons in stock for you to try out. I don’t want to spoil any of them, but there’s a lot of variety here, and you can really carve out your own playstyle with the amount of weapons there are. While some weapons are indeed more useful and their specific ammo drops more often, every weapon in RE4 is useful to some extent which makes sure the player doesn’t feel like they wasted their money on a weapon they don’t need. You can further upgrade your weapons as you progress, but be sure to only fully upgrade 2 or 3 weapons at max, since money in RE4 is another incredibly limited resource you need to manage if you want to succeed. Knowing what upgrades you want, and which ones feel worth it are just more small decisions RE4 presents to you that you gotta think about carefully. There’s plenty of variety, and every playstyle in RE4 is supported, hell you could only use the knife for most of your playthrough and never worry about weapons if you really wanted to, but I don’t recommend that personally. Every weapon has a specific range they do well in, every weapon also has their own niche uses such as high ammo count, high damage, pinpoint accuracy, wide spread, anything you can think of, there’s probably a weapon that does it well. You can also unlock more weapons by completing the game, giving the game even more replay value. While some of these unlockable weapons feel kinda gimmicky, it all serves to expand the sandbox and options the player has which only improves and enriches the experience Resident Evil 4 has to offer. Though to be honest, some of the unlock conditions for some of these weapons can be super tedious, so… no thanks, bro

Resident Evil 4’s atmosphere is another aspect of the game I absolutely adore. Right from the get-go, the game has this hilarious dichotomy of atmosphere with a muted color palette and a realistic artstyle for the time, but then has some of the most hilarious one-liners and dialogue I’ve ever heard in a game. Resident Evil 4 does a damn good job at balancing these things very well, because the environments speak for themselves since Leon doesn’t really say anything in gameplay, only in cutscenes. Because of this, it doesn’t take away the serious nature of gameplay, making decisions, fighting enemies, and the actual areas themselves are intimidating, oppressive, and a bit scary too. But as soon as you get into a cutscene, it sort of reels back on that to serve up some fun action-packed scenes, some humor, or some witty dialogue all while pushing the story forward in a believable, if somewhat ridiculous manner, all of which I love. I think the choice of music especially helps capture the sort of oppressive feeling Resident Evil 4 has during gameplay, when I first heard the save theme it really stuck with me, and honestly gave me a Firelink Shrine impression, and that feeling never really went away from the remainder of the game. It sounds odd to say Resident Evil 4 felt a lot like Dark Souls emotionally, because they’re both games about overcoming insurmountable odds while everything is trying to stop you from achieving that goal. I don’t think RE4 comes close to Dark Souls in terms of difficulty or really any other facet as they’re very different games, but they shared eerily similar vibes to each other when playing it, and I think for that reason RE4 sticks out more in my mind than it should. Regardless, I fell in love with RE4 very quickly, for its amazing atmosphere, fun characters and dialogue, combat, resource management, and music.

Resident Evil 4 is very smart with its cutscenes as well. Most of the time in games, you get a cutscene, and it’s the player’s cue to relax and not have to worry about any gameplay, much unlike RE4. In RE4, depending on how the cutscene plays out, you might have to do a quicktime event to ensure Leon doesn’t die. This not only will catch the player off guard, but will ensure they stay engaged and focused during the cutscene, and gives them the agency they should have at all times. Having stakes in cutscenes like this is a breath of fresh air, and makes the cutscenes that much more intense and memorable. While there’s plenty of QTE’s in RE4, I think all of them are handled incredibly well and never feel overused or out of place, it felt like just the right amount to keep you on your toes which I very much appreciated. The boss battles in RE4 are also incredibly diverse and fun as hell to figure out. They double down as tests of skill and a puzzle you gotta figure out to win, which felt very much like Metroid Prime to me, which I enjoyed a lot. I would want to go into more detail into all of them individually, so maybe at another time I will, but they fall into the same sort of fast decision making, resource management and fun combat I’ve mentioned already which makes them incredibly fun to fight, and also very memorable.

Resident Evil 4 was my first Resident Evil game I played. It left an incredibly strong impression on me, and easily became one of my favorites very quickly. I’m very excited to jump into the rest of the series from here, but Resident Evil 4 was really special. I’ll never forget the experience because it was really unique. I’ve yet to play the remake of this game, but it seems very well done, and I can't wait to play it and express my thoughts on it when the time comes. Thank you all for reading my review of Resident Evil 4. The next game I'll be doing is the Mario RPG remake which I’m incredibly excited for, so please look forward to that!. Before I wrap up this review though, I only have one very important question... you got a smoke? Thank you all for reading!

The plot's nonsensical, the horror's infrequent, the campiness is unbearable at times, the puzzles are out of place, the atmosphere doesn't compare to its predecessors', and, above all, it's a complete betrayal of the grounded nature that made classic Resident Evil so great. In one fell swoop it utterly decimated the chances of fixed-camera survival horror ever being a big deal again, but, damn, it was worth it. And if you look closely, Resident Evil is still there. Awkwardly moving backwards to make space between yourself and a slow-moving enemy. Desperately scavenging for health and ammo. Internally debating whether or not to use a green herb now or risk trying to find a red one later. Layered on top of these preexisting niceties is perhaps the greatest work of classical game design of all time. The ultra simple shooting mechanics expertly intersect with a constant clip of gameplay twists, some more noticeable than others. There's the phenomenal setpieces, of which I don't think there's a single misfire, but what's possibly more impressive is the less obvious stuff. The variance in terrain- some portions open, some portions closed off, some with a focus on verticality, some with crevices to hide in and debris that obstructs your vision, others where you have no choice but to face your fears head on. Despite the blistering pace, every single area feels memorable, like it has its own tangible identity... not simply as battle arenas, which is a trap that subpar shooters end up falling into, but as real locations, places you've truly passed through on your mission to rescue the president's daughter. Enemy types aid this by weaving in and out of your story, reappearing just when you've forgotten they exist, this time with a new weapon, or with a helmet on, or paired with a more threatening group. Skilled players will line up a whole hoard of enemies to hit them all with a single kick, shoot their projectiles out of the air instead of dodging them, and rely on using the knife just to preserve that tiny bit of ammunition. But, most importantly, they'll adapt. Cultists chatter and chainsaws whir in the distance. It's a ten-out-of-ten game, it has to be. So forgive me if I don't have the heart to rate it that way.

just beat the game for the first time and next week i'll be playing the remake so here's my 2 cents:

not outdated. the inputs are pretty precisely designed, sound and impact of bullets are god tier and mechanics are tightly compacted into.... ((everything))

what about limitations? i know a lot of folks went like "huh so RE4R will UPDATE and REPLACE the original one because now we have free flowing camera, rotational movement, strafing and RE Engine" so I want to talk about that.

RE4 is thoughtfully designed around those "limitations" (just different conventions).

1. Free flowing camera and rotational movement would break RE4 balance because it's absolutely against the positioning nuances like some enemy behaviors, different arenas creating very situational and interactive decision-making moments, like this one https://prnt.sc/udmBLx0gY1aa

2. Strafing is also about positioning. Imagine fighting the final boss, doing circle-strafes with your free 360° movement and camera while you dodge with QTEs and shoot the eyes in his legs? Imagine doing the first segment of the village just running around and shooting like it's nothing...
In my first point I wanted to talk about encounter design but now we come to a different subject: enemies.
They're perfectly balanced to Leon control abilities, e.g. no tracking attacks, no input reading, they'll generally slowdown when walking towards the player, encouraging risk/reward gameplay and promoting experimentation since the enemy manipulation here is very cool.

So, stop in one place, shoot an enemy in the head, and think about it: if you run and kick him, you deal damage, you stagger him, easy free kill with few knife hits, and ofc with this you save your bullets as well. there are 3 enemies with him? even better. kick gives you iframes and do AOE damage so that's even more advantage for you. very sick, dont you think? But what about 20 enemies? iframes and AoE will matter much less and you'll start to care more about keeping distance and shooting enemies ass. specially after the parasite thing, you'll never feel safe with headshots again...

...and this is just the beginning. From the castle onwards, I started to feel that I just entered in an ocean of decision-making, mechanics flowing into each other, strategic and experimental insights emerging in my head, and yeah, diving into such a deep sea was never THAT good, but Resident Evil 4 IS that good. I felt, a lot of times, highly challenged by the game's intensity and demand for harmony between effective and experimental gameplay, I rarely died (i think I died more in QTEs than in actual combat lol) but this game really put my brain to work.

3. About RE Engine, fuck off. DMC5 is made in RE Engine and it is one of the most visually uninspired capcom games i've ever seen.

In terms of game design, you could say "okay, if you think all of that about RE4 design and balance, you think RE4R will be a shitty game, right?"....... Nope. The short answer to this is that RE4R is simply a different game. Apparently, it changes a lot of RE4OG main conventions and it tries to "adapt" to modernity, which i'm ok with it.

the problem is that RE4R would never replace RE4OG and, despite this not being the problem per se, it's a subconscious problem for a lot of people. they try to convince themselves that "3rd person OTS non-fixed camera = more possibilities, more variety, more dynamism, more depth, more complexity!" and those kind of people often confuses "depth" and "complexity" with "breadth" which can be very nocive in a critical sense. Pretty much like folks begging capcom to "remake DMC1 but with DMC5 combat, it would be much better I swear... stop remaking resident evil!"

Like, okay, it's not impossible for a game with free flowing camera being better than the opposite but that's not a RULE and the former, for being more "updated", following modern game design conventions, is commonly referred to as "better" and this sucks.

I think I said enough about anachronism and false dichotomy around RE4OG discourse and that's the first thing I wanted to talk about this game. this isn't even a review

but let's talk about praise: this game is one of the best i've ever played, the peak of emergent gameplay, peak of deep combat, peak of positional combat, peak of effectiveness/experimentalism gameplay, peak of games with QTEs, peak of games with Killer7 being a gun, peak of games with merchant, peak of games without strafing, peak of games where you have to save USA president's daughter, peak of blablablablabla

great experience (that was a long 2 cents)

I am the King of all Zoomers. I am routinely filtered by the older systems and mechanics/attitutudes of games before my time (I was like 6 years old when this game came out). With that being said, anyone who thinks that these controls are bad and that this needs a remake is a big baby lmao they work perfectly.

I quit Silent Hill 1 cause the tank controls made it almost impossible for me to get through the first bit of the game without dying endlessly, I have never been able to get into the MGS games because I despise their controls. So know that I mean it when I say that everyone can play RE4, its designed around its tank controls. The enemies are slow and somewhat passive outside of Professional mode.

The game isnt without flaw, in particular I hate the Del Lago boss fight and the island is kinda lame compared to the excellent first 4 chapters of the game. Also hilarious voice acting if you speak spanish, so many of these supposedly castillan peasants speaking like they are clearly from Latam and some who I don't even know where they are supposed to be from : errors in grammar and pronunciation etc.

Simultaneously I think it's as good as people say but also overly hyped up; on one hand, a lot of the most praised things about RE4 really are things other shooters (and let's not beat around the bush: this is more of a shooter than a horror game) had already done at the time. The locational damage is probably the most unique thing at play here, but even that was done by other shooters beforehand, and a lot of 'em were on console, too! RE4 is at its best to me when it's putting emphasis on being a horde shooter. Enemies don't use firearms against you so it's mostly about figuring out how you'll deal with so many enemies as they slowly approach. The earlier sections in the village are definitely the best to me, as the hordes are in wide yet vertical areas but have the ability to continually breach your defenses in new ways, perfectly capturing the horror movie staple of an army of monsters swarming you in a way other games really haven't, and I enjoy it even if I don't find it scary (which I'd say conveys the success well). I'd also argue the castle mostly takes away the best of this though, and that's when the issues begin to really creep up on the game to me. Hordes get smaller and rooms get tighter as the cultists have less ways to engage with you, and truth be told I don't think the game is nearly as good when you're sniping religious zealots as it is when micromanaging villagers coming from every single window. This game also gives me major fucking trust issues as it goes on with the Merchant because every single time I'd spend all my money on upgrades for a single type of gun he'd just sell a straight up new gun that's far better I'd have to work up for every single time, even before I'd bought all the upgrades for the prior version of that gun, and I feel just having each weapon not get another "tier" would be better as then you'd only be working to diversify your arsenal rather than constantly spending on one type of gun in some kind of sunk cost fallacy. Ashley? Don't even get me started, she feels like she's just there because the developers played Ico at some point and often just becomes frustrating to deal with in my eyes, and half the best moments with her (making her hide) make you forget she's even there.

With all that said though, the hype is true in more of a structural sense. In any individual element I don't think it tops other players in the genre, but... it's just the total package. They finally found a system of gunplay which feels at home on a controller and from then on it just guarantees you quality gameplay and pacing with no pause. Once the ride of RE4 really begins it doesn't exactly stop, even with my problems with the castle and by extension (but a little less) the island. All the action-movie dumbness just gradually intensifies as it goes all out on being a constant escalating rollercoaster. Even if I have problems with RE4, it's just the easiest game to recommend because there's never a point where it becomes outright bad and the pacing carries it enough that the actual gameplay not being the best of the genre still is accounted for, and it'll never cease wowing you with spectacle and visuals, even as a two decade old game. It's good and above all else; entertaining the whole way through, a quality many games don't have.

The grandfather of modern games such as Dead Space, The Last of Us, etc., a game that defined an era, a game whose lineage can be traced for over 15 years!

The game still plays very well. The gameplay is intense and enjoyable. They really knew how to craft intense moments, such as the mob scene. The gameplay is simple, easy to grasp, and it’s more forgiving than its predecessors, but it’s not dumbed down to any degree.
It looks good for its time (and even now).The level design of the rural areas, right up to the castle, is thought out well enough. Getting from point A to point B feels good.

The story is bizarre. Obviously, this is still a resident evil game. It’s not incredibly deep, but it won’t impair your enjoyment as it does its job. The main villain is straight out of a Shakespeare play, complete with outlandish quotes.
In conclusion, it’s a masterpiece in my eyes. You’ve probably played it, but if not, definitely do so.

"They always feel new - constant, but constantly surprising. They become part of your private autobiography and every time you [play] them a new layer of memory is added to the bond between you. Each performance is a collection of the experiences you have had together. Not many friendships last so long - I suppose the unchanging nature of the music simplifies the dynamic between you - but what would be an unhealthily one-sided affair in your personal life provides a great deal of comfort throughout your professional one. It is even richer if you can always remember the initial naivety, wonder, and thrill that accompanied your first 'date'."

This is a quote from an orchestral conductor about his evolving relationship with great pieces of classical music, but I suspect it's pretty easy for many of us to substitute a couple of words and apply it directly to our experiences with our favorite games. And in the case of RE4 it was a first date to remember.

It was the late spring of 2005, my friend had just bought the game, eight of us crammed into his dorm room at midnight, turned the lights out and the volume up as we played through the first 3 chapters more or less blind. The idea was that we'd pass the controller around whenever the player died, but the first guy somehow stayed alive all the way until chapter 3-2! Us seven spectators had one of the most intense watch-sessions ever, alternating between "AHHHH!" and "EWWWW" and "LOLOL Chuck Norris roundhouse kicks".

Two years later, I bought the Wii version - now I could shoot a Ganado in the leg and then in the face a split second later! It was so damn addictive that I completed the game (for the first time) in one single 16-hour sitting. A friend picked me up to go to a party right after, and I spent the entire time in a hazy half-asleep stupor hovering between RE4 and reality. And while I don't remember this, he said (while laughing his ass off) that at one point I stood in front of a vase and swiped my right arm back and forth in the "break vase" Wiimote gesture for a few seconds.

I've returned to Resident Evil 4 at so many different seasons of my life - playing quick rounds of Mercenaries mode with a warm bottle of milk in my lap waiting for my infant daughter to start fussing, doing a handgun-only pro run when COVID lockdowns first started - that it has to be a five-star game for me. It's not just that I have plenty of memories of it; it's that the game was addictive and fantastic enough that I kept coming back to it to make those memories in the first place, and that's something that no amount of plot contrivances or anticlimactic final acts can take away from it.

Plenty of reviews have waxed lyrical on this game's virtues better than I can, but I wanted to point out how impressed I am with how the iconic village brawl really teaches the new player how to play the game. It establishes from the outset that unlike the zombies from previous games, these guys are capable of running, moving intelligently to flank you, and following you up stairs and through windows. And through a mix of its large enemy swarms, the presence of sloping terrain which means that you will eventually hit an enemy in the face even if you just spray and pray, and the fact that enemies sometimes stagger forwards when hit in the face, and you've created the conditions for even a complete newbie to discover the melee options by accident. And the melee options are part of the extraordinarily robust but viscerally simple gameplay loop that has sustained my interest in this game through countless playthroughs.

I know that this represents the start of the shift away from survival horror that culminated in the all-action RE6 (that's a review I'm kinda dreading to get to) - but taken as it is it's a blockbuster in all the right ways. It looks and sounds fantastic even today, is exceptionally refined in execution, is a bundle of scares on the first run and then unadulterated fun on subsequent playthroughs, and... it's just good, man. Play it!

I think Mikami understands to an unnatural degree that video games are fundamentally about problem-solving. Unlike an academic interpretation of "problem-solving" though, Mikami understands that the exercise of problem-solving is less about solving the actual problem but of learning new ways of thinking. Sure, other video games are problem-solving in a base sense, but Mikami's problems have that magical "Oh Shit" element to them; everyone who's done one playthrough of this game will instantly remember all three wolverine encounters, the first time they encountered Regenerators, the Krauser section, the entire 4-4 homestretch, etc. Consistent to all these amazing sections is that the game feels like it's adapting along with the player--as if Mikami was a math tutor guiding us along the workbook. "Ok you know how to deal with Wolverine now, but what if we stuck in you a locked cage with one of them? What if we put two of them in the same room? How would you adapt then?" You have to recontextualize and reinvent constantly, without forgetting the fundamentals that got you there. One of the fundamental pillars of a conservative mindset is the idea that change is risky--the problem might get worse if you approach in a new way, so it's safer to keep doing things the same way. RE4 looks at this mindset, kneecaps it, then gives it a head-exploding suplex--change is necessary, even if it is risky; use more of your resources, resupply, be more precise, exploit another weakness, or use a goddamn rocket launcher if you have to--just don't think the old way is the only way if you want to make it through. It's a constant escalation of gameplay, and that the narrative matches this escalation tit-for-tat is just aces. Literally one of the most radical games of all-time, in every sense of the word.

Forget about misplaced film analogies, I’m starting to think Resident Evil 4 might be the Abbey Road of video games - not just a title that shook the industry and course corrected everyone even thinking about flexing their own creative muscles in its wake, but also arriving fully formed after years of refinement and experimentation, effectively acting as a thunderous mic drop for their creators and the years of work that preceded it. In fact, this game has been so universally and thoroughly praised, that the idea of picking it apart critically feels futile.

Don’t worry, I’m not about to denounce a modicum of this game’s quality here. Anything I say for the rest of my mortal life that resembles intense negative criticism of RE4 ought to be interpreted as a cry for help, and the authorities should be alerted of my status immediately. What I am suggesting though, is that its monolithic status in the industry has likely steered away modern critics from really digging into the systems to discern what really makes the package sing. “Resident Evil 4 is one of the greatest games of all time” is a sentiment that’s as natural as breathing to most (myself included), so why even bother trying to justify that notion? I won’t be challenging that instinct today, as breaking down every positive element to RE4 would be an exercise in futility at this point, but there is a single ever-present thread that permeates through the game’s massive campaign that I would like to discuss today.

Call it a theory (a game theory, if you will) but I think many modern “gamey” games have taken RE4 and its sneakiest qualities for granted, or just completely missed certain brushstrokes that brought the game together. It’s hard not to love everything here, obviously, but something that really stood out to me on my numerous recent playthroughs was how RNG influences every corner of play across the game’s massive campaign.

We all know by now how masterful Resident Evil 4’s restricted control scheme is, but in my eyes, the reason why is due to everything else surrounding the control scheme. Say for the sake of argument you’ve just cornered yourself in a room with a dozen Gonados. A fate worse than death in a traditional action game, but it shouldn’t be too scary here due to Leon’s plethora of ranged options, right? If you’ve played RE4 before (and if you haven’t, what the hell are you doing here?) you know that encounters rarely play out in such a breezy fashion. Enemies and their movement patterns are erratic, their attack options are multifaceted and frequently require different countermeasures, and the silent difficulty scaling that pulls the strings on normal mode means you always have to stay on your toes to fight for your survival. This dynamism swings in your favor too, with critical hits and item drops occasionally feeling like the determining factor between success and failure during bouts. Even in the most ideal of circumstances you always have to stay on high alert, with every layer quickly crumbling with the slightest of breeze and collapsing over your plan near constantly. It’s miraculous how you can play one room over and over again with a vague route in mind, and things can still go wrong.

The item drops are another point too: while the game gives you far more ammo than you could ever need, relying on one weapon will all but guarantee its depletion, forcing you to fall back on other options until you find more ammo. It’s easy to rely on the shotgun due to its range and power, but it feels like for every encounter where you want to fall back on it, another harder fight is sure to come soon. Despite the clearly uneven power scale between your arsenal of weapons, the game somehow remains near-perfectly balanced for an entire playthrough as a result of these micro-decisions you’re forced to make every 5 seconds.

Loot drops from villagers and the economy as a whole also go great lengths towards affecting Resident Evil 4 long-term, but it's revealing to me that even on the highest threshold of difficulty, it's something you never actually need to engage with. Due to the strength of universal options like the knife and invincible melee attacks, combined with the breadth of ways to use crumbs of ammunition for even the weakest guns, you always have a strong chance of survival. The core gameplay design is so tight knit that even the addition of an in-game shop that lets you sell every weapon and item in your arsenal simply exists as a way to mix and match gameplay styles on the fly, and try out distinct strategies in a way that feels totally customized to the player and no one else. If you want to sell everything just to max out the Killer7 at the very end of the game and kill the final boss in 8 shots, you can do that! If you want to kill off the Merchant entirely and only use the tools the game is guaranteed to give you, go for it! You’re all but directly encouraged to do so. That’s true dynamism.

Considering everything at play, from Leon’s limited control to the intense variables that shift the playing field with every passing second, it’s fair to say the outcome of the game is at the mercy of RNG in some way. Generally speaking I’m wary about this flavor of design - I always like to have control over my inputs and consequences if I have the dexterity to overcome a challenge, so the idea of a spinning wheel of numbers guiding me towards (or away) from victory isn’t something I normally want to engage with. This may be why I’ve gravitated towards fighting games as a competitive outlet over the past decade, as their mechanics are so cut and dry that the only thing standing in the way of success is my own skill (and often, my hubris).

Resident Evil 4 isn’t like the other girls though. The core mechanics and encounters are so good on their own that the designers didn’t need to weigh down on the player in other more heavy handed ways. It doesn’t need to randomize the shape of rooms to differentiate encounters, weapon stats are never clashing up against the power level of enemies in a way you can’t be expected to work around, and the player is still largely in control of their success at all times despite factors that are genuinely out of your control. Even an enemy randomizer, something that has been proven through ROM hacks to still add to games in meaningful ways, is simply unnecessary when you have a campaign so tightly packed with variety and interesting scenarios. The unpredictable elements that do come into play simply follow the player and force them to engage with the mechanics in cool and interesting ways - no more, no less. It’s one of the more elegant threads of randomization I’ve ever seen, and is a clear sign from the designers that they absolutely knew what they were cooking with. Capcom created perfectly optimized systems around the simple act of pointing and shooting, and could be as hands off from the player as possible to let the design of this suplex of a game speak for itself.

so much of re4 comes down to the tension of its moment-to-moment play, and i bear this in mind as i consider the possibilities of the remake and the crucial matter of how the action feels if the pacing and your maneuverability is significantly increased or 'improved' — as we expect it to be.

looking back at the original game (and its various ports), especially having now played the re2 remake and a number of similar modern tps games, there's a vaguely king's field-like sluggishness to re4 and its tank controls and slower forward movement. combined with its wild action setpieces and a synesthetic style resembling an arcade game (especially apparent in the character models, their faces and the particular expressiveness of their voices, the scope and flair of the boss fights, the button-mashing qte stuff, etc), this very deliberate and yet very flexible approach to action in balance with tension is something which continues to set re4 apart from the rest. in praise of games which offer interesting friction to your mobility, rather than endlessly seek ways of reducing it. amen.

If there's anything that was on my mind about Resident Evil 4's development, it's how it branched off into the creation of Devil May Cry. After experiencing it for myself, I can see a good chunk of DMC1's DNA in this game. Both of them are incredibly tight action-based experiences that are tonally in sync with both their oppressive atmospheres and campy storylines. The main difference I picked up on from DMC is that RE4 is a comparably more linear experience. Not to say that DMC was anything close to a search action title, but RE4 felt more like a rollercoaster ride of action. I think this works to its benefit, though. It allows RE4 to keep a strong level of momentum throughout the entire experience. In fact, I think its pacing is more similar to DMC3 in that regard. What I believe this showcases is how RE4 reflects the direction of the action games that followed it and how they focus on more linear, moment-to-moment experiences that build up over the course of the game. It makes RE4 that much more interesting to analyze as a cornerstone of gaming history.

Murphy's Law:
1. In any field of endeavor, anything that can go wrong, will go wrong.
2. Left to themselves, things always go from bad to worse.
3. If there is a possibility of several things going wrong, the one that will go wrong, is the one that will cause the most damage.
4. Nature always sides with the hidden flaw.
5. If everything seems to be going well, you have obviously overlooked something.

One of the best games ever made, but you knew that.

I don't need to explain what Resident Evil 4 is, or the story of its development, or the influence that it still holds over the entire industry nearly two decades later. I just want to talk about what this game means to me, because your own personal experience with Resident Evil 4 is the last unique thing that anyone could hope to say about it in 2023.

Resident Evil 4 came to me when I was a teenager, as I imagine it did for most other people. I think it was the Best Friends zaibatsu that turned me on to it in the first place, but there was an undercurrent running through the gaming zeitgeist that commanded you to play it. That commanded you to enjoy it. Resident Evil 4 was a game that I was supposed to like, and so I did. I liked fitting in. It helped that it was a fun game. I liked being able to tell people on the internet that it was one of the best things ever made (in all of my ignorance; I'd probably only played fifteen video games in my life up to that point) and arguing with anyone who dared say otherwise. I knew that Resident Evil 4 was good, and everyone else needed to know that, too.

Then I got a bit older, and I got a bit sourer, and I started questioning a lot of things. About myself, about the world, about my hobbies. Suddenly, liking Resident Evil 4 felt kind of lame. Like, sure, it was still good, but everyone said that. I thought Dead Space 2 was the better game because it didn't have tank controls and it was scarier. That became the new, hot take that I could hold to my chest. Fuck what everyone else was saying, it was time for me to say something fresh. Something new. It was something I could argue about that felt novel, and I could feel the first tendrils of a personality starting to grow deep within me. Someone in middle school once teased me with the line "where'd you download that opinion from", and it got to me so bad that I still remember it over a decade later. Never again. I had thoughts of my own, now.

And from there, I just kind of passively accepted that as the new way of things. Resident Evil 4 was old, and passe, and Dead Space 2 was the successor to the throne. I never played either of them again after I got into my sophomore year of high school, and I didn't even finish Resident Evil 4 the last time that I played it. The two games have been laying dormant on my shelves and in my Steam library for eight years each. But the news of the Resident Evil 4 remake spurred me to check out the original again. I had fond memories and — with age — I'd become a bit less of a contrarian for the sake of being contrary. It was time for a retrospective.

Walking through the village made me tear up. I was home again.

I beat Resident Evil 4 a lot when I was a teenager. I would come home from school and play it on days when my friends weren't around for Call of Duty matchmaking or miniature Mortal Kombat 9 tourneys. I had forgotten how much I had loved it while I'd been playing it; I'd forgotten a lot about the game as a whole.

I didn't like it just because someone else put me on to it. I liked it because it was good. I liked it because it was fun. I liked it because I could be cool and stylish and slick one moment, and then be shitting my pants over the sound of a breathing regenerator the next.

Resident Evil 4 is still the same game that I loved as a teenager, with all of its pock marks and blemishes. The quick time events are an odd inclusion. Massive, flashing DODGE and KICK prompts can override your fire button, which can make you take an unfair hit. Resources on the mandatory first normal mode playthrough are so plentiful as to make the game trivial with any effort spent on health and ammo conservation. It's sleazy in a way that feels exploitative rather than self-aware. Ashley can be a pain if you end up telling her to wait in a safe area where enemies will later spawn in from nowhere. The economy is completely fucked, what with the fact that you can buy fifteen insta-kill rocket launchers to use against bosses for the same amount of pesetas it takes to fully upgrade a magnum.

And I don't care about any of that. When I played Resident Evil 4 again for the sake of this review, nearly a decade after I'd last touched it, I was a teenager again.

This home isn't perfect, but it's mine.

The early opinions I've seen for the Resident Evil 4 remake have been mixed, with people both praising how punchy and dynamic it is, and deriding it for losing some of its tone and character. I probably won't play it anytime soon, because it's a Capcom game and I'd rather wait like, two months for it to hit 10 dollars, but all the back and forth over whether a remake is even deserved did provide enough of an excuse to load up the "Chainsaw Demo".

Pretty good! I might just wait one month for the game to hit 30$ instead. It got me thinking, though... I haven't played Resident Evil 4 since it came out all the way back in 2005, so it's difficult for me to understand what's different and what's the same without playing that, too. I loading it up off my Wii's hard drive and immediately said "why the hell is this in 16:9?" Uh, no option to change that...! Maybe I got the wrong version. Oh well, I have a physical copy sitting on my shelf, the disc is as clean as the day it was purchased, I could just put that in. Wait, it's still in 16:9?

It took a bit, but I can totally understand why Capcom would want more room to the left and right of Leon, because otherwise everything would be pulled in too tight and the third person shooting just wouldn't be satisfying. I'm just stupid is all, I forgot that was a thing, because I haven't really looked at or thought about this game much in the last uh, 18 years? Oh my god I wish I didn't just do the math on that.

You've all played this game. Everybody has. It's on about as many platforms as Doom, and it's arguably just as seminal for third person shooters as Doom was for first. My take away from my little comparison is that REmake 4 does some interesting things with the formula, and it has left me curious to see how the full game makes use of its expanded mechanics and more cinematic focus, but I also had so much fun dinking around in Resident Evil 4's opening hour that I just kept playing. And playing. And playing... I've now finished the game for only the second time in my life, and I still think it's pretty good!

Resident Evil 4 is definitely more tense than I remember it. Rather than building anxiety through rigid controls, low resources, and deliberate enemy placement, Resident Evil 4 instead focuses on creating satisfying combat that still leaves you stressed the hell out thanks to the erratic movement of its enemies, as well as their sheer numbers and aggression. Ammo might be falling out of the walls and fixtures, but every firefight leaves you with your teeth clenched, hoping to god you can run over a pile of corpses and find a few more boxes of shotgun shells to take out the heavy gunner that's just dropped in, even though you're probably fine. Probably. Your inventory is again limited, but since you also need to keep a much larger arsenal on you, it's been totally reworked to become a attache case whose blocks must be carefully rationed between items and guns of varying sizes. At times I found it irritating having to constantly jump into the attache when I wanted to heal or change weapons mid-fight, but meticulously rearranging everything to my liking between battles is very cathartic, and actually works as a great way to center yourself after a fight.

There's still puzzles to solve, and that's perhaps where I think Resident Evil 4 is at its most mixed. Some of them are good, others just feel obligatory, like they felt they had to keep putting them in there because, well, it's still a Resident Evil and that's just what you do. At the same time, there's such a variety of set pieces and gimmicks, it feels like Capcom threw every idea they had at the walls, and I have to appreciate that. I have no idea what development was like, but the people they had on the project must have been some "yes, and" motherfuckers with the way the game keeps outdoing itself. Yeah you're in a castle now, it's run by some weird little dude, of course he has a roller coaster cart he uses to move around the place, it's huge, he has a whole room for a three story tall statue of himself and also it moves. There's just an army of Emperor Palpatine looking dudes here, those are his friends, some of them have rocket launchers. Why? Because it's fun!

By the way, shout outs to the Regenerators in the last chapter. I had this vague memory of hating them, but coming back to the game now, I think they're one of the more inventive enemies in the series, and they're generally placed in locations that keep each encounter feeling fresh despite the method for disposing of them being the same. They're also buckass naked, which... that's just brave.

The tone and writing are also perfect, and I think I have an even greater appreciation for what it's doing now than I did back then. It's clearly lampooning American action films of the era, and every time "the war on terror" is brought up, it's done in a way that makes it clear the localization team was being very self-aware. It is upsetting to hear that REmake 4 potentially loses some of that, but it's also so period specific that I don't know how well it would play today without the added context of its original release date. So long as they keep lines like "your hand comes off?" I'll be fine. The one thing you cannot change is Leon's one-liners, those are sacred and I will fight for them.

I've heard the phrase "best of all time" thrown around for this game, and I don't know if I entirely agree with it. Obviously I think it's very good, but there's just enough about it that keeps it from being my favorite Resident Evil, even. The QTE's are generally uninteresting and disruptive, and while I do understand it was something games just did at the time, I don't like them. I also think the game is a bit too long and could be more tightly paced in some areas, and while Saddler is pretty hammy, I just never got too invested in him versus his subordinates, who I found to be much more interesting characters.

But, man, it's still Resident Evil 4, and those are small gripes considering how great the game is overall. I mean, you all know that. All of you are probably more familiar with this game than I am. Why am I even talking about it?

The first issue of Nintendo Power that I ever read (#231) included a segment titled “BEST OF THE BEST,” where Chris Slate and the gang ranked what they considered the twenty greatest games for every Nintendo console. As an eight year-old sitting in a seven-week summer camp where videogames were absolutely off-limits, this was a treasure trove. So much had already stoked my curiosity for my pastime’s past, Nintendo’s in particular, and this magazine was a whole gallon of kerosene on that tiny lil’ flickering spark. It’s here that the seeds of intrigue for the Legend of Zelda series were first planted in my brain, seeing as it always seemed to narrowly edge out the guy I was there to see (up until the dedicated Wii page, where Mario Galaxy reigned supreme), but in the small collection of those that stood up there with the Big Boys was a glaring anomaly. The GameCube was my introduction to the medium, emblematic of Mario Kart and Sonic Adventure, but here, it was host to the grungiest entry on the entire list. Scary, even, for a kid as timid as I was. That fiery screenshot, with its grotesque giant towering over a gun-toting action hero, branded itself onto the grooves of my gray matter. And right beneath it —

01 – RESIDENT EVIL 4

Somehow, the whimsy and imagination I so craved had lost out to the brutish violence I'd glimpsed in more “MATURE” content, and on its home turf, too…I might’ve been a bit put-off, but I had the whole rest of the summer to think it over. I knew that if even the staff of Nintendo Power had to hand the cup to Capcom (themselves acknowledging how rare it was for a “third-party game to top Nintendo on its own system”), there must’ve been something to it.

Fast-forward another fourteen years, and Resident Evil 4’s reputation has become impossible to ignore. Its third-person shooting is so legendarily perfect that it “killed” its own series, cutting off any and all future for fixed camera angles, but also never quite being succeeded by anything that managed to improve on its gameplay. There’s even been some renewed vitriol levied against RE4 in recent years now that the series has managed to finally recapture some amount of its success with something closer to an A-Horror aesthetic (at least among fans I know), but either way, the conversation has never seemed able to escape from the devouring whirlpool of that fourth entry. I still hadn’t gotten around to any of ‘em myself, having decided I wasn’t a horror guy or a shooting guy for most of my life, but that was changing as I was gradually broadening the scope of my personal taste. Eventually I figured that, if I was ever gonna get around to Resident Evil, I’d be one of those diehard fixed camera haunted house puzzle box fiends, decrying 4’s abandonment of all that is subtle, terrifying, and holy. It was too colorless, too vapid to catch the interest of one with taste as REFINED as myself. Right. As if.

No, I’m not too good for Resident Evil 4. Not even close, and I knew it within the first fifteen minutes. It takes no time at all before we’re fending off crowds of parasite-infected villagers as the most adorkable government operative this side of Solid Snake, and if the goofy “rEsiDeNt eeEEviLLL…fOOOUUuurRRR” on the title screen didn’t gear me up for a schlock-fest, Leon’s indelible “bingo” quip did the trick. Even as an MGS fan, I don’t know if I’d have guessed how well that balance between the tense, sometimes genuinely fear-inducing gameplay and the campy fun of the story would work for me. Metal Gear’s cartoonish stealth often straddles the same line between silly and serious as its cutscenes, but the shamelessly corny character interactions here were a relief, a chance to laugh before plunging back into atmospheric danger, and that made it much more endearing than I’d expected. I understand the pushback against some of the nonsense here, especially with such a strong opening area, but it was just too entertaining to ever strike me as some kind of tragic missed opportunity. I never thought I’d enjoy quicktime events, and escort missions are rarely done well, but the occasional button-mash and the presence of a companion both counterbalance the thrilling dread of the regular gameplay in all of the right ways (and RE4’s gameplay somehow manages to measure and expand on both ideas).

Despite the recent ubiquity of the genre, I hadn’t actually played a dedicated third-person shooter before this game (so my bewilderment over its greatness is probably not that far off from players of its day), but my impression of the sixth console generation had always been, when it came to the big names, an eschewing of tightness and gameplay depth in favor of breadth and spectacle. I was more wrong than I realized. Resident Evil 4 is almost, if not as dedicated to its core hook as the original Super Mario Bros., and its ability to take a minimalistic and intuitive system and spin it out into dozens of dynamic situations is about as well-documented too. The temptation to build a game around a narrative concept or theme can be strong, but RE4 is a textbook example of what happens when a designer picks one verb and rolls with it all the way, come hell or high water. You don’t need me rattling off every little nuance, but its handling of the interplay between ranged and melee combat is so sick that, even without a plot, the promise of getting to set up and execute the next head-smashing suplex would’ve been enough to carry me through the entire game both times.

Slim resources are a fine way to get the player to pick their shots carefully, but this added layer means they’re also weighing where and when to aim to get the most out of every bullet. Headshots open the door to sweeping roundhouse kicks which can topple an entire tide of lurching foes, but, unless I could afford to spend some shotgun ammo, I never wanted to be too close to the horde while I was at it. I found myself sizing up a situation, firing off some careful headshots from afar, and then closing the distance to cash in on that splash damage. Shooting below the knees is best when looking to take out an individual enemy with a spectacular skull slam. That simple decision makes it so much more than your typical “glory kill,” it always rewards the player for thinking several steps ahead. ‘Course, you’ve got more on hand than just a couple of guns and Leon’s ridiculous muscles, and RE4 rarely disappoints the desire to use the environment in creative ways. In one of the best moments in either of my playthroughs, I threw down a flash grenade while surrounded by goons, and quickly took advantage of the resulting stun effect to kick all of them, one by one, down a hole in the center of the room. Unless any other third-person shooter can offer anything nearly that good, I'm afraid I’ll have to kindly ask the genre to sit down. This game goes in so many directions with its core mechanics that I don’t even feel much of a need to play any of its successors, spiritual or otherwise.

If there is a downside to that insatiable exploration of concepts, though, it’s that it reveals just how narrow the range of RE4’s excellence really is. Its pacing is just about perfect almost all the way through, dialing the intensity up and down with tremendous care and drawing from a seemingly endless barrel of ideas (it can’t be understated that just about every encounter features a distinct spin of its own that makes the engagement unique), but somehow, it didn’t quite manage to wow me in the end. I’m talking about the very end here, just the final few setpieces. Maybe capping off such a crowd-focused game system on a more traditional one v. one final boss fight wasn’t quite the right move, perhaps the insanity of that second to last segment was just a little too messy (despite being succeeded by a pretty great little zone), maybe the game had already hit such a spiraling high just a little earlier that the final stretch couldn’t possibly have lived up, or maybe it really did need a bit more weight to its drama to make that ending sing. Whatever the reason, it’s hard to criticize RE4 for failing to “stick to its guns” when it does so fantastically over the course of the whole game, but it clearly does best in those explorable combat arenas, filled with ins and outs and enemy types to strategize around. When the conclusion finally did roll in, it seemed to have already exhausted just about every possible configuration of those parts it could dream up, but it’s a good thing it ends only a little after it stops playing to those very particular strengths. Surprised as eight year-old me might’ve been to hear this coming from himself, that just makes it all the more enticing to hop back over to the start and climb Resident Evil 4’s rollicking “Tower of Terror” over again.

I guess Chris Slate was just me all along...

The more I play and the more I think on it, the harder it becomes to justify giving this game anything less than a perfect score. It takes me back to a different age, when games seemed endless, when I could play them again and again and keep finding new secrets, when they had all these crazy bonuses and different side modes to discover and unlock, when I could toy around and experiment with their mechanics and find all the different cheese tactics. Not to mention it’s ambience, it’s art design, the sound effects, music ques, that safe room theme, despite not playing it before logging it here, I find it evokes a lot of nostalgia in me. I definitely still think there’s hiccups, parts that I dread to play through again, and yet I’m always motivated to power through them. Every time I pick this game up, hours go by. They really captured lightning in a bottle with this one.

Here it is, Game Journalism: The Game. This game was worth the development hell that Capcom went through to make this game. It is definitely not a scary game, however it can get very tense and stressful due to the somewhat awkward controls and not being able to move while shooting. Settings are really good, soundtrack is great once again in the Resident Evil franchise, enemies are fun to fight and the game has a satisfying gameplay loop. Puzzles are scaled back but boss fights are scaled up in result. Most of the boss fights are fun and enjoyable to play. Leon is a badass, doing kicks and suplexes are fun as hell and even though they are basic, it is still fun to kick the shit out of some Ganados and Zealots. Leon is also super campy but it has a real good charm to it and it makes him the character that is loved by many today. A very worthwhile experience that everyone should try at least once in their life.