Used to play this game a ton back in the day. The shitty PC port published by Ubisoft back in 2007 was my go-to with this game at first. But, because of the reptilian controller scheme I droped it and moved to the PS2 version because a friend had one.

It's still pretty good. It hasn't aged that much and even compared to the remake, it still stands tall. It's fun, funny, it barely makes sense, brutal, tight and just well, a fun adventure to go through.

Fun fact: The spanish in this game, is utterly broken. Ganados voice lines I mean. I can truly say it myself as a native speaker. But it's goofy type funny. They corrected it in the Remake though.

I slept on this game for too long! This is one of the most fun games I have ever played in my life. The shooting gameplay loop with the ganados is kino and never gets tiring.

My only issues involve the pacing and the controls. The second half of the game (about halfway through the castle) drags a bit for me and I really hate the novistadors. The tank controls are fine for the most part, but leon feels a little too slow during boss fights sometimes. None of these are big enough issues to deter from how stupid fun this game is though

I love this game, RE4 is the game that got me started on the series and playing it again now with the PS1 entries under my belt makes me like it even more than I did the first time around.

Big part of what makes RE4 so effective is that the game does away with the intentional limitations of the older entries and molds them into being the best parts of the game. For example, the combat, which you usually wanted to avoid in the past games is instead encouraged here with item drops and is the highlight of the game. It's just so damn fun, the random ammo drops mean you'll constantly have to switch up what weapon you're using so it's constantly engaging and transitioning to melee options like the knife is seamless here. Also, suplexing enemies so hard their head explodes will never get old. The game is extremely linear but this works to the game's benefit rather than detriment because the pacing here is perfect. The game is constantly changing up the terrain and enemy types so there's rarely if ever a dull moment in the 16 hours that this game goes on for, not even in the military base. There's also the attache case, inventory was always clunky in the past games but here it's one of the best parts of the game. There's just something so enjoyable about personalising your inventory so items are placed specifically where you want them to be and fiddling around with it so items are stacked neatly scratches an itch I never knew I had.

Obviously the game is heavier on the action than any of the prior games but every mainline resi game upped the action from the previous one so I view RE4s direction to just be a natural progression of that, rather than some betrayal of the series' roots. Horror atleast still plays a role here like in the sections with Verdugo, Regenerators and the UM3 bossfight and for me they're some of the most memorable parts of the game so I appreciate the effort to balance the horror with the action even if the end result feels pretty skewered towards the latter. What I don't really appreciate is the story, I like the village section's tone but once you enter the castle it turns into hammy nonsense and while it is pretty funny and entertaining, it feels like it's from a completely different series and doesn't do much for me, but it's not like I play these games for the story anyway.

Also, I don't know how to segway into this but mercenaries mode is fucking awesome. All the characters feel distinct from eachother and it's insanely fun to experiment with what character does best at a specific stage. Wesker and Hunk are probably my favourites since sending enemies flying across the screen is about as fun as it sounds and getting multiple kills is the easiest with Hunk since all he has is the TMP. I usually don't spend much time with side modes like this in games but I love RE4s gameplay so much that I had to make an exception here.

Prior to replaying the game, I was feeling pretty burnt out on the series and I was thinking about playing something else, but the moment I booted RE4 up, I could not put the controller down. Time just flies by when I play this game, it's honestly magical, it's my favourite RE game and one of my favourite games ever, easily.