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!
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!